Nifty.
Please be aware that this is not a "spotify client" per se. It gets the data from Spotify, and plays the audio from YouTube.
It's an interesting invention, and worthy of the first page, if you ask me.
Please be aware that this is not a "spotify client" per se. It gets the data from Spotify, and plays the audio from YouTube.
It's an interesting invention, and worthy of the first page, if you ask me.
What I really want is a converter from Spotify abomination to standard podcasts which I can read from any podcast client.
Last I checked the podcasts are DRM encumbered. So you’d have to spin up a client pretending to be chrome and use the Wivedine extension to decrypt every mp3 frame. No hacking required. But Life is too short. So instead I refuse to listen to fake podcasts on Spotify.
Part of the reason why API access is desirable is because it forms an effective safeguard against some forms of company abuse. To argue that we can only have API access if nobody uses it for adversarial interoperability or to build 3rd-party clients or to bypass systems -- we might as well argue against API access entirely if that's going to be our position. The point of API access is to be able to use it.
And during that process, Spotify wants to be treated as if they are profitable. They don't want consumers to be looking at them like they're a fly-by-night business whose entire existence depends on raising prices in the future once consumers have no alternatives to switch to. They don't want podcasting partners to be looking at every business deal as a temporary arrangement that will only last until Spotify feels comfortable trying to pull the rug out beneath them. If we're going to start acting like businesses are charity cases when indie developers do anything they dislike, then we should stop acting like these "charities" are sustainable businesses at all.
Spotify doesn't run ads saying, "hey, we can't make money and we're hoping that goodwill and investor greed is enough to keep this engine running for one more year until its safe to start charging you what we actually need to survive."
It's reasonable for developers and consumers to treat businesses with substantial market control as if they are businesses and not charities. That treatment is consistent with how Spotify advertises and portrays itself and with the decisions that the company makes about the market. It's not an accident that Spotify is in this position, it's a conscious choice in service of pursuing a long-term strategy of market domination. It's also not a healthy choice for the market overall, so Spotify choosing to put itself into this position is not a moral obligation for consumers or developers to treat them with some kind of special consideration. If anything, we should be more harsh to companies who try to decrease competition by creating an artificially unstainable market and starving out sustainable businesses and funding models.
For all intents and purposes Spotify is a billion dollar company making moves to lock down open ecosystems like podcasting that are consistent with a billion dollar company. If it's also a poorly managed billion dollar company that's lying to consumers about the actual cost of delivering music, then that's their problem -- it's not something we need to feel guilty about.
Sometimes but not always. The best example is Uber/Lyft: taxis sucked before ride shares, they continued to suck after being "disrupted" by ride shares. Both in terms of price and quality of the service.
Briefly, Uber and Lyft were less expensive than traditional cabs, but now I'm back to spending the same $40 to go to the airport that I did a decade ago. The difference being that the cabbie can't have their machine magically "stop accepting cards" once you arrive.
Though to be fair, the taxi industry had been terrible for decades, and are the exception
On the other hand, I think it's become clear that Uber's pricing wasn't sustainable, and part of the reason why Uber was less expensive was because it wasn't sustainable and rides-on-demand might just be something that is naturally expensive because it's expensive, not because taxis were all exploiting the market.
I don't want to say that the taxi industry shouldn't have been "disrupted", everything I've heard about how taxis operated makes it feel like that industry was a poorly run cartel. But I sort of feel like there must have been a better way to disrupt it than what Uber did, and the winner-takes-all approach that Uber took probably introduced some harms as well. Having a decent app that allows you to know in advance what you'll pay, to be able to pay online -- those are value propositions that in theory should have been enough to make Uber competitive even without shoveling VC money into a furnace and saying, "we'll figure out the profit part once we own the market."
But I can't know for sure what would have happened.
It feels like when the VC model does yield improvements we end up getting those improvements in a batch lump during the "nice" phase of the company. And then we end up back at square one where there are a few taxi services that increasingly care less and less about doing a good job. I'd prefer a system where businesses compete on quality as much as they can without ignoring pricing realities, because who knows -- maybe there were other taxi services that might have done an even better job than Uber or who might have had improvements that Uber might have been forced to copy, but they couldn't operate or compete because unlike Uber they didn't have a bunch of rich investors throwing money at them covering for all of their losses.
The honeymoon period with VC companies is nice and sometimes occasionally we get permanent improvements out of it, but overall it's necessarily temporary, and it masks the fact that Uber probably would have needed to compete a lot harder and would have needed to make their experience even better if they weren't able to charge so little for rides for so long.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/arsenal-home-dani...
API access (interop) is a digital human right. If companies can't be profitable without restricting that then that's a deficiency upon them and their gormless VCs
I'm with it on this idea, but comparing it to a "human right" will not lead to the desired response in non-tech people, who will write off the idea as taking the Internet too seriously if phrased that way. A human right carries a much heavier, more fundamental connotation than just a right on its own
Even if you consider it a human right, might be better to brand it differently to get wider traction
BTW, If you need an API key for public API access, you may need to enroll yourself to use that API. I don't ship public API keys with my apps.
So many times when I try to find some music on my partner's spotify account it is just not there, and I give up and we listen to it via newpipe or freetube.
Connecting via YouTube offered significantly more music than via Spotify, albeit some big artists restricted it.
Circumventing DRM, no matter how trivial, is a violation of the DMCA.
> Would be far less worthy if, by the time we get to the README, we only get to see a take down notice from Github. Instigated by Spotify for breach of not sure what.
was what violation would cause Github specifically to take it down, not whether it could ever find a host. The parent brought up Github, not I.
It would simply get the title from the Spotify API and then look it up on YouTube to play.
At some point I actually had set up a rather awful hack where I had a Discord bot that could play webradio and then pointed it towards my own Mopidy server which used the Spotify plugin to have a webpage such that multiple people could add songs and such. It was a great hack though I did not use it for long.
I'd have tried it, but I pay for good audio quality so I won't :)
Newer youtubes are "opus (251)", which I think is 128kbps 48KHz Opus (WebM standard).
- Spotify at least used to be ogg vorbis and claims to be "320kbit/s [mp3] equivalent"
I think the 128kps Opus is still considered quite lossy¹ and 320kpbit/s mp3s I know I can hear the difference to wav on some tracks in a blind test, but generally don't find them better or worse.
¹ from some google test:
no question opus is the more efficient codec
Hm? What codec was uploaded if it's an official upload?
As opposed to some mp3 ripped off a scratched CD in some guy's drawer.
Why?
For example, there are many songs on YouTube listed as "Provided to YouTube by CDBaby". (Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxHpQ668gzA )
CDBaby only provides one format, which is mp3. They'll accept uploads in any of four formats, of which one is also mp3.
So you'd need to answer two questions:
1. Is the file that CDBaby distributes to YouTube the same file they distribute to everyone else, or is it the same file they receive from the artist? (Note: if the answer is #1, that is likely to save CDBaby a bundle on storage!)
2. What did the artist upload to CDBaby?
And then you'd also need to answer analogous questions for the other major providers of official music on YouTube; there are tons and tons of them. CDBaby appears to be unusual in that, in addition to providing your music officially to YouTube, it will also sell it to consumers. Most of these services don't appear to offer anything but official distribution to major websites.
I’ll not rewrite details here, one can search my comment history if more details are required.
This means, to be able to get a good sound from any system, you have to feed it a good signal, and that path starts with recording.
Current audio codecs are great from a psychoacoustic point of view. A good encoder can create an enjoyable file at modest bitrates (192kbps for MP3, and 128kbps for AAC IIRC), and retain most of the details.
The audible residue when you subtract a MP3 from a FLAC is not details per se, but instrument separation and perceived size of the sound stage. People generally call this snake oil, but I have the same amplifier for the last 30 years, and I can say how different qualities of audio render through the same pipeline. A good recording stored losslessly can bring the concert to your home, up to a point. MP3 re-encodings of the same record will sound flatter and smaller.
Lastly, it's not possible to completely contain the sound of a symphony orchestra in a stereo recording. That's not happening. So there's always a limit.
If you have the time, there's a nice ABX test: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/
If using plain old "stereo" mode instead, this problem doesn't occur, but you need a higher overall bitrate for correlated sounds to come through at the same quality, so it's rarely used at modest bitrates and instead tends to be reserved for only the highest bitrates.
Thus, comparing mp3@192 with mp3@320 often actually means comparing mp3@192joint with mp3@320stereo and therefore the listener will find very little if any improvement in the quality of mono-miked center-panned sounds (vocals, etc.) but a decent improvement in the quality of wide sounds (cymbals, reverb, string sections, etc.) since the 320 will have only a few more bits for "mid" but way more bits for "side" so to speak, relative to the 192.
The tests I have done is all encoded by myself. I have purchased 24bit WAV of Radiohead's OK Computer Remastered. I encoded it to FLAC, and 320CBR Stereo with LAME. I still can feel the difference on soundstage, and can create a audible residue file by subtracting MP3 from FLAC version.
I agree that current iteration of encoders create very good audio, however given that your audio system can render high resolution audio, the difference is still audible.
For active listening, the gain going from 320 MP3 / 256 AAC to lossless is beyond minuscule. What you are hearing is far more likely to be placebo.
MP3@320kbps CBR and AAC@256kbps are pretty good for normal listening, but if you have the hardware to render, lossless formats creates a richer soundstage. I have an amplifier which can render it, and I'm listening music with it for 30 years now, so I can hear the difference.
At the end of the day, if your audio pipeline can render the differential residue between MP3@320kbps and FLAC, you can hear it.
Now, you can say that "are you attentive enough to perceive such difference", I'm not listening that intently 75% of the time, but it pays off when I put some time aside to listen to my favorite album for the sake of listening it.
Is this only an issue for mp3 or do other codecs also use fewer bits for the difference between channels?
Usage: "file test.mp3"
Rsult: test.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, JntStereo
Thank god we have more than 2 ears.
A symphony orchestra is miced per group normally (2 for violins, 2 for trumpets, etc.), but if you're around 60 people, you can mic every instrument individually.
To reproduce the sound 1 to 1, you need to mic every instrument individually, and playback them with speakers matching the frequency response and air pressure . So you need speakers equal to the number and characteristics of instruments themselves. On top of that you need to record them ideal microphones and store them loslessly in the process.
Otherwise, you can't create the sound by recording 100 people with 20 microphones, and downmixing them to two channels. It's not possible. I played in double bass in an orchestra, listened countless orchestras, listened the recordings of our own concerts. The gap is enormous.
It's a very well balanced system for my needs and room size. That's a pretty nifty setup for me.
> Plays on YouTube Music will gain on average $0.008.
Although neither have sources. I imagine YouTube Premium plays match or beat Spotify on average.
Of course, for anything, if you block ads AND refuse to pay for the premium subscription, the artist makes $0 from your listening. Hopefully you can support them off-platform via merch or even purchasing their albums (e.g. iTunes which provides DRM-free versions), but then you're still not paying for the platform if you continue to use one with an ad blocker.
0: https://www.lalal.ai/blog/music-streaming-payouts-2023/
1: https://routenote.com/blog/how-much-music-streaming-services... Although this doesn't take into account
For monetized videos, where Youtube directly pays the channel owner, I've heard a few times now that they really don't pay anything when neither ads are successfully displayed or the viewer has Premium.
How soon before they modify their apis to stop that?