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Spotify Premium Users Get Lossless Streaming After Years of Delays
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No, not lossy ≠ lossless.
FLAC is a lossless compression codec. It will put out what you put in, bit for bit.
But if the audio is irreversibly altered before lossless data compression, there is already loss.
Spotify seems to be the only service that has an issue with providing bit-perfect transmission of the actual master files, with everything being downsampled to 24/44.1 regardless of samplerate. None of the other lossless streaming services seem to have this problem.
Spotify is not lossless.
This is like me opening a stock photo repository where everything is available as a lossless TIFF file, except every image has been converted from a JPEG. The file format in use itself may be capable of losslessly containing something, but what they put in it does not fit that criteria.
Spotify IS NOT lossless now, indeed. They stream compressed content to the user. They're just about to launch loseless streaming which means they WILL stream original, not compressed content to the user.
What's your point, actually?
EDIT:
Actually they'll provide up to 24bit/44.kHz *FLAC*. It's explicitly mentioned in their announcement.
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As a musician we appreciate the extra money. As a fan of music, that would work if you listen to the same thing all the time, but streaming is a fantastic way to find new music.
I guess the happy medium would be to listen to Spotify free, and buy the music you like but again, only if you listen to the same music routinely.
I'm not sure what you mean. If the file format/ CODEC info isn't provided, you cannot know. All that's provided above is the bit depth and the sample rate.
For example, 24 bit 44.1k WAV/PCM (pulse code modulation) is uncompressed.
Ironically I just checked last evening to see if Spotify had lossless because Ive been pretty unhappy with Apple Music. I've been limping along with Apple Music because of uncompressed audio. Being an audio engineer you can really hear the difference, particularly on good equipment.
However, I don't understand why the Apple Music service is so sub-par. The algorithm is pretty bad, and I hardly discover new music organically. I don't like how you have to add each individual album to your library although I did find a work around by long-tapping and selecting "go to artist". The UI is not great, and Spotify will work on more non-Apple devices than Apple Music. It's one of those Apple services (like Siri) that you'd expect more from.
There's no indication that lossless is available in Canada yet. I'll likely switch back once it's available. I have to figure out how to break the news to my wife though. I've switched her back and forth at least 3 times now.
However, I don't understand why the Apple Music service is so sub-par. The algorithm is pretty bad, and I hardly discover new music organically. I don't like how you have to add each individual album to your library although I did find a work around by long-tapping and selecting "go to artist". The UI is not great, and Spotify will work on more non-Apple devices than Apple Music. It's one of those Apple services (like Siri) that you'd expect more from.
There's no indication that lossless is available in Canada yet. I'll likely switch back once it's available. I have to figure out how to break the news to my wife though. I've switched her back and forth at least 3 times now.
Hi, lossless is a factor of the compression algorithm used, not the bit or sampling rate.
If your suggestion is that your ear can resolve more, that's believable but super unfortunate. Available content is limited and preserving that level of quality throughout your audio systems is expensive.
I'm very pleased that my ears have aged out of audiophilia. I can spend more time enjoying what I can hear now that I'm not concerned with what I can't. And it's super comfortable to be able to buy my devices in, like, regular stores with regular features for regular prices.
Anyone know if spotify Basic Family plan will get lossless. we had Premium Family but had the option to go basic, which just meant removing audiobooks, which we never used. its just a few pounds cheaper, but is basically a premium subscribed option. i got the alert saying lossless was coming...
24/44.1 will only be lossless for recordings actually mastered in 24/44.1, which is probably not a great majority of them. And certainly not all of them, as higher sampling rates have become more and more common over the past 15 years - ESPECIALLY for reissues of older material recorded on analog equipment.
So no, a great deal of the material will not be lossless.
It may not be processed by a lossy perceptual audio encoder like MP3 or AAC. But it will not be a faithful or accurate representation of the audio as originally supplied by the labels. Spotify is downsampling (irreversibly decimating and altering) the audio data, whereas every other lossless streaming service is serving it straight up, bit for bit exactly as it was provided to them. True, bit-perfect lossless.
It is ignorant to try and equate what Spotify is marketing as lossless to any of the other lossless streaming services.
Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” might take the prize for bad Atmos mixes.
I'm in the US, I have premium, still don't have the lossless option. What exactly is this rollout process supposed to look like? The wait is over... but not really.
Bluetooth has supported lossless since 5.4 in 2023 (aptX Lossless and LE Audio) … 6.0 and 6.1 have released since.
While not many headphones are using such, Bluetooth being lossy is antiquated thinking. It’s no longer the case. Lossless is very relevant for some current and most immediate-future product releases. — Though iPhone 16 is Bluetooth 5.3 … 17 is Bluetooth 6, and therefore, fully lossless capable. It joins some Android phones that could already do lossless over Bluetooth since 5.4 (highres since Sony’s LDAC on 5.3, which Apple never supported, but some Androids did).
Anyway, point is, thinking of Bluetooth as inherently lossy is outdated by about two years.
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Wrong! Loseless or lossy refers to compression method not quality of original content. You can both compress 24/44.1 or 16/44.1 (and many others). In case of loseless transmission you receive bit-by-bit same data as stored on Spotify servers (be it 24/44.1 or 16/44.1). In case of lossy transmission you receive similar but not identical data (artefacts, etc.) due to compression. It has nothing to do with source quality.
Not wrong! It’s almost as if you didn’t read anything that I said. Once the source has been irreversibly altered, it is no longer lossless. You can not convert an MP3 file to a FLAC file and then consider it to be “losslessly compressed” just because that is the compression method used.
You are wrong. Up- or downsampling does not make source material lossy. Because if that's your claim only mastering engineers and mixers have access to lossless music, because most source material is 32-bit (floating point) and 96 or 192 kHz. For the music listener that's a total waste of space, but in the studio the extra headroom makes sense. It gives you some slack when mixing and mastering. What Spotify does makes actually a lot of sense. 24 bit gives you enough dynamic range to record everything in between a mouse and a space rocket (16 is actually more than enough). The 44.1 kHz sampling rate comes from the era of CDs (16/44.1 kHz is the Redbook standard). Philips and Sony did not settle on 44.1 kHz because they just felt like it, but because it offers all the frequency bandwith you need to cover the spectrum of the human ear (20 Hz-20 kHz). Audiophiles will tell you they can hear way beyond 20 kHz and therefore need 48, 96 or even 192 kHz, but they're scientifically full of BS. Not a single human on the planet can hear beyond 20 kHz, we're not bats, dolphins, dogs or insects. Just Google the Nyquist theorem.
Your claim higher source materials are great for older releases is laughable at best. You're being fooled. Really old stuff is mastered analog on tape that has seen some degredation. The source material therefore has a dynamic range of 12-bits at best and the higher frequencies weren't even recorded in the first place. Recording gear that records beyond 20 kHz is a lot less common than you might think. When they digitalize the old tapes they use the highest possible bit depth and sampling range for the headroom they need to properly handle the material in the digital world. So when you break the bank on that ultra high lossless album you're actually buying upsampled music. Is it lossless, absolutely. Does it sound good, probably. Do you need it? Absolutely not.
Actually, for 99,9% of the population your average lossy file is all they ever need. But that's a whole different can of worms I'm not willing to open ;-).
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Ok. Now at least what you wrote is technically consistent and precise. You claim they Spotify can “cheat” and use compressed or altered in other way source. Sure, Spotify could do this just like any other service. I see no reason why Spotify would want to do this though. 1/ it’s auditable - for sure some clever guys will check it, 2/ Spotify doesn’t gain anything doing this - storage is cheap, throuput is expensive.
There is a lot here that is very, very incorrect. I am not sure where to even begin addressing it all. Do you even realize who you are speaking to?
I can assure you I have more experience in this matter than anybody in this thread
At the end of the day you have a number of services providing something called lossless, and all of them except for one provide the same thing - the exact untouched audio data provided to them by the label.
The one service that acts as an outlier is irreversibly altering/discarding audio data before it ever gets to you and still marketing it “lossless”
“lossless” is identical everywhere else except for Spotify. Do the math. The only thing it is a lossless representation of is their own tinkering.
Apple Music on Mac is a joke. I can stop playback on macBook and send AM to background (with red dot) and left it unused for many hours/days. Still, when I start playback on iPhone, macOS shows pop-up with information that I cannot listen on two devices simultaneously. The only way to stop AM from displaying pop-up is to really close the app.
Apple keeps such stupid bugs unsolved for YEARS. It's so irritating.
There are no Bluetooth codecs that can deliver high quality lossless audio.
I am not completely sure about other platforms but Spotify app on Android started go "go wrong" somewhere last year when lock screen widget got broken and it took ages to fix it. If it was only problem then it would have been "nothing to write home about", but everything is just plain horrible on Android nowadays - sometimes app is unable to proceed in queue with endless "loading" spinner in a view, app is not remembering queued items when closed and opened again. "Cherry on top of a cake" is a bug that makes you feel that phone's screen is broken as scrolling can only be initiated from top part of the view.
It's a shame that paid "Premium" service is ruined by broken app.
P. S. These problems do not seem to be present on Mac though...
It's a shame that paid "Premium" service is ruined by broken app.
P. S. These problems do not seem to be present on Mac though...
Seems like splitting hairs. It may not do 24-bit/48kHz … but it’s a fact that Bluetooth can now do lossless, and a few headphones and phones already do it.