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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

Who knew I would be locked into Spotify not by the music quality, but by playlists, friends, apps using it, and their Discovery mechanisms.

Apple and Tidal may have awesome quality, but apps like https://musicleague.app/ have gotten me through Lockdown, and it turns out that these value props are very strong.

I always thought I would instantly switch to a service for its audio quality, but then again, I can also buy FLACs, ALACs, and CDs. Geez, my music spending has changed completely over the last decade.

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Agreed - Spotify's UI is bad and getting worse, and its quality is meh, but its discovery features are top notch and it has the biggest catalog.

I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.) I used a playlist importer to get my playlists to Tidal, and about 90% of my tracks made it - with some obvious mismatches/songs not found for unclear reasons. (There were also, in fairness, a few songs Tidal did have which the import tool missed.)

But Tidal just doesn't seem to have the radio and discovery features I use to find new music. If I used it, I'd have to constantly sync all my tracks (by paying for an external service) and risk losing some of them, for an audio quality difference that even most audiophiles seem to admit is negligible unless you're in ideal listening conditions with a track you know extremely well.

So even though they're constantly making things worse, I will stick with Spotify for now.

ALAC and FLAC are technically very similar formats [1]. Both are bit-perfect. Compare with MQA which is utter garbage and has absolutely zero to do with losless. MQA is actually, objectively worse than 16 bit audio CDs. An abject failure backed by an aggressively anti-science company backed up by a bunch of lawyers.

[1] Both encode a PCM stream using linear prediction while storing the difference between the predictor's output and the actual samples. This allows recreating the samples with zero error when decompressing. It's functionally equivalent to .wav.gz.

Yeah, I've heard similar about MQA.

To be honest though, what's the science behind any of these formats in terms of listening experience? Clearly there are differences in the data and how much of the original content is represented. But have there been any studies on whether people can actually tell any difference?

I've come across some quizzes online, etc., and those mostly suggest I can sometimes tell, but even when I can, it's not obvious and it doesn't really impact my experience. Would be curious whether anyone has studied this more fully.

Just to add to this comment, the video breakdowns I've watched on MQA are interesting listens even as someone who doesn't use Tidal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc -- Critque of MQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZ5hDzQ5Jg -- in defense of MQA

At the end of the day, people should listen to what they think sounds good (is this an opinion?). If a placebo makes someone enjoy something more, is it really a placebo? If someone can't tell the difference between low quality recordings and high quality recordings, why should they go through the trouble of sourcing the high quality stuff.

It's so easy to lose track of the subjective nature of audio in all of the objective details.

That's not really the point here - if someone says "I like how this sounds with (MQA artifacts | tube distortions | +20 dB bass)", that's perfectly fine and not something many if any people would argue with.

That's fine, but it's not fine to claim MQA is lossless or represents the original lossless file.

Very interesting and completely new to me, I had no idea Tidal wasn’t the equivalent of lossless.

Over and over again I’ve been impressed with Tidal’s song radio functionality. Unless you’re trying it out with very obscure songs that might only have a few listens total on the platform, Tidal’s radio always recommends tracks that are specific to that track’s subgenre/region. Meanwhile Spotify always seems to recommend songs that are only mildly related and that I’ve already listened to.

Other than playlists, it feels more difficult to discover new music on Spotify than on Tidal.

To me that's a great feature from Spotify, as I like exploring lota a lot of different genres and sounds. But I can see that is a personal taste and others would prefer a different experince.

Is shuffling large playlists still broken on Android for Tidal (only shuffles the first 30 or so and then nothing)?

That problem got me to unsubscribe even though I was loving the HiFi streaming. It was broken around Christmas 2019 and still was broken months later. They're Android app receives little to no support.

>I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.)

Comparing Spotify on high settings to the WAVs I have stored on my computer, the difference is hardly noticeable. I'm convinced that Spotify's sound depends more on the systems audio pipeline.

@Spotify. Why is there no 2FA yet? Why can't I customize my homepage? Why can't I have unlimited artists on my recent searches?

They're busy redesigning the UI so desktop is more like mobile, but only in ways that make it slightly worse.

I run Spotify Connect through a Naim Uniti, but I don’t have Tidal support yet. I did test through headphones - Grado - and tried to correct for volume level, but my conclusion was just that they sound slightly different, but not objectively better/worse. I am pleased to hear that others seem to feel the same, as it makes it easier to ignore the competing streaming race and get back to the music…

Dude their adding/removing songs from the Liked Songs list is ridic haha. They had the heart button right next to where you scroll. It's been idiotic for years. How can a company like that have such an obvious flaw in the UI?

Though I generally agree, one ridiculous thing Spotify does is suggesting new releases by just matching the artist's name to your history. Not rarely I get some new releases from a completely different artist just because they have the same name

> and it has the biggest catalog.

That's not entirely accurate. Amazon Music (unlimited) and Spotify catalogs are approximately same.

I'm a big fan of Qobuz. It has human curated playlists and features, which is really nice. It's also truly lossless unlike MQA.

I'll agree with you that 90% of the time, I can't tell the difference. But for my most loved albums, I still prefer listening to lossless on my hifi system.

For me it is Spotify Connect, and I still can’t believe no one has copied.

I’m in the process of getting my speakers set up with airplay, which might be my one way out. It still won’t be as good as Spotify Connect. I just hate that Spotify is deliberately trying to make my Mac and iPhone worse (e.g. Spotify is the only reason Rosetta is running on my M1 Mac) as part of their little war with Apple.

I ended up extracting the binary for the Spotify iOS app and side loading it on my M1 MacBook. It works pretty well, and eliminates need for rosetta.

Seriously.

It's also one of the cleverest examples I've ever seen of turning a limitation into a feature.

Spotify didn't want multiple people sharing a single account, which is relatively easy to implement by preventing multiple devices from listening to different tracks at the same time.

But so they just synced the same stream across all connected devices, and boom -- no longer a limitation, now it's a feature! And a genuinely useful (even indispensable for me) one at that.

I can't think of any other similarly clever solution by any other company where a limitation is genuinely turned into a benefit, but I wonder if anyone else here can.

Agree, it's really nice to start streaming from my computer to my Sonos speakers and know that I can close out the app and it will keep playing. And if I need to change it from across the room, I can just pick up my phone.

If you have Sonos speakers you can do all of that for any music streaming service that they support

I switched from Apple Music to Spotify for around 12 months, starting before but mostly overlapping with the pandemic lockdowns. I found their playlists, auto-play features, and discovery better than Apple Music's. Spotify links are ubiquitous on social media and elsewhere, which is nice (although Apple isn't far off either). And their Spotify Connect ecosystem is pretty nice: I loved how I could click the speaker button in the Spotify app on my iPhone and stream my music to the "Everything" group that plays simultaneously on all 3 Amazon Alexa speakers I have in my apartment. Apple Music's integration with Alexa speakers is nearly non-existent.

But I ended up switching back to Apple Music because of something that seems so minor but is so fundamental: Spotify on iPhone simply does not let you browse your entire library by artist. You can search your library and find anything you want, of course, but there is simply no way to serendipitously browse all the artists in your library. You can "follow" artists and browse all those artists, but that's a separate system from your music library, and when you click on an artist you just get the standard Spotify artist page (rather than a list of that artist's albums that you have in your library). For me this ended up being a dealbreaker and meant that during my Spotify trial I listened to much less music than usual because I simply couldn't browse my library effectively.

I swear Spotify used to let me browse my library by Artist and only show me the songs I've liked/added for each Artist. But now when I view my library and navigate to an artist, I just get the public artist page.

You're not the only one. This alone is making me want to switch away from Spotify.

Why is it so hard to browse my library by artist?!

You can still do this today though its a bit indirect.

> Your Library --> Artists --> Click artist --> Liked Songs.

The changes to library these services have made for simplification in my opinion are the wrong direction. I want more controls on how to filter/sift through my library, NOT less.

Edit: Also, we're slowly diluting the definition of album. The industry is going away from it because artist release frequency becomes more important in the streaming system. You have to stay relevant by releasing new music so album's are fewer songs with less duration. Lower duration also increases revenue because we pay per stream not by mean time listened to artist. :/

Library -> Artists only shows artists that you have followed, which is a totally separate mechanism than adding songs or albums to your library. Also, I don’t see the Liked Songs option anywhere on the artist page.

Ah you're right, the artist list there is followed artists. I didn't realize that is the case.

I hate this stupid distinction so much as well. The idea that you have to follow artists instead of seeing the artists based on your liked songs or albums is so dumb.

This musicleague website is probably the worst landing page I've ever seen.

What the heck is it? And why should I log in? What company is behind it? What has it to do with Spotify? What's their target audience? Did they intentionally remove all information on that page? Is it an app for a smart phone? Or maybe I'm just too old..

I agree. No idea what this is or how it benefits me at all, so of course I did not connect my account. From Google for the curious:

"Music League is a weekly game which lets you share songs with friends and score points for whoever’s track slaps the most.

Each week you’re given a theme, eg. “a song that gets you on the dancefloor”, “a song you’ve loved from this year”, and you have a week to make your submission. The tracks are then all automatically added to an anonymous Spotify playlist which you and your league listen to, before voting for which track you like the best.

You have 10 points to dish out and – for the wannabe music critics among you – comments to leave on each song. When you reach the deadline, the points are tallied and a winner declared."

Not really interested.

Sounds fun to me. At my old work, we used to have "song of the week" contest every Friday, where everyone would post the most ridiculous, over the top, goofy videos of actual songs (think Top of the Pops pisstakes, overly earnest power ballads, hair metal, bad 90s fashions, etc) and everyone would vote for their favorite. There were some pretty amazing selections.

I do agree that their landing page is pretty lacking.

Creator here! I’ve heard this feedback a few times recently, and a couple of people here even reached out! A proper landing page is definitely at the top of my To Do list. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts here!

It’s only a web app today, but a mobile app is in the works as I have time outside of the day job.

The site has never been marketed, and there’s never been a company behind it - just me. I’m in the awkward phase of taking something I built on the weekend for close friends who all knew exactly what it was/how it worked and evolving it to support all of the people who have stumbled across it. Super excited to keep improving it!

Less quality is their windows software. I am currently on a 3 month trial with Apple Music. I'm not sure why I was surprised, but it doesn't run very well on either Windows or Android. iTunes... is what it is, and the website version hogs CPU like no other even with the tab in the background. If I'm going to let a subscription service become my music library then I need it to run on anything!

Apple Music is bY far THE buggiest software on my Mac, including all Apple and non-Apple software.

So it's not just Windows version.

I'm sure other music services like Spotify will match Apple Music's lossless quality in order to keep competing for the audiophile market.

Personally, lossless quality just sounds like a great way to blow through my data caps even faster. I'm sure some will love it, I question whether it's worth the extra bandwidth.

Spotify have it in the works, for release later this year. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-...

" Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers".

So they will stream some DRM-ed wav files ?

> Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi

This sounds like it'll be an additional cost (like it is with Tidal), as opposed to Apple Music. Also I really can't think of a reason why it'd be region-locked.

But anyways, been hoping for this for years and will definitely switch if I'm not geo-locked out of it. I've experimented a lot with FLAC and 320 kbps and I can clearly notice the difference in my mid 20s with a couple of hundred euros worth of audio setup.

One reason it may be region locked for Spotify is that they offer services at throwaway price in certain regions and those regions probably won’t subscribe to a much more expensive variant at enough volume to warrant delivery capacity. They offer Spotify premium for under $2 in Russia and India, for example. Apple offers at similar price point, but they are able to sell expensive phones and earphones that Spotify does not.

I'm sure there'll be an option to stream at a different quality and an option to download the lossless versions, which you could do over wifi.

For both Spotify and Apple Music, I stream at "normal" quality, but download at "high" quality. I'm sure those options will extend to lossless.

Amazon Music has had lossless for awhile.

https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14070322011

I’ve recently been testing the master quality on Tidal, and was excited initially to see the Tidal Atmos offerings, but sadly Atmos isn’t available on the desktop app. I haven’t decided yet if I can hear the difference between Spotify/Tidal masters using a pair of Genelec Monitors.

Wow thank you for introducing me to musicleague, I love the idea!

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