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Comment by extr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Wrote a "persuasive speech" in college a decade ago about how to solve the problem the music industry was facing (piracy). I proposed an all you can listen subscription service, at a price point of say $10. Saying the record labels would work together to make this happen. My professor nearly laughed me out of the room when I proposed my thesis for the speech. I presented the speech anyways and got an A.

Today, Spotify is thriving as a company and the major record labels have their hands in it. Sure, they have some work to do to figure out how to become profitable and sustainable, but they've come a long way.

Could you link the paper? Reading a future prediction/expectation with such accuracy should be interesting.

Hey sorry I just saw this reply. Unfortunately, I can't find the paper, as it was written in word and pre-dates my days of using Dropbox (edit: it pre-dates Dropbox period). However, I was able to find the email thread with my professor, since Gmail is forever. I had to redact some personal information.

https://imgur.com/UeSzTal

I use Tidal more often because it has higher quality audio most of the time and a better UI, but fall back to Spotify prn. The emphasis on original music is nice.

I subscribe to both because one is not a subset of the other, which I dislike.

But hey, it’s been great, and I’ve actually found new music I love on Spotify/Tidal, unlike every other platform which has attempted recommendations.

Can you tell audio quality of Spotify vs Tidal in a blind test?

The default quality for the desktop app is in OGG Vorbis at 160kbps and for the mobile app is 96kbps. With a Premium subscription you can change these to 'Extreme' (320kbps). The web player reaches is 128kbps AAC or 256kbps with Premium [0]. Many users might be unaware they can change the quality at all (or they don't use the desktop app but use the web player so can't change the quality at all).

I can definitely hear the difference between 96/160/256. Between 256/320/lossless I'd probably fail an ABX test [1] and I'm very doubtful of anyone claiming to hear the differences between 320/lossless regardless of how much of an audiophile they claim to be if they refuse to take an ABX test. I'd maybe believe telling 256 and lossless apart but still be doubtful without any ABX results.

[0] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

In that case given Spotify premium and just setting the config to use 'extreme' there should be no reason to pay for a separate subscription service? (At least for quality reasons).

At that point, you’re choosing between services based on content. And even without a quality issue, I have several artists I need one or the other platform to hear. I haven’t enabled the Extreme quality on Spotify (and was unaware).

I’ve compared the two, not blind, periodically. I seem to notice a bigger difference when using my higher-quality headphones and on certain albums (typically newer ones), but have not tested blind.

A confounding variable is that Spotify may use different bit rate heuristics than Tidal when streaming, so I’d need to preload the albums to be compared on both platforms, but I’m willing to conduct it blind.

A bigger complaint for me, honestly, is that Spotify’s navigation does not do what I want it to. (e.g., when trying to go to an artist’s page from a song, it just won’t do what I want.)

spotify premium (if you select “high quality streaming” in settings) uses 320 kb/s ogg vorbis, whereas tidal streams in a lossless format. on most audio set ups those will be indistinguishable but my understanding is that people who know what to listen for can tell the difference on a suitably powerful/nuanced sound system.

>but my understanding is that people who know what to listen for can tell the difference on a suitably powerful/nuanced sound system.

Or at least they claim they can. I've yet to know anyone with any expensive systems who claims to be an audiophile who can actually pass an ABX test with any more accuracy than random guessing would have given them. Largely because they'd need superhuman hearing - able to hear things that are literally outside the frequency of normal human hearing. Not saying these people can't exist... just that it's extremely unlikely.

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 month of Spotify is stil cheaper than the first R.E.M CD I bought in 1991.

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 then I notice little difference between Spotify and Tidal HiFi. The Masters tracks still are noticeably better than the Spotify on Chrome app playing at 1411kbps.

There is an upside to streaming from the Spotify Chrome app for 1411kbps which doesn't incur extra cost but this is all functionality Spotify is not advertising. The downsides are this only currently works in the US (IIRC) and navigation in the Chrome Browser app is very limited compared to the desktop app.

I'm very surprised you were not able to notice a difference with such a great stack as the HD800s + Mojo and suspect it was something else in the chain limiting the potential. I suggest giving even just Spotify direct in the Chrome webapp a try again if not Tidal and ensure you have the chain configured properly.

>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.

Have you done the blind test?

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.

I feel this way about Soundcloud.

The subscription service of Soundcloud? Really?

I am a Soundcloud Go+ (or whatever their premium tier is called by now) subscriber, and it is the worst. They don't have the same catalogue available like Spotify, the alogrithm constantly shows me outright garbage (young aspiring musicians? More like 15 year olds with a mic in the basement) and their app... I don't know how a company that old can have an Android app that is so shitty. It even misses the subscription status and won't let me play my collection, even when 2 minutes earlier (and later) it all worked (works) fine.

Can't wait to end my subscription there and move to Spotify/Apple Music.

I do agree, but I think they have a wider selection of truly indie music. It's very difficult to find, but it's very good when you do.

> the steaming model

Care to elaborate?

Edit: Cuz steaming? lol

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.

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