Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I've been on about this before, but the single biggest obstacle to spotify usability for me (or rather, the main thing that keeps me from being able to switch to clouded listening as opposed to stored listening) is the "UMG Problem". Anything and everything which a UMG label released to the digital services before 2013 has that awful, blatant audio watermarking encoded into it which makes pianos, choirs, acoustic guitars and cymbals sound like they're underwater. Starting in early 2013 I noticed UMG labels started releasing certain new things to the digital domain without this defacement, but not everything; based on by-ear research I've done it seems that by June 2013 all new releases, reissues and recompilations were without watermarks. Which is great, but still leaves the vast majority of their holdings (everything they released to digital vendors before then) still sitting there in an unlistenable state.

So like my Spotify playlists and libraries can comprise everything I feel like listening to except Motown, Decca, ECM, Island, Geffen, Deutsche Gramm, Impulse, Arista, etc etc etc. Which is actually a giant slice of things I love. So I still just say fuck it and do almost all of my listening from my packed to the gills ipod.

I like to hope someday UMG will reup all their holdings without watermarks but unless that can be batch automated somehow I can't imagine them assigning someone on payroll to grind out such a monumental job.

Anyway this is not at all spotify's fault and obv affects UMG items on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3 exactly the same way. But if it were ever fixed by UMG, spotify would be a dream.

Jon I really appreciate your continued efforts to publicize that issue FYI

idk how feasible it is, but it would be amazing if you could search spotify by country of origin

I had never heard about the UMG thing, that totally sucks. Another reason to holds onto CDs.

I'm confounded by how quiet Universal has managed to keep mainstream media outlets from complaining about their watermarking. Maybe people are just fatigued about the notion of bringing up another argument about audio mastering issues that only 20% of people are annoyed by, but that 20% should be at least half of the people on this board

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=universal%20watermarking&safe=off

Also, they might still be watermarking the newer things but if they are it is subtle enough to not bother me. I know the technology was originally pitched as an "inaudible" way to track the sources of audio files, maybe it actually lives up to that claim now, idk. I just don't want the backing vocals on "My Old School" to sound like they are singine through a table fan.

I remember "underwater" cymbals was always the giveaway that an mp3 was 128kbps or lower. Does their watermarking just consist of using really low quality compression?

wait is the diff between the "4.99/mo" membership and the reg?

No it sounds a lot different than low bitrate compression. I know well the 128 bit cymbal sound and it is much more listenable than what the watermark does.

Basically, you'll hear a great sounding recording across most frequencies except certain frequencies/tone colors which sound like a 64 Kbps file.

New iOS app out today, has sorting and filtering in Your Music. Nice in the album view because you can now sort by artist instead of just by album title.

The sorting turns out to be a temporary casualty of some internal reworking to prepare for bigger improvements...

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, July 2, 2014 9:15 AM (Yesterday)

thanks for the explanation. I figured it wouldn't be a permanent change.

wait is the diff between the "4.99/mo" membership and the reg?

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, July 3, 2014 4:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the UK at least the main differences are offline playlists and high-bitrate streaming.

Yeah, I think offlining stuff and/or getting it on other devices are the main thing. This user-made chart may be out of date, I don't know, but perhaps it gets at the gist: http://community.spotify.com/t5/Newcomers-and-Contribution/Subscription-Comparison-Chart/td-p/666916

I can see lots of good reasons to pay the extra money, but they didn't fit what I need out of the site, so I was glad to save the money and very glad my friend told me about this secret, speakeasy-style system just as I was about to enter my CC info for Premium.

has sorting and filtering in Your Music

holy crap, gave up on this ever appearing on the mobile app a long time ago

There's a $4.99 student rate now too

Wait, really? Where's that? What's it offer?

https://www.spotify.com/us/student/

Sweeeeeet!

Hmmm, this is interesting but strange - I passed the student eligibility test, but when I try to go back and upgrade to Premium it's still talking about $9.99 a month.

what was your score?

i really love how there are two sizes for album art on the windows app: really small and extremely small

Does anyone know roughly what percentage of recorded music is on spotify? Like, how many albums have ever been released, and how many are on Spotify?

I went through a list of 1000 albums released in 1971 and around 500 were available on Spotify. So half.

That must have involved some serious typing. Thanks!

the amount of stuff getting put out through means other than a significant label now is so huge I bet that % is dropping

oh yeah, my percentage is probably wildly off the mark, even for stuff from the early 70s, as most private press and indie stuff only shows up if it was reissued at some point.

I wonder how many hrs of music youtube has by comparison

i bet you could listen to music on youtube for an entire day and never have to repeat a song

I went through a large bunch of my stuff. It came out around 70% on Spotify.

Certain licensing-sensitive genres like film scores are probably only about 10% present on spotify. But that's a genre where the majority of the music is out of print physically for the same reason.

the vast majority of ALL recorded music is out of print and/or has never been translated digitally so I'd be shocked if it was above single digit percentage points
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub133/sum133.html

OTOH 85% of groovy Italian schlock soundtracks are represented so who gives a twat about crappy American soundtracks.

1989 isn't available so spotify should just quit imo

it was a good run

Red wasn't on there for a full calendar year and we all survived.

most of us anyway

I will wait until christmas when someone will def give me a starbucks gift card. I will then buy the album at starbucks with the gift card.

Dumb 1989 is better

$9.99 auto-rip from amazon is tempting, but then they're going to send me a cd! why don't they just offer the album digitally for $9.99?! what a disaster for the environment.

YouTube has the acetates of yer grandad farting in the bathroom, with all of the attendant good and evil about that...

I know this absolutely ACE garage rock album wasn't on Spotify in its entirety about six mod ago, so:

http://open.spotify.com/album/2rPBcCdWIUOo8iJ85Ks5Ed

Now you can hear We the People's "My Brother the Man"! And other fuzz punk gems!

is it true that apps are due to be killed?

not sure how i'm going to live without the blue note app :(

what apps do you mean?

I never really understood the apps but I usually just construct playlists like Albums Released in April of 1965

Giggle play's interface is so ugly, I'm tempted to switch back to spotify on aesthetics alone.

so Taylor Swift pulled all of her albums, eh?

I understand what pulling all streaming could do for an artist/label, but I don't get the singling out of spotify. I am just going to listen to Taylor Swift's old albums on rdio now. But I will continue to use spotify for everything else.

well it could obviously do something for her if she's in negotiations with them

dunno how effective an embargo is when there's plenty of other legal sources for what you're withholding

I guess I'm assuming that inciting spotify user outrage with spotify is the main play here. I don't know how much spotify makes off of plays from Swift's back catalog.