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Spotify and Lossless?

Some listening on Spotify is a guilty pleasure, however, the amounts the pay to musicians is appalling. Even quite successful singers & songwriters get a tiny fraction of the advertising money and subscriptions that Spotify get.

Try following a band or two on Bandcamp and if you like the songs - make a purchase or two. It makes difference to the musicians. Plus with Bandcamp you might get some happy surprises of new music.
 
chartz said:
I can send you three hi-res samples – not telling which is which – and I bet you won’t hear anything significant to tell them apart.
24/96
CD
Spotify

Or you could do it yourself in earnest.
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I did just that yesterday evening.
Chose a few of my favourite Steely Dan tracks as the sq of their albums is always great.
My conclusion was that the 24/96 versions did sound better and that CD vs Spotify was incredibly close.
The trouble is that when you do these comparisons sighted you know which version you're listening to and it's difficult not to be influenced by that.
My suspicion is that if I were blindfolded I would struggle to consistently pick out the 24/96 files and choosing between CD & Spotify would be a complete lottery.
 
I'm now leaning towards letting my son use our Amazon Prime music (which should suffice for him) and I might get a Qobuz sub for the main system. I may start a trial on that this weekend in fact...
 
webster said:
I did just that yesterday evening.
Chose a few of my favourite Steely Dan tracks as the sq of their albums is always great.
My conclusion was that the 24/96 versions did sound better and that CD vs Spotify was incredibly close.
The trouble is that when you do these comparisons sighted you know which version you're listening to and it's difficult not to be influenced by that.
My suspicion is that if I were blindfolded I would struggle to consistently pick out the 24/96 files and choosing between CD & Spotify would be a complete lottery.
Click to expand...
I do think the sound quality of Qobuz Studio is generally better than Spotify but I may need to revert to Spotify as part of the family’s recent budget drive. Everybody has made a lot of sacrifices and it may persuade my wife to jettison bloody awful Virgin TV!
 
Just subscribed to Spotify. My Qobuz will run out later this month. It is very listenable especially through the LRS speakers though I can hear the slight closing in of the sound against the cd quality and above Studio.Still, it’s very listenable. And I still have a magnificent stash of cds and lps to listen to.
 
webster said:
I did just that yesterday evening.
Chose a few of my favourite Steely Dan tracks as the sq of their albums is always great.
My conclusion was that the 24/96 versions did sound better and that CD vs Spotify was incredibly close.
The trouble is that when you do these comparisons sighted you know which version you're listening to and it's difficult not to be influenced by that.
My suspicion is that if I were blindfolded I would struggle to consistently pick out the 24/96 files and choosing between CD & Spotify would be a complete lottery.
Click to expand...
This was my experience too. On lots of recordings Spotify SQ is not just good but to my ears all but indistinguishable from my other sources. But...

flatpopely said:
You also don’t know what master Spotify use.
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...this is key. Most of my listening is old jazz recordings of which many different masterings exist and when I occasionally compare the LP I’m listening to to whatever Spotify happen to have it really is night and day. I haven’t tried this with Qobuz or the others but if I were shopping around this would be a much more significant criterion for me than the lossless thing itself.
 
Hi all

Must be my system/hearing as I find Spotify free version sounds very good (I believe the free stream is 160Kbps) but Radio Paradise FLAC stream sounds very 'in your face' and compressed to me.

Thinking of upgrading to Spotify Premium but not sure how much better it would/could sound.

IMO Spotify UI is excellent and have no problem creating play lists of Albums or individual tracks.

Also very wide selection of music and genres.
 
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Seanm said:
This was my experience too. On lots of recordings Spotify SQ is not just good but to my ears all but indistinguishable from my other sources. But...



...this is key. Most of my listening is old jazz recordings of which many different masterings exist and when I occasionally compare the LP I’m listening to to whatever Spotify happen to have it really is night and day. I haven’t tried this with Qobuz or the others but if I were shopping around this would be a much more significant criterion for me than the lossless thing itself.
Click to expand...

Also age and hearing. Mine is compromised now due to illness last year so It is likely to have an affect on how and what I hear.
 
(I was the person who first complained about the UI; carrying on with that tangent a bit more...)

finesensations said:
IMO Spotify UI is excellent and have no problem creating play lists of Albums or individual tracks.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the main way I manage my "library" on Spotify is not through the aforementioned album-saving feature but by creating playlists for each album and arranging them in folders. It's better than saving albums, and it's certainly more conveniently for marking albums to listen to later. However, as my collection grew over the years (at a much faster rate, I might add, than a traditional CD/vinyl or purchased-download collection would), manually organising them (e.g. manual alphabetisation) started to become excruciatingly tedious. Things reached a head for me, however, when a bug in the Linux version (official but unsupported) would occasionally just lose all the contents of a playlist and, more recently, would just brazenly remove the playlist after a few minutes of saving it. But even before that bug kicked in, I was already completely frustrated with the inefficiency of interface.

I know for a fact that Spotify collects a ton of usage data from the application (clicks, timings, feature-usage, etc) and they constantly add or drop features to fit their model of how the majority of people use their software. Unfortunately, I've gotten the short end of the stick on many of those decisions as the software has developed since the early years. I am fully aware by now that I do not use the software the way most people do and, by extension, the way that Spotify intends everyone to use it. Unfortunately, in my view, the result is a software design without any vision but rather produced to satisfy the lowest common denominator. That's why I feel it's such a missed opportunity with regards to the otherwise unbelievable strength of their music database.
 
What I like is that the Spotify app will also look for music stocked locally, to add it to your playlists. Very convenient!
 
Seanm said:
...this is key. Most of my listening is old jazz recordings of which many different masterings exist and when I occasionally compare the LP I’m listening to to whatever Spotify happen to have it really is night and day. I haven’t tried this with Qobuz or the others but if I were shopping around this would be a much more significant criterion for me than the lossless thing itself.
Click to expand...

I am currently experimenting with services and the above is important to me. I am generally liking Qobuz, Deezer and Apple Music once I start looking at older jazz recordings.

Qobuz sound quality is great but I am not enjoying it for music discovery and play list recommendations. I also listen to a lot of modern afrobeat, jazz, blues, r&b etc.

Deezer lossy and Apple Music lossy both sound better to me than Spotify lossy. That's on modern recordings where the master shouldn't be that different and even more so once you you look at some of the remasters Spotify uses.

Deezer is my most recent trial and seems to be a good all-rounder with a CD tier. It gets little attention though. Early days with it but it might be my best choice overall across hifi, PC, Android and iPad.
 
JTC said:
Just wondered, is it an option with them yet? I'm considering signing up for a premium family account but I can't confirm whether lossless streaming is available. I don't *mind* AAC320kps for music discovery purposes, but I'd rather have lossless. That said, I'm not sure I want to spend £20/month for a single user Tidal or whatever - I have precious little time to listen to the music I do own as it is, but my eldest son wants a Spotify (or similar) account, and I might occasionally use it. Best if it were lossless, no?
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Sadly, despite all of the great features Spotify has to offer, lossless is not one.

If you would like lossless, we tend to use Qobuz as it offers this and has brilliant integration with many other programs such as Roon & Audirvana.

Like many software programs, you can also use their free trial to get an idea if it is for you!
 
What is this with lossy streaming? Where is the problem to put out everything lossless? Storage? I do not think so. Internet bandwidth? They streaming movies no problem, why there problem with audio only?
 
gints said:
What is this with lossy streaming? Where is the problem to put out everything lossless? Storage? I do not think so. Internet bandwidth? They streaming movies no problem, why there problem with audio only?
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Spotify was primarily conceived for mobile phone use, hence the lossy format to limit data use and bandwidth. Things have moved on somewhat since then. I'm sure they will introduce a lossless service in the near future. I'm surprised they haven't already done so, but if it isn't affecting their growth or subscriber numbers, then why introduce another service to muddy the waters?
 
They will not be introducing lossless.
Their business model doesn’t need it.
280 million users.
180 million subscribers, more than twice as many as any other competitor.
 
Bob McC said:
They will not be introducing lossless.
Their business model doesn’t need it.
280 million users.
180 million subscribers, more than twice as many as any other competitor.
Click to expand...

And there you have it in numbers. Most of those subscribers are not interested in a lossless format.
 
Quite.
I am quite happy getting the family premium subscription for 5 users at a bargain price and am happy with the quality through my system.
I have tried Tidal and Quobuz and didn’t think they were worth the hike in price for a small upgrade in SQ.
 
I think I'll go Qobuz. Though oddly enough I have Deezer Premium as part of my in-car entertainment, but I have not particularly taken to Deezer and it expires soon anyway. I haven't yet signed up - I need to give myself a big kick up the arse to do so, but it's been a busy few weeks (work, family stuff, um.... changing amps ;) ) and I want to be sure I'll have enough time to kick back and check it out properly during the trial... but it looks like it will be compatible with my hardware and hopefully has enough interesting new/unknown music to keep me going for a while :)
 
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