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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#371

Post by p1esk »

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…

Have you done the blind test?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#372

Post by tomc1985 »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #370
tomc1985 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to go to boutique retailers to get files that are anywhere near the quality of commercially-available CDs. And while subscription models may be common that doesn't make them pro-consumer, the right thing to do, or even a good idea.

Bandcamp is pretty big nowadays, but it could still be considered a boutique retailer when it comes to pop music. It depends a lot on the genres you prefer. No matter what audiophiles claim, 320kbps MP3/AAC/Ogg/etc. files are equivalent audible quality to CDs, and that's what most online music stores sell. Subscriptions have existed for hundreds of years, for anything from newspapers to soap. Priced correctly, subscr…

> I think this race towards owning as much stuff as possible is driving western society to destruction.

I agree except it is only through ownership that you are free of others' (e.g. your rentors') control. When that control is used almost universally to expand the financial relationship between rentor and rentee, or to enrich the rentor at the further expense of the rentee, it is imperative for individuals to remove themselves from its influence.

Also, if you load 320kbps MP3 and 14.4khz WAV into a spectral analyzer you will find differences, which will be detectable to anyone with the right critical listening skills.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#373

Post by thirdsun »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #335
thirdsun wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I see this argument everywhere, but I really don't like the idea of artists earning their money with cheap merchandise instead of the product itself: The music. The album should be the good to sell, not some unnecessary accessoires.

And remember that not every project is a rock band. Think of an ambient, experimental artist creating calm music for home listening and an adult audience - those artists won't fill any venues or impress their listeners with colorful t-shirts. They rely on album sales.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#374

Post by KozmoNau7 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #372
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp is pretty big nowadays, but it could still be considered a boutique retailer when it comes to pop music. It depends a lot on the genres you prefer. No matter what audiophiles claim, 320kbps MP3/AAC/Ogg/etc. files are equivalent audible quality to CDs, and that's what most online music stores sell. Subscriptions have existed for hundreds of years, for anything from newspapers to soap. Priced correctly, subscr…

> I think this race towards owning as much stuff as possible is driving western society to destruction. I agree except it is only through ownership that you are free of others' (e.g. your rentors') control. When that control is used almost universally to expand the financial relationship between rentor and rentee, or to enrich the rentor at the further expense of the rentee, it is imperative for individuals to remove…

There are good and bad subscription services, it has always been like that.

>Also, if you load 320kbps MP3 and 14.4khz WAV into a spectral analyzer you will find differences, which will be detectable to anyone with the right critical listening skills.

Do you listen with your eyes? A spectrogram can't tell you what your ears will hear.

The only way to know, is to do a proper double blind ABX test on files you encode yourself from known original files. You can use Foobar2000 with the ABX Comparator plugin for this purpose. I think you'll be surprised at just how low you can take the bitrate even on an ancient format like MP3, before you can tell a difference.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#375

Post by KozmoNau7 »

thirdsun wrote: post #373
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I see this argument everywhere, but I really don't like the idea of artists earning their money with cheap merchandise instead of the product itself: The music. The album should be the good to sell, not some unnecessary accessoires. And remember that not every project is a rock band. Think of an ambient, experimental artist creating calm music for home listening and an adult audience - those artists won't fill a…

The vast majority of money-earning musicians don't earn anything significant from album sales, they have to rely on live gigs and merchandise sales. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

And a lot of musicians don't make anything, or are actually losing money. But they keep doing it for the love of the art.

Would I like to see these talented individuals properly compensated? Hell yes! But between predatory record labels and the sheer vast number of people out there also producing music, it's not easy to break through.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#376

Post by baby »

samfriedman wrote: post #356
baby wrote: post #203

I’ve tried Spotify but I cannot upload my own library (lots of mashup, asian music, remix, etc... that Spotify doesn’t have), use it and retrieve it later if needed. I’ve been looking for a service to do that and I couldn’t really find anything except iTunes match. But iTunes match is not really the same as spotify. So I did this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0...

Have you looked into Google Play Music? They let you upload your own music, and will try to match it with metadata automatically if they have it available. You can then stream your uploads to any device over Internet (as opposed to LAN which is all Spotify offers IIRC). I'm a Spotify user, but I still maintain a free GPM account specifically for music that isn't on Spotify.

yeah but I think you can't download it back if you need to. I compared the service a while ago and decided not to go with Google for this reason if I remember correctly. I should have taken better notes.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#377

Post by baby »

kepano wrote: post #237
baby wrote: post #203

I’ve tried Spotify but I cannot upload my own library (lots of mashup, asian music, remix, etc... that Spotify doesn’t have), use it and retrieve it later if needed. I’ve been looking for a service to do that and I couldn’t really find anything except iTunes match. But iTunes match is not really the same as spotify. So I did this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ptV0sWO2tBT4c3G8aiB0...

You can do this in Spotify, it's actually one of the main reasons I use it. You need to add your local directory to the list of music sources. The trick to getting that music to sync to other devices is that you need to create a playlist and download it while both devices are on the same local network. Your personal library is never uploaded to the cloud.

The last time I tried it was really an ordeal to make it work. I should have taken better note as to why it wasn't a good solution.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#378

Post by jscholes »

jqbx_jason wrote: post #174
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? My only experience with Discover Weekly (and any other suggestion algorithms, i.e. radios, etc...) has been pretty terrible... It doesn't seem to suggest songs I like at all, and recently it seized upon one single song in one of my playlist and only plays covers of that song and the other songs in the album for my discover weekly for the past several weeks... I love Spotify, but I use Pandora sometimes _exclu…

I posted this earlier but it got buried: I had the same experience as you and built JQBX[1] to mix it up. It's kind of like Pandora (it's a lot like turntable.fm if you ever used that) but it's user generated so you tend to get more obscure / timely recommendations. [1] https://www.jqbx.fm

Unfortunately large portions of your web app seem to have aria-hidden set to true on them, which means I can't use it at all with a screen reader.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#379

Post by LudoA »

chii wrote: post #117
LudoA wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10K songs is limiting to you?! Wow, how/for what do you use Spotify? At a (low!) estimate of 4 minutes per song, if you listen to Spotify for 3hrs/day, it would still take you 222 days to listen to all of them once. Is this a form of data hoarding? If not, how do you use that many songs?

if you want to have music on 10hrs a day, a 10k long playlist only lasts 20 days. and 10hrs is only half a day, and you might want to have music outside of work hours too!

Good point, hadn't thought of people listening to music at work :)
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