Spotify Readies Premium Tier With Hi-Fi Audio and AI Features

[tcgjeukens]

Very very funny thread.
Most people who talk about HiFi use mediocre playback apparel.
HiFi people, having spent 5-6 figures on apparel, will base their purchasing decision on quality, emotion and ease-of-use.

 

[NightFox]

In this day and age, isn't this a bit like a streaming service trying to charge extra for HD?

 

[Pezimak]

I like Deezer because of its Flow AI, but I use Apple as its One package for TV and storage. They are much a like and around the same price with HiFi sound. Spotify will find it difficult to market their equivalent if it costs more.

 

[Big_D]

HiFi good

AI features ... "meh" ... to each their own

Spotify seems to have an end game wish of folks just opening the App and hitting "play" with no care or thought

I think that might be so. They have an increasing catalogue of non-copyright music, if they can use the AI to select that for users, so they don't notice, they save themselves a fortune in payouts to the music industry... Use the AI to generate the music as well and they are laughing all the way to the bank...

 

[8667132]

Oooh, more money they can pass on to the artists... oh wait..

 

[wanha]

The popularity of Spotify despite its disgusting track record against musicians and user hostile actions is a great example of the power of network effects.

Most artists simply cannot afford to stay away from the biggest streaming platform in the world, while many users want to use the biggest service out there and the same one most of the people in their lives are using.

But on the whole, Spotify isn't great:
- most expensive by far
- pays artists the least on a per stream basis
- has been caught red handed doing all sorts of shady stuff, including:
- replacing real artist's music with fake in-house artists to further reduce the amount of royalties they need to pay to artists and labels
- offering artists better visibility on their "discovery" playlists in return for paying less royalties per stream
- tried to appeal a Copyright Royalty Board decision to increase songwriter streaming rates, effectively fighting against better compensation for songwriters

Notice the key component of all of those things? It's about money, for which Spotify is seemingly willing to do just about anything to get more.

You can like their UI, playlists, or music discoverability, but make no mistake that this company is decidedly bad for music and musicians as a whole.

 

[somnolentsurfer]

The new tier is said to include AI-powered features allowing subscribers to mix songs from different artists. Spotify is also exploring various concert ticket sales strategies such as pre-sale access and premium seating options through discussions with major promoters and ticket vendors.

Read: Spotify are looking for ways to take over the last few remaining ways for artists to fund their careers because they are underpaid by Spotify.

 

[jeremydc]

I think Apple really dropped the ball with not first introducing Apple Intelligence in their Music App. On device processing, that generated recommendations based on my interest, would be so huge. Apple Music weakest quality is how bad their playlists or My Station are. Spotify DJ, not perfect really added something to their service.

This. I switch between the two every year. And by the end of Apple’s year, I’m thankful it’s almost over. Spotify DJ continues to be superior.

 

[wanha]

I think Apple really dropped the ball with not first introducing Apple Intelligence in their Music App. On device processing, that generated recommendations based on my interest, would be so huge. Apple Music weakest quality is how bad their playlists or My Station are. Spotify DJ, not perfect really added something to their service.

Agree.

Apple (or any streaming service really) could and should add the ability to create AI powered playlists based on the song tempo, mood, or instrumentation, for example.

It would be a game changer for creating playlists and discovering new music.

So much untapped potential there...

 

[racerhomie]

Why would you need native AirPlay 2 support from the Spotify app when both iOS and macOS support it system wide? I thought that meant you can AirPlay any audio output from your device.

AirPlay 2 is supposed to add instant playback and pausing, longer buffering to HomePod and other AirPlay 2 speakers. Spotify is still using AirPlay 1, when YouTube Music, Apple Music app and others have migrated to AirPlay 2.

 

[oldwatery]

And here I am coming out the other end of this spectrum...I couldn't care less about FLAC or Hi-Res Lossless audio. I used to be one of the audiophiles touting the superiority of FLAC and above quality. It turns out, it really is just snake oil and placebo. I have spent countless hours A/B testing all kinds of music across various streaming services and my own FLAC collection, with all kinds of different headphones and speakers. What I can tell you without a doubt is this: almost every person cannot tell the difference between 256 AAC or 130 OPUS and FLAC or Hi-Res Lossless. All of this HiFi audio marketing is just that - marketing. The vast majority of people are listening to music over bluetooth either in wireless buds or in their car (neither of which can transmit FLAC or higher). Not to mention you wouldn't even hear the supposed differences while driving down the road in a car or walking around with buds in. Just put on regular quality and enjoy your music, and more importantly, enjoy using less data and taking us less storage if you are downloading. A song in FLAC is around 38 mb while an AAC or OPUS song is like 5 mb. The data savings is insane and you CANNOT tell the difference in audio quality, at all.

These type of comments really piss me off. Just because you can’t hear a difference does not mean I or others can’t. I can absolutely hear the difference. And as the price of storage is so low, even if it is slight, it’s worth it. I acknowledge your personal position and experience….so be reasonable and acknowledge mine and others like me. I am not you and my ears are not yours. Enjoy your music experience and I will enjoy mine.

 

[Nothing Phone(2)]

Later this year, which year are they speaking from, 2077?

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

“Devoted music fans” don’t use spotify because spotify doesn’t pay the artists those fans are devoted to.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

These type of comments really piss me off. Just because you can’t hear a difference does not mean I or others can’t. I can absolutely hear the difference. And as the price of storage is so low, even if it is slight, it’s worth it. I acknowledge your personal position and experience….so be reasonable and acknowledge mine and others like me. I am not you and my ears are not yours. Enjoy your music experience and I will enjoy mine.

So you disagree that lossless audio isn't important when the equipment being used can't even reproduce it or the listening environment has so much ambient noise that whatever nuances "lossless" gets you is overwhelmed by distractions? I agree with Frankie that the number of people that have the equipment capable of reproducing lossless in an environment acoustically perfect is very small compared to everyone else with wireless buds or headphones that switch on or download "lossless" because they think it's better but they'll not be able to reproduce it.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

“Devoted music fans” don’t use spotify because spotify doesn’t pay the artists those fans are devoted to.

Spotify doesn't pay the artists? That's surprising. So Spotify is stealing the music?

And yet, the artists don't leave Spotify. Hmmm...

 

[TVGenius]

Great, concert ticket access is really useful for those of us 3 hours from any venue listed on LiveNation or Ticketmaster. Glad I get to pay for that if I want HQ audio.

 

[Frankied22]

These type of comments really piss me off. Just because you can’t hear a difference does not mean I or others can’t. I can absolutely hear the difference. And as the price of storage is so low, even if it is slight, it’s worth it. I acknowledge your personal position and experience….so be reasonable and acknowledge mine and others like me. I am not you and my ears are not yours. Enjoy your music experience and I will enjoy mine.

Sure you can buddy. Whatever you say.

 

[Ateam043]

While I under stand this is an optional upgrade for Spotify, this sealed the deal for me. I'm cancelling my family subscription and moving over to Apple One. Once you put this option into your family plan, for the same $25 you get Apple Music, TV, and Arcade. Just wish they would upgrade that darn cloud plan of 200GB. Great value.

 

[dankron]

I moved away from Spotify 1 yr ago, after being a subscriber from day 1 of their launch in Australia in 2012. It was my favorite platform for music streaming by far. But in the past few years their business model started changing quite a bit, focusing more on forcing us to listen to music they didn't had to pay for.

Their Shufflle playlist feature is probably one of the worst in the market, the amount of times I hear the same song on a playlist play more than once during one listen, even when I have onver 900 songs on the playlist is ridiculous. There are 100s of pages in their comunity forums of people complaining about it, and they don't do anything to fix it.

After talking to a couple of musician friends that have songs on Spofity I started understanding why they will never fix this.

There are 2 ways musicians get paid for their songs on Spotify:

1. By listening hours
2. Once off fee and Spotify will own the lincence for the song.

The first one, the artist will only get paid after it reaches a minium threshold, I'm not sure how much is that but lest say $25, they get paid $0.001/listen it will take a lot of listens untill Spotify needs to pay them.

The second one is the best for spotify as they own the song and don't need to pay anything anymore.

So Spotify suggestions and shuffle will give priority to artists with low listen counts or songs that Spotify owns, so they don't have to spend any money.

There is also record label deals, where record labels are paying spotify to force an artist or song to our players.

So yes, Spotify doesn't have their users (paying customers) in their best interest, all they want is capitalise everywhere they can, even if that means pissing a few users off. (like me).

Also the lack of Homepod support... one of the other reasons I moved away from Spotify.

 

[dburkland]

I’ve been waiting ages for Spotify to drop a legit Hi-Fi option, but I’m still not sold they’re serious about doing it right. If they actually pull it off, I’d ditch TIDAL in a heartbeat—their nonstop hip-hop recommendations are driving me nuts, no matter how much I try to steer them toward what I actually listen to.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Coming from YTM after they canned my VPN subscription, I can't understand why anyone uses Spotify. It's so bad in comparison.

 

[RumorConsumer]

Hope people paying for the lossless/hi-fi plan are smart enough to listen over wired or AirPlay. Audio over Bluetooth is not full quality yet

Spotify Connect protocol with supported hardware is better than AirPlay. When it goes Lossless it will be definitively superior.

 

[RumorConsumer]

Even with pretty expensive headphones, speakers, and monitors, I’ve never been able to tell the difference between lossless and 256 kbps audio. I’ve also spent a good amount of time mixing music (primarily as a hobbyist, but I did mix a few independent releases), and I still can’t tell the difference even on my own mixes comparing the WAV files and the AAC/OGG on streaming platforms. I can’t imagine people being able to tell the difference when more passively listening to music in untreated spaces or over Bluetooth

Just curious what gear you're using.

 

[platinumaqua]

Spotify Connect protocol with supported hardware is better than AirPlay. When it goes Lossless it will be definitively superior.

AirPlay audio is lossless right now

 

[Cayden]

Just curious what gear you're using.

I’ve tried it on a number of things. Multiple different audio technica wired headphones, Kali monitors, Neumi powered bookshelf speakers, and some passive speakers my friend uses for mixing that are definitely nicer than mine. This is all going through great AD/DA converters as well on multiple interfaces or dedicated boxes.

Definitely not the most expensive gear, but stuff made for very accurate playback. Much more importantly, these were used in treated rooms.