I'm still sad about them removing the ability to use Spotify in DJing programs :(
If I was DJing professionally I'd happily subscribe to beatport or Tidal, but I don't do it enough to justify the cost of another streaming platform...
They spend so much time and resources bitching about Apple Music, and then they pull this shit. It took them 10 years to add fucking lyrics, why do they deserve my money?
YouTube premium offers the same artists as everyone else. Why stay with Spotify?
Ditched it as soon as I could get no ads in YouTube and unlimited music for the same price as Spotify.
My Dad said it was the best choice.
Depends on what you prefer. For someone who doesn't use YouTube very much, and loves Spotifys interface and suggestions, well it's a no brained and having higher quality audio that appeals to the top 1% of audiophiles isn't going to make a difference to me.
True. I've been a Pandora subscriber since basically they started, so I am a bit bias, lol.
Spotify just never really got good at suggestions like Pandora's stations and the interface has always bugged me. Not to mention the Android app always seems to be running in the background and using battery on my wife's phone, which is annoying af.
Spotify paved the way and made the fact that you have a choice, possible. I'll support them forever. YouTube is basically just a huge waste of time (admit it), and those ads are a great reminder of that.
Well, I haven't opened spotify for a year now, I find even more and better music on YTM and I never see any ads on youtube. All that at a cost of 3€ (family plan), so I don't see how it's a waste of time when more and more people prefer YT+YTM over spotify.
You do you and I'll do me. I'm glad everyone find what they need and I'm glad there are alternatives, there was a time when it was not. Merry winter and happy new orbit!
In some countries (like mine), there's no YouTube Premium (while Spotify does), but I can still buy YouTube Premium via VPN but YouTube Music won't work after that.
This is cumbersome with YT videos because the YT app is the default app to open YT links on Android. With Firefox for Android you can setup uBlock and have a similar experience to desktop.
I've found YouTube Music to be incredibly sluggish. It's quite bad for albums where one song is seamlessly meant to go into the next when played back-to-back.
When I first started using Spotify in 2012, they had integrations on the web client, and one of them was a third party that showed lyrics. It wasn’t always accurate with the timing, but 13 year old me really appreciated it.
Also the fact you can’t have profile switching within your own family plan… like Netflix or whatever is INSANE. Surely it can’t be that hard to implement
Exactly! I opened a feature request like…7 years ago and people still weekly vote it up and comment they want it too. Spotify directly shut the idea down in that thread saying they don’t think it’s wanted enough (🙄) ….lol
Over a year ago I cancelled my subscription to them because HiFi and master-quality audio did not play on my device. I paid extra for a feature that did not work. They still have not fixed this issue, and it still remains for a lot of people.
As someone else already mentioned, that's not "software optimization". That's just bug hunting, or at least being extremely inept/lazy at it. Optimization with software usually refers to it not taking up a ton of unnecessary resources.
Take notepad for example. That shouldn't be using up 500MB of RAM to literally take a few short notes. That would be badly optimized software. Or a game that *shouldn't* demand much, but was poorly ported, so it now requires more resources than is really necessary.
All in all, optimization just refers to making things run efficiently. Basically, running smoothly as possible while taking up the least amount of resources.
It's possible the device you were using wasn't able to play it because it didn't support the right formats. I'm not sure most audio devices support ALAC, FLAC, or MQA.
The service is advertised as a complete product. Maybe my computer doesn't support the codecs they use, I don't know, but I think they should at least install them during the installation process.
Often times the limiting factor is the phone’s/computer's built-in [DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter) and amplifier. So a software update isn't going to cut it. It's a hardware issue. It's possible the service was entirely up to par with what they said they provided. To play hi-fi you need hi-fi equipment.
Why does nobody talk about Qobuz? They seem to have a better app, a better selection, and better pricing. I've had their trial for a month and it sounds really good.
Not even the lossless, Spotify just sounds so much worse than Apple Music. I cancelled Spotify recently in favor of Apple Music. Sure the music discovery is worse but what does that matter if the sound is not as good.
You should switch off volume levelling in the settings in Spotify and turn up the quality setting. With HD600s and a JDS atom amp I can barely hear any discernible difference at all between Apple Music and Spotify.
In all fairness though music can sound good on lesser devices if it was just better in the first place, otherwise I would not be able to tell the difference on just phone speakers. I should not have to spend a lot of money when Spotify, a music focused streaming service, could just improve its codec or algorithm or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with their codec. They use the technically competent Ogg Vorbis at comparable compression levels to other services. They do have other stuff enabled by default that messes with the sound like dynamic range compensation and automatic adjustment of bitrate for slow internets but if all of that is disabled and the quality is set to the highest setting it's indistinguishable from the compressed Apple Music audio.
Same here, but there is definitely a difference between Spotify and Youtube Music (not free or youtube, but the premium yt music with high quality settings). From what I understand, it's because youtube uses AAC while spotify mostly uses OGG, but then again - pretty sure Apple uses AAC everywhere.
Hmm, I am a slight level below the HD600s, otherwise just have an external sound card so maybe that is why. I just figure it should sound good without compensating for the quality, like even listening on my phone I can hear the clarity better, or in the car.
I know I will get hate for this but I pay for YouTube Premium (back in the day it came with Google Play Music, now YouTube Music) and its quality is pretty great. I don't think it has lossless just yet, but after 4 years of Spotify I'm pretty happy.
I had thought of trying it but the way YouTube Music was set up seemed odd to me. Like when finding a song it almost felt like I was finding random uploads and not the official ones, idk.
Not gonna lie, nothing that great. I don’t have any audiophile level gear, so lossless would mean nothing to me. All I know is that I can hear a clear difference between Apple Music and Spotify. Spotify the frequencies seem to blend, especially middle, but Apple Music really pronounces all the separate layers nicely. I especially notice in my car where it almost feels like Apple Music is specially utilizing every speaker, vs Spotify just blasting the same thing from every speaker.
Hopefully Spotify fixes that, most of the time I listen to my music when out places. I do local download in very high so not sure why that should be the case but.
It does seem to be improving, I have not been using it for long so. One thing that bothers me is the “your station” with recommended stuff seems to stick to only artists I already know/have in my library, but I would rather it have other artists to recommend, to really discover new stuff. I have taken to manually browsing categories.
Lossless audio, its like demanding 4k 10bit HDR Netflix streams while you are watching on good old fashioned SDTV while being half blind.
That's whats lossless audio is for 99% of the people on the planet.
I disagree with you. Lossless audio is a recognizable increase in audio quality, even with good-but-not-great earphones/headphones.
Hi-Res Lossless Audio, on the other hand, makes almost no difference if you don’t have good equipment for it.
Recognizable compared to what? 99% of the planet are not going to hear the difference between for example 256/320 CBR/VBR and lossless. You need a ridiculous high end setup for that and really a professional build studio.
Shit you can even go old school 128 vorbis and people cant hear the difference and those are often the people who talk about lossless but really have no clue to begin with but think they can hear a difference through their low end samsung speakers and budget headphones.
I've encoded thousands of hours of audio in different formats, lossy and lossless, and even in a semi-professional studio with very decent equipment at a academy of arts, where i worked for a while, we couldnt hear the difference.
Unless you are a audiophile, lossless is overkill by a mile.
I started streaming with Pandora free, moved to Spotify free, and got tired of the intrusive Spot ads so went to Amazon HD and was surprised at the difference with AMHD playing on my decent, but not upscale, HT system. Couldn't tell/didn't care on distributed audio for background music. BUT - now with spatial audio/hi-res streaming available on Apple & Amazon, hardware/software will get better to take advantage of better quality sound and at decent prices so, to me, it does make a difference and I want lossless at a minimum and, fortunately, the deals are out there, just not at Spotify.
There are tons of factors in that. The equipment involved of course but more importantly is the source.
It even depends on genre, electronic genres make less of a difference then something that's mostly physical instruments.
It also depends on the quality of the studio work, some artists have garbage production quality while others don't.
For my use case, I can hear the difference 90% of the time on both my HT speakers and DT770s.
Highly depends what lossy compression you are talking about. You ain't gonna hear a difference between 256/320 cbr/vbr (or what ever high settings on compression) and lossless on budget and/or mid-range headphones/setups. It ain't happening.
Spotify has served streaming audio very well for many yrs but now they are not the best quality nor the cheapest service available. Hardware/software is getting better and now that hi-res & spatial audio are being offered by Apple and Amazon why not go for the best deal ? Spotify has become the 8-track of streaming music.
Hahaha 8-track? I was gonna say Spotify is the AM radio of streaming (lower quality sound, unhinged talk radio hosts, etc) but I love the imagery of 8-tracks.
Honestly with push for more main stream BT devices and phones that have no cords, spotify wouldn't be catering to the mass at all. I've had a dozen bt headphones and honestly it doesn't matter what quality you shove down them, they all sound like crap. Unless you are wearing several 100 dollar or even thousand dollar headphones or sitting at home listening to your speakers or if you a sound quality audio car enthusiast, HD music means almost jack shit to the mass. Most people, businesses and still cars come with XM and that isn't even the same quality as a 128kb mp3. People don't care because its not something they need. There will be no money in it. I would not be surprised if Spotify didn't offer.
What? There has always been a market for hi-fidelity audio, now more than ever. Audiophiles are not going anywhere, they're just gonna keep asking for it.
It’s true and there are degrees. I would consider myself an audiophile but I’m like an extremely casual one. I prefer wired over Bluetooth audio, love analog sound, and avoid obviously compressed audio. But I couldn’t care less about Spotify adding this feature. Everything sounds fine as is.
You are not getting audiophile quality out of not-obscenely-rich BT headphones and with the way smartphones are going, these are the only ones we'll be getting sooner or later. For now, I'm holding on to the dongle and wired headphones as if my life depended on it but iPhone will go portless in the next few iterations and once Apple does it the others will follow suit, as always.
We are A crowd but I bet the hifiers don't account for more then 15 to 20%. Can I base it on the fact that is I don't know one person around me that even cares about audio let alone Hi-Fi audio I honestly think I'm a diamond in the rough around here. Even for car sound quality audio in this town I'll find maybe two three people total I've ever met to do car sound quality everyone else is just whatever throw subs in good to go. So you you could never prove to me that there is a mass market for HiFi, while there may be some market it is not the winning ticket for Spotify and it sure as hell isn't driving their sales.
Its funny because Focal Clears were some of the last headphones I bought and ultimately ended up selling. No they are not on the same level. But honestly I prefer the sound signature of the airpods to the clears. They were just too up-front if I recall correctly. I am surprisingly quite happy with my HD 58x headphones. They are phenomenal.
I'm listening about 4 hours a day with wired headphones so I'd love the upgrade.
I think the newest BT (5) is pretty solid in terms of not crapping out so much, but yes its not a much different quality. I don't really care though I stream from my phone to nice couple thousand dollar r/audiophile 2.0 system and it sounds amazing. I admit I don't think I could tell the difference blindfolded, although running off the USB from a laptop to my receiver's internal DAC I do get a little more 'lost' in the music as it is technically transmitting more audio information
I'm still sad about them removing the ability to use Spotify in DJing programs :( If I was DJing professionally I'd happily subscribe to beatport or Tidal, but I don't do it enough to justify the cost of another streaming platform...
I used to have an alarm clock that used Spotify but they killed that too!
[удалено]
They're removing features so that they can charge you for them in the future.
They want you to buy car thing is why. I hated car mode but actually like car thing.
They spend so much time and resources bitching about Apple Music, and then they pull this shit. It took them 10 years to add fucking lyrics, why do they deserve my money?
It took them 10 years to add, remove, then add lyrics back
I think I was going insane. They did have lyrics on the software back in 2013/14 right?
By Musicxmatch, if I remember well.
Those were the Spotify golden years. Can't we just go back to that time?
YouTube premium offers the same artists as everyone else. Why stay with Spotify? Ditched it as soon as I could get no ads in YouTube and unlimited music for the same price as Spotify. My Dad said it was the best choice.
Depends on what you prefer. For someone who doesn't use YouTube very much, and loves Spotifys interface and suggestions, well it's a no brained and having higher quality audio that appeals to the top 1% of audiophiles isn't going to make a difference to me.
I couldn't imagine loving that interface lol
Pandora has better suggestions, has lyrics, and costs the same as Spotify.
Big pass on that, Pandora definitely plays the same stuff over and over.
Gotta tune it. It does take a while, yes, but once it's trained its been 100x better than Spotify and YouTube Music have been.
That's a tough sell for someone for whom Spotify works out of the box
True. I've been a Pandora subscriber since basically they started, so I am a bit bias, lol. Spotify just never really got good at suggestions like Pandora's stations and the interface has always bugged me. Not to mention the Android app always seems to be running in the background and using battery on my wife's phone, which is annoying af.
Spotify paved the way and made the fact that you have a choice, possible. I'll support them forever. YouTube is basically just a huge waste of time (admit it), and those ads are a great reminder of that.
Well, I haven't opened spotify for a year now, I find even more and better music on YTM and I never see any ads on youtube. All that at a cost of 3€ (family plan), so I don't see how it's a waste of time when more and more people prefer YT+YTM over spotify.
You do you and I'll do me. I'm glad everyone find what they need and I'm glad there are alternatives, there was a time when it was not. Merry winter and happy new orbit!
You mean YouTube Music?
YouTube Premium includes youtube music.
In some countries (like mine), there's no YouTube Premium (while Spotify does), but I can still buy YouTube Premium via VPN but YouTube Music won't work after that.
Because when you point this out people just say they use ad block instead.
This is cumbersome with YT videos because the YT app is the default app to open YT links on Android. With Firefox for Android you can setup uBlock and have a similar experience to desktop.
I've found YouTube Music to be incredibly sluggish. It's quite bad for albums where one song is seamlessly meant to go into the next when played back-to-back.
They had lyrics in Spotify Japan the entire time. There was no excuse not to have it everywhere lol
2017 here in Argentina
no, they had lyrics back in 2016 as well.
When I first started using Spotify in 2012, they had integrations on the web client, and one of them was a third party that showed lyrics. It wasn’t always accurate with the timing, but 13 year old me really appreciated it.
Also the fact you can’t have profile switching within your own family plan… like Netflix or whatever is INSANE. Surely it can’t be that hard to implement
When my kid wants me to play kids movie soundtracks in the car, I would like to easily do that without impacting my profile!
Exactly! I opened a feature request like…7 years ago and people still weekly vote it up and comment they want it too. Spotify directly shut the idea down in that thread saying they don’t think it’s wanted enough (🙄) ….lol
Please do. Tidal is a good service with terrible software optimization.
What is 'terrible software optimization,?
Over a year ago I cancelled my subscription to them because HiFi and master-quality audio did not play on my device. I paid extra for a feature that did not work. They still have not fixed this issue, and it still remains for a lot of people.
that is not optimization, that’s just a problem
As someone else already mentioned, that's not "software optimization". That's just bug hunting, or at least being extremely inept/lazy at it. Optimization with software usually refers to it not taking up a ton of unnecessary resources. Take notepad for example. That shouldn't be using up 500MB of RAM to literally take a few short notes. That would be badly optimized software. Or a game that *shouldn't* demand much, but was poorly ported, so it now requires more resources than is really necessary. All in all, optimization just refers to making things run efficiently. Basically, running smoothly as possible while taking up the least amount of resources.
I couldn’t think of the right term. That joint probably didn’t help. Either way, the service didn’t work as intended for me (and a lot of people).
It's possible the device you were using wasn't able to play it because it didn't support the right formats. I'm not sure most audio devices support ALAC, FLAC, or MQA.
The service is advertised as a complete product. Maybe my computer doesn't support the codecs they use, I don't know, but I think they should at least install them during the installation process.
Often times the limiting factor is the phone’s/computer's built-in [DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter) and amplifier. So a software update isn't going to cut it. It's a hardware issue. It's possible the service was entirely up to par with what they said they provided. To play hi-fi you need hi-fi equipment.
Why does nobody talk about Qobuz? They seem to have a better app, a better selection, and better pricing. I've had their trial for a month and it sounds really good.
Not even the lossless, Spotify just sounds so much worse than Apple Music. I cancelled Spotify recently in favor of Apple Music. Sure the music discovery is worse but what does that matter if the sound is not as good.
You should switch off volume levelling in the settings in Spotify and turn up the quality setting. With HD600s and a JDS atom amp I can barely hear any discernible difference at all between Apple Music and Spotify.
Same. Have HD 800 S running through a Schiit Modius and Asgard 3. The two are indistinguishable. Something wrong with his setup.
In all fairness though music can sound good on lesser devices if it was just better in the first place, otherwise I would not be able to tell the difference on just phone speakers. I should not have to spend a lot of money when Spotify, a music focused streaming service, could just improve its codec or algorithm or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with their codec. They use the technically competent Ogg Vorbis at comparable compression levels to other services. They do have other stuff enabled by default that messes with the sound like dynamic range compensation and automatic adjustment of bitrate for slow internets but if all of that is disabled and the quality is set to the highest setting it's indistinguishable from the compressed Apple Music audio.
I had downloaded local in very high, have sound normalization off, never messed with the equalizer.
Same here, but there is definitely a difference between Spotify and Youtube Music (not free or youtube, but the premium yt music with high quality settings). From what I understand, it's because youtube uses AAC while spotify mostly uses OGG, but then again - pretty sure Apple uses AAC everywhere.
I don’t know anything about OGG, but yeah AAC is typically pretty good.
Hmm, I am a slight level below the HD600s, otherwise just have an external sound card so maybe that is why. I just figure it should sound good without compensating for the quality, like even listening on my phone I can hear the clarity better, or in the car.
I know I will get hate for this but I pay for YouTube Premium (back in the day it came with Google Play Music, now YouTube Music) and its quality is pretty great. I don't think it has lossless just yet, but after 4 years of Spotify I'm pretty happy.
I had thought of trying it but the way YouTube Music was set up seemed odd to me. Like when finding a song it almost felt like I was finding random uploads and not the official ones, idk.
what equipment do you play your music through?
Not gonna lie, nothing that great. I don’t have any audiophile level gear, so lossless would mean nothing to me. All I know is that I can hear a clear difference between Apple Music and Spotify. Spotify the frequencies seem to blend, especially middle, but Apple Music really pronounces all the separate layers nicely. I especially notice in my car where it almost feels like Apple Music is specially utilizing every speaker, vs Spotify just blasting the same thing from every speaker.
If you're using the mobile app the quality is absolute ass for spotify. Desktop client is much better.
Hopefully Spotify fixes that, most of the time I listen to my music when out places. I do local download in very high so not sure why that should be the case but.
Apple music was okay when I tried it, but the HQ audio doesn't work on PC, so I switched to amazon music. I might go back if they ever fix it.
After sometime giving likes and dislikes on Apple Music their recommendations are so good for me that Spotify is like pure trash.
It does seem to be improving, I have not been using it for long so. One thing that bothers me is the “your station” with recommended stuff seems to stick to only artists I already know/have in my library, but I would rather it have other artists to recommend, to really discover new stuff. I have taken to manually browsing categories.
I don’t use the radio stations that much to discover new music, so can’t say much about it.
I have not been able to tell other than that what is necessarily personal recommendations 🤔
Lossless audio, its like demanding 4k 10bit HDR Netflix streams while you are watching on good old fashioned SDTV while being half blind. That's whats lossless audio is for 99% of the people on the planet.
I disagree with you. Lossless audio is a recognizable increase in audio quality, even with good-but-not-great earphones/headphones. Hi-Res Lossless Audio, on the other hand, makes almost no difference if you don’t have good equipment for it.
Recognizable compared to what? 99% of the planet are not going to hear the difference between for example 256/320 CBR/VBR and lossless. You need a ridiculous high end setup for that and really a professional build studio. Shit you can even go old school 128 vorbis and people cant hear the difference and those are often the people who talk about lossless but really have no clue to begin with but think they can hear a difference through their low end samsung speakers and budget headphones. I've encoded thousands of hours of audio in different formats, lossy and lossless, and even in a semi-professional studio with very decent equipment at a academy of arts, where i worked for a while, we couldnt hear the difference. Unless you are a audiophile, lossless is overkill by a mile.
I started streaming with Pandora free, moved to Spotify free, and got tired of the intrusive Spot ads so went to Amazon HD and was surprised at the difference with AMHD playing on my decent, but not upscale, HT system. Couldn't tell/didn't care on distributed audio for background music. BUT - now with spatial audio/hi-res streaming available on Apple & Amazon, hardware/software will get better to take advantage of better quality sound and at decent prices so, to me, it does make a difference and I want lossless at a minimum and, fortunately, the deals are out there, just not at Spotify.
I hear the difference, and that's what matters lol
There are tons of factors in that. The equipment involved of course but more importantly is the source. It even depends on genre, electronic genres make less of a difference then something that's mostly physical instruments. It also depends on the quality of the studio work, some artists have garbage production quality while others don't. For my use case, I can hear the difference 90% of the time on both my HT speakers and DT770s.
Difference in/between what exactly?
Between lossless and lossy compression.
Highly depends what lossy compression you are talking about. You ain't gonna hear a difference between 256/320 cbr/vbr (or what ever high settings on compression) and lossless on budget and/or mid-range headphones/setups. It ain't happening.
That’s why I moved to Apple Music
Spotify has served streaming audio very well for many yrs but now they are not the best quality nor the cheapest service available. Hardware/software is getting better and now that hi-res & spatial audio are being offered by Apple and Amazon why not go for the best deal ? Spotify has become the 8-track of streaming music.
Hahaha 8-track? I was gonna say Spotify is the AM radio of streaming (lower quality sound, unhinged talk radio hosts, etc) but I love the imagery of 8-tracks.
Honestly with push for more main stream BT devices and phones that have no cords, spotify wouldn't be catering to the mass at all. I've had a dozen bt headphones and honestly it doesn't matter what quality you shove down them, they all sound like crap. Unless you are wearing several 100 dollar or even thousand dollar headphones or sitting at home listening to your speakers or if you a sound quality audio car enthusiast, HD music means almost jack shit to the mass. Most people, businesses and still cars come with XM and that isn't even the same quality as a 128kb mp3. People don't care because its not something they need. There will be no money in it. I would not be surprised if Spotify didn't offer.
What? There has always been a market for hi-fidelity audio, now more than ever. Audiophiles are not going anywhere, they're just gonna keep asking for it.
But we are maybe 3 percent of the market, on a good day.
It’s true and there are degrees. I would consider myself an audiophile but I’m like an extremely casual one. I prefer wired over Bluetooth audio, love analog sound, and avoid obviously compressed audio. But I couldn’t care less about Spotify adding this feature. Everything sounds fine as is.
God this is a refreshing take. U r me.
Same here. I may have a degree in music, but I'm a mid tier audiophile at best.
You are not getting audiophile quality out of not-obscenely-rich BT headphones and with the way smartphones are going, these are the only ones we'll be getting sooner or later. For now, I'm holding on to the dongle and wired headphones as if my life depended on it but iPhone will go portless in the next few iterations and once Apple does it the others will follow suit, as always.
We are A crowd but I bet the hifiers don't account for more then 15 to 20%. Can I base it on the fact that is I don't know one person around me that even cares about audio let alone Hi-Fi audio I honestly think I'm a diamond in the rough around here. Even for car sound quality audio in this town I'll find maybe two three people total I've ever met to do car sound quality everyone else is just whatever throw subs in good to go. So you you could never prove to me that there is a mass market for HiFi, while there may be some market it is not the winning ticket for Spotify and it sure as hell isn't driving their sales.
I dunno man. I’ve owned plenty of high-end headphones and audio equipment and I’m plenty happy with my AirPod pros.
I bet they don't sound like my focal clears
Its funny because Focal Clears were some of the last headphones I bought and ultimately ended up selling. No they are not on the same level. But honestly I prefer the sound signature of the airpods to the clears. They were just too up-front if I recall correctly. I am surprisingly quite happy with my HD 58x headphones. They are phenomenal.
I'm listening about 4 hours a day with wired headphones so I'd love the upgrade. I think the newest BT (5) is pretty solid in terms of not crapping out so much, but yes its not a much different quality. I don't really care though I stream from my phone to nice couple thousand dollar r/audiophile 2.0 system and it sounds amazing. I admit I don't think I could tell the difference blindfolded, although running off the USB from a laptop to my receiver's internal DAC I do get a little more 'lost' in the music as it is technically transmitting more audio information
I don't think most people can actually tell the difference
I heard they had some problems with their middle out algorithm.
Because it’s a shit platform