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Spotify Offering Lossless: Confirmed

watchnerd

watchnerd

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"Spotify is preparing to launch a lossless audio version of its streaming service, according to multiple sources. The offering, which is currently called Spotify Hi-Fi, will offer lossless CD-quality audio to users — similar to what Tidal offers in its Hi-Fi service."

"The streaming service began running a test on a small group of users yesterday, offering the Hi-Fi service for $5 to $10 above the $10 per month price for Spotify Premium. But a source and a few Reddit users who got the prompt and tried to sign up for the Hi-Fi service were either told it wasn’t available in their area at the time or they received an error message."

More at:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/1/14776780/spotify-hi-fi-preparing-launch-lossless-audio-tier
 
Curiosity dpt 1: Daniel Ek/Spotify founder was born and raised a few km from where I live.
Curiosity dpt 2: Magnus Persson aka Notch, founder of Minecraft sold to MS for USD 2.5 billion recently sold his house 500 meters from where I live & moved to US.
Curiosity dpt 3: I have good hopes for my youngest son studying game development, no hopes for me though ... ;-)
 
LarsS said:
Don't think so, part of Spotify's business model is to own the user experience.
Click to expand...
They heavily license their service to hardware OEMs though (car stereos, AVRs, etc.) where they don't control the UI.
 
amirm said:
We will also have to see how good the offering is (breadth of albums available).
Click to expand...
Wouldn't you think that once all the pieces are in place everything in the current catalog would automatically be available at 16/44 flac or better? Why would anything be held back? Licensing issues with the labels? We know many labels are now gung-ho over MQA (for it's DRM like implications IMO), it will be interesting to see how they go about packaging these new offerings.
Really hoping to see a pricing war once everyone is on a level ground and the competition gets hot.
 
Sal1950 said:
Wouldn't you think that once all the pieces are in place everything in the current catalog would automatically be available at 16/44 flac or better?
Click to expand...
It depends on their relationship with their supplier. There are middlemen who rip CDs and then sell them to these distributors. If their original license didn't include the lossless version, they would have to pay again to get them. It also takes time to ingest the lossless versions and catalog them. Given the tons of data, it may literally take months to transmit, QC (verify metadata) and ingest them.

It is not a huge deal but it is an obstacle. Let's hope they have done all of this in advance of the roll out.
 
Saw this on Roon forum from their COO. Looks like Lars was right:
----

They refused to let us release. They were giving us OKs and thumbs up for months, but after seeing a working integration, they pulled the plug and said we can not release what we had. They insisted that their customers not leave their own Spotify app. Their reasoning was that it was an important aspect of their business that they own the user experience.

Given that our entire value proposition is an alternative user experience, you can see how this led to them rejecting us.

It's been a while however, so maybe they have changed their minds. Not holding my breath, but we are going to try again.

Obviously getting this done would be awesome for everyone involved. Please don't flood me with +1s, we already know many of you would love this.

-----

Good news is that Roon is not the block.
 
amirm said:
Saw this on Roon forum from their COO. Looks like Lars was right:
----

They refused to let us release. They were giving us OKs and thumbs up for months, but after seeing a working integration, they pulled the plug and said we can not release what we had. They insisted that their customers not leave their own Spotify app. Their reasoning was that it was an important aspect of their business that they own the user experience.

Given that our entire value proposition is an alternative user experience, you can see how this led to them rejecting us.

It's been a while however, so maybe they have changed their minds. Not holding my breath, but we are going to try again.

Obviously getting this done would be awesome for everyone involved. Please don't flood me with +1s, we already know many of you would love this.

-----

Good news is that Roon is not the block.
Click to expand...

Well, that's a deal-breaker for me; my digital listening is built on a Roon foundation with several Roon Bridges around the house.
 
Me too! although if enough listeners switch to Spotify that might have serious consequences for Tidal and thus Roon.
Keith
 
watchnerd said:
Well, that's a deal-breaker for me; my digital listening is built on a Roon foundation with several Roon Bridges around the house.
Click to expand...
So what is this saying, that Spotify HiFi won't work as a client from inside Tidal?
 
watchnerd said:
Almost. We're saying Spotify won't work as a client from inside Roon.
Click to expand...
Yep, tripped on my tongue, that's what I meant. They'll work it out I'm sure.
 
Just for the record, as I sat down just now my eye saw the title of this thread but the gray matter interpreted it like this

Spotify Offering Lobsters: Confirmed

It must be time for some lunch.
 
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