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Spotify Speaks

Sal1950

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"Updated on 2022-01-07
Hey folks,

We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you. We feel the same, and we’re excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future. But we don’t have timing details to share yet.

We will of course update you here when we can.

Take care."

What a lame public announcement after all this time. :mad:
I will now be canceling my account since I only use Apple for it's multichannel and Atmos streaming.
This really is some BS
 

DanielT

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Also note, it's only a moderator who wrote it. One can wonder how official that person is? I did not think of that, before it was pointed out here, see attached picture:

 

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Sal1950

Sal1950

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Also note, it's only a moderator who wrote it. One can wonder how official that person is?
Hadn't seen that post but in any case it's "official" enough, he being the moderator for the Spotify Community site.
I can still use their excellent UI to search, etc with their free tier. All the while enjoying Apples lossless, multichannel, Atmos, etc sound for my same $10 a month.
Kiss my stinky Italian ass Spotify.
 

DanielT

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They are hopeless. So nonchalant to just throw out such a small little message like that. Although the customer group for Spotify who are interested in lossless is probably like a fart in space for Spotify. But why then when Spotify even cares about fiddling with lossless is beyond my comprehension.:oops:
 

Apexplus

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they have the largest share of the market and thus can afford to take it slow -- so they think...
 
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Sal1950

Sal1950

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so they think...
They got a nice letter from me yesterday answering why I was canceling my long held subscription. Also the same was posted in my Community account. I sure hope they got many more.
Enough!
 

Jim Matthews

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They got a nice letter from me yesterday answering why I was canceling my long held subscription. Also the same was posted in my Community account. I sure hope they got many more.
Enough!
Even money says they roll out what you wanted, the week after you cancel.
 
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Sal1950

Sal1950

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Even money says they roll out what you wanted, the week after you cancel.
I did yesterday.
They would have to offer the equivalent of Apples multich-Atmos catalog to lure me back.
But that's just a easy-peasy mouse click or two away. I've turned on and off all the streamers at least once with the exception of Tidal, I won't go there.
 

PierreV

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Well, as far as I am concerned, I don't care what they do or don't do.

I had Qobuz, Tidal and Spotify simultaneously. Did I hear a difference? I _think_ I did, at least on some recordings. But what does that get me?
The opportunity to claim I do hear a difference? That would immediately get me a "post your ABX results!" reaction. If I were to post those ABX results, I would immediately get into a never-ending argument about level-matching (which I would have done wrongly, one way or the other), statistics, etc... Basically, a time-eater that would steal actual listening time.

Tidal was constantly pushing me music I did not want to listen to. Half of my suggestions were essentially advertisements. Out went Tidal, even before the MQA controversies. Qobuz was much, much nicer in terms of recommendations, but buggy as hell, at least on some of the devices I owned. Despite the sympathy I had for them, as a minor but well-meaning, for my tastes, player, out went Qobuz.

I am out of the Apple ecosystem and Amazon's interface sucks big time.

That leaves me with Spotify, which works, finds me nice music I didn't know about every day.

The only thing I don't like about Spotify is how they apparently underpay artists compared to other systems. But I have my doubts about the apparently better rates Tidal is paying given how they forced music, often stakeholder's and friends music down my throat

And, on top of that, I am perfectly willing to be categorized as a wooden ears guy whose system isn't resolving enough to truly appreciate hires.
 

DanielT

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Here's a bit about similarities and differences:

Post #69

 

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D

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Well, as far as I am concerned, I don't care what they do or don't do.

I had Qobuz, Tidal and Spotify simultaneously. Did I hear a difference? I _think_ I did, at least on some recordings. But what does that get me?
The opportunity to claim I do hear a difference? That would immediately get me a "post your ABX results!" reaction. If I were to post those ABX results, I would immediately get into a never-ending argument about level-matching (which I would have done wrongly, one way or the other), statistics, etc... Basically, a time-eater that would steal actual listening time.

Tidal was constantly pushing me music I did not want to listen to. Half of my suggestions were essentially advertisements. Out went Tidal, even before the MQA controversies. Qobuz was much, much nicer in terms of recommendations, but buggy as hell, at least on some of the devices I owned. Despite the sympathy I had for them, as a minor but well-meaning, for my tastes, player, out went Qobuz.

I am out of the Apple ecosystem and Amazon's interface sucks big time.

That leaves me with Spotify, which works, finds me nice music I didn't know about every day.

The only thing I don't like about Spotify is how they apparently underpay artists compared to other systems. But I have my doubts about the apparently better rates Tidal is paying given how they forced music, often stakeholder's and friends music down my throat

And, on top of that, I am perfectly willing to be categorized as a wooden ears guy whose system isn't resolving enough to truly appreciate hires.
Absolutely bang on.

For most of my listening: background whilst friends are round, background while working, drunk party time, other half listening to whatever that is she listens to.... etc I wouldn't even notice the difference between Spotify and XXX service. That probably constitutes over 90% of my streaming usage.

But for the moments where I want to kick back and do some critical listening: the annual relisten of Bitches Brew, unpicking layers of Burial, marveling at the complexity of a John Williams score, getting lost in some drone stuff..... then I really appreciate the unquestionable, if relatively minor, improvement in SQ of Qobuz' 'hi-res' copies.

There's no right answer for all
 

SKBubba

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The only thing I don't like about Spotify is how they apparently underpay artists compared to other systems. But I have my doubts about the apparently better rates Tidal is paying

This is a frequently made argument. But consider this. Would an artist (actually, label in most cases) rather get $.012 x 100,000 streams ($1200) from Tidal or $.004 x 1,000,000 streams ($4000) from Spotify?

It’s way more complicated than that, but the point is Spotify has the most subscribers by a wide margin, and exponentially more than Tidal and Qobuz combined. So the artist (label/whatever) gets much broader exposure, and more revenue even though they are getting a smaller piece of a much, much larger pie (over $5 billion in 2020).

There's plenty to not like about Spotify, but I'm not sure this is one of them.
 
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D

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It's funny, but every time I listen to it (about once a year) I like it a little bit more.
Ditto. Always feels like a bit of an event for me. Clear my desk, pinpoint a time (other half away etc), pour a nice dram and get lost in it.

Was talking about this recently with a friend of mine, I have a few LPs that I treat in this way. Absolutely love them, but can't just stick them on anytime, have to make space and effort to listen to them.

Screenshot_20220109-145747_Instagram.jpg


Screenshot_20220109-145800_Instagram.jpg


Screenshot_20220109-145815_Instagram.jpg
 

sergeauckland

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This is a frequently made argument. But consider this. Would an artist (actually, label in most cases) rather get $.012 x 100,000 streams ($1200) from Tidal or $.004 x 1,000,000 streams ($4000) from Spotify?

It’s way more complicated than that, but the point is Spotify has the most subscribers by a wide margin, and exponentially more than Tidal and Qobuz combined. So the artist (label/whatever) gets much broader exposure, and more revenue even though they are getting a smaller piece of a much, much larger pie (over $5 billion in 2020).

There's plenty to not like about Spotify, but I'm not sure this is one of them.
What I don't like about Spotify, and possibly other streaming operators, is their model for plays and payment. Essentially, they pool all income, then divide it by number of plays, and each play gets whatever. That means that parts of my subscription goes to artists I never play, never would play, and would prefer they went away! I would much rather that my subscription was divided up amongst those artists I do play, and as I play a fairly limited range of folk and jazz artists, they would get a fair percentage of my subscriptions. It's a perfectly easy calculation for Spotify to do, they have been asked repeatedly by less mainstream artists to do this, and yet they won't. It favours the Adeles, Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheerans of this world, (and of course their record companies) and whilst they're perfectly nice people, their music isn't to my taste so why am I paying for them? Artists I do like, like Thea Gilmore and Ralph McTell, struggle to make a living from Spotify as their total number of plays is small.

S.
 
D

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Guest
What I don't like about Spotify, and possibly other streaming operators, is their model for plays and payment. Essentially, they pool all income, then divide it by number of plays, and each play gets whatever. That means that parts of my subscription goes to artists I never play, never would play, and would prefer they went away! I would much rather that my subscription was divided up amongst those artists I do play, and as I play a fairly limited range of folk and jazz artists, they would get a fair percentage of my subscriptions. It's a perfectly easy calculation for Spotify to do, they have been asked repeatedly by less mainstream artists to do this, and yet they won't. It favours the Adeles, Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheerans of this world, (and of course their record companies) and whilst they're perfectly nice people, their music isn't to my taste so why am I paying for them? Artists I do like, like Thea Gilmore and Ralph McTell, struggle to make a living from Spotify as their total number of plays is small.

S.
Forgetting MQA, I don't particularly like Tidal as a UI etc, but I'm sure they devised a royalties method where 50% of your payment is divided amongst your listens and the other 50% as described above.

The 50% figure may be incorrect.
 

holbob

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There's probably an argument to say that Spotify HiFi either isn't coming, or is a long way off. Saying nothing means some of the tiny percentage of their customers who actually care about this, don't cancel their subscription and hang on a while longer. As soon as Spotify announce its possibly not coming they would all cancel.
 
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Sal1950

Sal1950

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It just totally pisses me off the way they jerked us around for a year waiting for some word on the promised lossless stream without a single word in all that time. Then just to put up that stupid short statement on the community site where we've been bitching "WTF where's lossless" since March 2014
This was a slap in the face to it's customers at a level I haven't experienced before.
YMMV
 
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