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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#331

Post by cja »

yamaneko wrote: post #206
dopeboy wrote: post #96

Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - tha…

I don't pirate music anymore for the same reason. However, I also don't listen to music as I used to. I usually use Spotify to listen to what I already know, not so much to find new stuff. Before, I used to dive in depth into an artist/band, starting from their greatest hits. Once I got the band vocabulary, I'd download the albums chronologically and listened to every track, sometimes more than once until I got famil…

IKEA effect?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#332

Post by KozmoNau7 »

num wrote: post #263
Erwin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent several months alternating between Tidal HIFI and Spotify to see if I could difference on my Sennheiser HD800S and the Chord Mojo DAC and couldn't. I also tried the "Tidal Masters". It wasn't some complex blind test though. In the end, Spotify's content discovery was worth more to me, but if they finally release some lossless version for twice the price, I'll be happy to subscribe. Even at that price, one mon…

I've experienced a significant improvement listening to Tidal Masters tracks over Spotify. A very enjoyable improvement. Even non-Masters tracks on Tidal sound significantly better. Currently, almost all tracks on Tidal at the HiFi tier are 1411kbps (non-Masters) and still the Spotify desktop app caps out at 320kbps. Spotify has been streaming 1411kbps for most tracks through their browser player in Chrome and only t…

>Currently, almost all tracks on Tidal at the HiFi tier are 1411kbps (non-Masters) and still the Spotify desktop app caps out at 320kbps.

You cannot compare bitrates directly like that.

1411.2kbps is uncompressed CD audio, while the 320kbps is a highly developed and advanced psychoacoustic format that aims to be completely equivalent to CD quality to the human ear.

So it's not "getting less than 1/4th of the music", like some audiophiles claim, based on faulty or non-existent understanding of audio codecs.

Also, you are absolutely not getting 1411.2kbps from the Spotify Chrome app. That is simply a display issue, or the actual decoding happening at another step in the chain, and it's either giving you Ogg Vorbis at 320kbps or AAC at 256kbps.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#333

Post by KozmoNau7 »

froidpink wrote: post #127
extr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before, but Spotify is the single most valuable subscription service I pay for. Video streaming is convenient, but some of the music I've come across on Spotify has literally changed my life and that would never have happened if I was still forced to torrent everything. It's just so easy, it's everything they said the steaming model would be.

Thing is, you still need to support smaller artists buy buying physical or going to live events. Spotify pays very close to nothing to small acts.

They pay around $0.006 per play. If you're only getting 1000 plays or less per months, that's not very much, but it's the exact same rate as paid to bigger acts.

But yes, absolutely buy merch and go to shows, and support artists through Patreon. For the sheer amount of enjoyment these people give people, I think most can afford to support their favorite artists a little extra.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#334

Post by KozmoNau7 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #246
poisonarena wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soundcloud and youtube are sooooo much better.. Glad u found some hot tracks on Spotify but mannnnnn that is like the facebook of music

Youtube is like listening to music through an aquarium. The audio quality is terrible. Sure, there are a lot of unknown/aspiring/indie artists on Youtube and nowhere else, some of them are even quite talented, but if I can find audio literally anywhere else, I will use that instead.

It depends completely on how good the uploaded tracks are. Youtube uses Opus at a rather high bitrate, so there shouldn't even be any audible issues from re-encoding.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#335

Post by KozmoNau7 »

thirdsun wrote: post #286
steve-benjamins wrote: post #4

I really hope Spotify succeeds. I've mentioned this before on Hacker News, but as an artist, the algorithmic playlists are amazing. On a good week I get ~4,000 new listeners. It's incredible. Discovery Weekly drives the most but Release Radar and Radio also send a good chunk. Apple Music on the hand hasn't even verified my artist profile— which I need in order to view analytics. So I don't even know if people listen…

Ok, but do those listeners earn you any significant money? Maybe compared to a traditional album sold on Bandcamp?

Maybe not directly, but it does gain him new fans, which means more people show up at shows, which means he can get booked for bigger shows and sell more merch.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#336

Post by Orphis »

einr wrote: post #330
croon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't distributing each subscribers fee individually and distributing all of them collectively by listening habits the same thing? Made up example: $100000000 * 0.0000001 of all listening activity = $10 Or $10 * 1 of all my listening activity = $10 Or are you saying that Spotify cuts off at a certain point and doesn't pay anything out, or that they take a fixed cut after allocation?

Let's say Artist X has their music on Spotify but is currently making $0 a month. Now, for the sake of argument, let's say I spend an entire month listening to only Artist X a thousand times; I personally think it's fair in that case that whatever scraps of my Spotify fee are left for the artists should then go 100% to Artist X because they're the only ones I've listened to. So, in this utopian scenario, they might m…

But no one actually does that, and if you really did, you don't need Spotify, just buy their album directly. Such a payout seems appealing in theory, but in practice will just give more money to the very popular bands since they dominate the market and leave a much smaller share for the others.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#337

Post by TheArcane »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #310
mancerayder wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. Love Spotify, disagree strongly with this. My experience is terrible music that doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the hundreds of songs I have on my playlist. I get this curious Millennial mix of soft rock music with long, boring instrumental guitar strumming, a disco beat and a sleepy, sarcastic-voiced gal (sometimes g…

I think it depends a lot on your taste. The more poppy your listening habits are, the worse the recommendations seem to be. I listen almost exlusively to hard rock and metal, and all of my auto-generated playlists are absolutely stellar in their selection. It seems that once Spotify lumps you in with a specific segment, it's hard to get out of it again.

I'm more of a Downtempo fan, and I feel nobody does music discovery quite like Spotify. I've had a better than excellent experience in this regard.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#338

Post by Orphis »

8ytecoder wrote: post #82
actuator wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even I hope so. Discover Weekly and their curated playlists are some of the best I have seen across all music services. Even their cross platform support is the best. Play Music has a terrible app and web UI. Even Apple Music doesn't fare any better.

Google Play Music is the best deal out there - ad-free Youtube TV is bundled in the plan and allows you to upload your own music that you can stream from anywhere. That said, it's the absolute worst in terms of UI and cross platform support. I kept switching between subscriptions because Spotify still doesn't allow uploads (which I really need). But gave up on everyone and decided to just sync my personal music to my…

What kind of phone do people have in emerging countries? Certainly not an Apple one.

I wouldn't worry about Apple too much, the market will become saturated in some countries after some years where they are popular. But in other countries, where they only use Android, who do you think will win the market?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#339

Post by TheArcane »

on_and_off wrote: post #55
protonimitate wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm a Spotify lifer unless something catastrophic happens to their service or media availability. The only alternative service I even debated about was Apple Music when they first announced their streaming service, but there is no clear advantage to their service and I hate the Apple Music UI. I hope they find a way to help a bigger % of the revenue get into the hands of artists and start cutting out the big re…

disclaimer : I worked for a music streaming service for several years I don't really like the Play Music UI (but I don't hate it either, the new parts are very nice, but the album pages could use a bit more love). I dislike the spotify UI though (why is it THAT dark and depressive ?) and play music removes the ads from youtube (us user) and pays youtubers, so that's an easy choice. Oh, the winning feature of Play Mus…

> why is it THAT dark and depressive ?

Different tastes. I love their green and black theme. it's focussed and clean.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#340

Post by yomly »

dopeboy wrote: post #96

Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - tha…

Not only has Spotify stopped me pirating music, it has led to me spending thousands of pounds (previously zero) on live music to see artists I had never heard of prior to Spotify, to listen to music I never would have known existed.

Short-sighted publishers be damned.

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