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Spotify Premium Users Can Stream Lossless Music At Last
The feature supports up to 24-bit FLAC quality and is rolling out in over 50 countries. However, Middle East users may have to wait until October.
Spotify has switched on lossless music streaming after years of delays, bringing premium users up to 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC quality across most of its 100-million-track library. First teased in 2021 as a “HiFi” tier, the feature is now rolling out in more than 50 countries — but unfortunately, the Middle East isn’t on the initial list.
Lossless audio delivers uncompressed sound, retaining full quality for playback on capable headphones and speakers. Premium subscribers in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia and Sweden are among the first to get access. Users will see a notification when the option lands on their account, and it must be enabled manually under Settings > Media Quality > Lossless for both streaming and downloads.
The company has confirmed that regular Bluetooth can’t carry lossless audio, so playback requires Spotify Connect over Wi-Fi with compatible gear from brands like Bose, Yamaha and Bluesound. This keeps fidelity intact without relying on Bluetooth compression.
Also Read: Best Music Streaming Services In The Middle East
Spotify is late to a race rivals started years ago — Apple Music added lossless in 2021, while Amazon bundled its HD tier at no extra cost in 2020. For Middle Eastern subscribers, the wait continues: Spotify says October will bring clarity on whether the feature rolls out in the region.
News
NVIDIA Puts GPT-5.5 Codex In Hands Of 10,000 Staff
The chipmaker has significantly expanded OpenAI’s latest model across teams from engineering to HR under tight internal controls.
NVIDIA has started rolling out OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model through the Codex coding agent to more than 10,000 employees, extending the tool well beyond software teams and into core business functions.
The deployment covers engineering, product, legal, marketing, finance, sales, HR, operations and developer programs. Staff are using Codex for coding, internal research and routine knowledge work as companies test whether AI agents can move from demos to daily use.
GPT-5.5 is running on NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems, linking OpenAI’s newest model directly to the chipmaker’s latest infrastructure push. NVIDIA said the systems cut cost per million tokens by 35 times and raise token output per second per megawatt by 50 times versus earlier generations.
Inside the company, it says the effects are immediate. Debugging work that once took days is being finished in hours and experiments across large codebases that used to stretch over weeks are now handled overnight. Teams are also building features from natural-language prompts with fewer failed runs.
In a company-wide note urging staff to adopt the tool, CEO Jensen Huang wrote: “Let’s jump to lightspeed. Welcome to the age of AI.”
Security remains central to the rollout. Codex can connect through Secure Shell to approved cloud virtual machines, allowing agents to work with company data without moving it outside approved environments. NVIDIA said it assigned cloud VMs to employees so agents run in isolated sandboxes with full audit trails.
Also Read: Deezer Says AI Tracks Now Make Up 44% Of Uploads
The company added that the setup uses a zero-data-retention policy. Access to production systems is read-only through command-line tools and internal automation layers.
The move also highlights NVIDIA’s long relationship with OpenAI. NVIDIA said the partnership began in 2016, when Huang personally delivered the first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to OpenAI’s San Francisco office.
The two companies have since worked across hardware and model deployment. NVIDIA also said OpenAI plans to deploy more than 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for future AI infrastructure.
For Gulf markets pouring money into sovereign AI and enterprise automation, the signal is clear: internal AI agents are moving from pilot phase to standard tooling.
NVIDIA Puts GPT-5.5 Codex In Hands Of 10,000 Staff
Deezer Says AI Tracks Now Make Up 44% Of Uploads
Yango Ride Introduces In-Chat Trip Planning In ChatGPT
Nano Banana 2 Arrives In MENA For Google Gemini Users
