Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis (q5) Options

[lameboy]

Hi

Maybe this is old news, but I just read that the new "iTunes-killer" Spotify (http://www.spotify.com/en/ )
uses Ogg Vorbis (q5, ~160 kb/s) for their streaming service.

(reference: http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/soundquality )

Nice to see that they're using an open source encoder!

regards
Magnus

[HotshotGG]

Hi

Maybe this is old news, but I just read that the new "iTunes-killer" Spotify (http://www.spotify.com/en/ )
uses Ogg Vorbis (q5, ~160 kb/s) for their streaming service.

(reference: http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/soundquality )

Nice to see that they're using an open source encoder! smile.gif

regards
Magnus

That's good to hear. It's not old news!. I just hope we made a good enough recommendation in the wiki when we were writing the page. I think -q 5 should be transparent on most samples for the most part.

Edit: It appears as though it's a music application and it's only in the BETA stages so it DOES NOT work in the United States. That's going to be a real setback if they want to start a music service. I like the fact that it's legal, instant, and free though. I see great promise in this new application.

This post has been edited by HotshotGG: Jan 9 2009, 15:17

[Synthetic Soul]

I got an invite through today. Is anyone using this service? I understand the music collection is impressive...

I was a little reticent to install yet another application though.

[HotshotGG]

I got an invite through today. Is anyone using this service? I understand the music collection is impressive...

I was a little reticent to install yet another application though.

How exactly are they liscensing this music? are the paying the record companies royalties? they must be? I am interested in learning more about it's not avaliable in the U.S right now though (Which means it must be a European thing).

[kerminen]

Why haven't I seen more fuzz of this superb service at HA?

1:
It's free (for people living in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain )

Invites from here:
http://spotify.fleo.se/ (just put that web page to a firefox tab, refresh every 30min. "Det finns inga invites kvar just nu." translated from Swedish: "There are no invites available at the moment." But don't worry, when they put some more invites, they put plenty, over 900.... I got mine in under 3 hours, when I took mine there was over 970 left. I started my waiting period with "No invites" screen, too)

2: If your country is not yet in that 6 countries list, you can test the service 9,99euros per month in over 100 countries. Country list here:
https://www.spotify.com/en/products/premium/order/account/
For example in Argentina, Australia, Austria and so on...

It's like having unlimited iTunes for 9,99euros

3: Sound quality and technical layout is excellent,
they are using "Ogg Vorbis q5 codec which streams at approximately 160kb/s."
https://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/

It is always good to see good use of open source code. And the next step seems to be open source FLAC, like we have always wanted at HA
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....c=70852&hl=

It is almost surreal to listen music from artists like MGMT, Laurie Anderson (O Superman), small Finnish underground artist Risto, M.I.A (Paperplanes) and The Smashing Pumpkins for free, totally legally and using Ogg Vorbis q5.

It's so easy and convient to use, it is even faster than utorrent, which can't usually be said of many online things. So no 14-year-old needs to use torrents anymore. So far torrents have always been the most convenient way to get things, they work in every pc/mac/linux with no drm or any other bothering difficulties.

Universal Music Group, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, EMI Music, Warner Music International, Merlin and The Orchard have licensed their music to Spotify, so artists get compensation, like on radio play.

The music selection is HUGE!

http://erihyva.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Public/spotify.png/full

Makes iTunes look little bit like the old aunt

There is so much iTunes talk everyday on HA, where is Spotify????

Go, Spotify, go, this kind of small money buffet models are the future, because the consumers always have the zero euro buffet table option.



[edit: typo, link]

This post has been edited by kerminen: Apr 19 2009, 13:57

[soundberg]

Invites from here:
http://spotify.fleo.se/

I got an invite per your instructions and I'm very impressed with the amount of music and the sound quality.

It is almost surreal to listen music from artists like MGMT, Laurie Anderson (O Superman), small Finnish underground artist Risto, M.I.A (Paperplanes) and The Smashing Pumpkins for free, totally legally and using Ogg Vorbis q5.

Not to speak of Tasavallan Presidentti! Or Swedish groups like Mecki Mark Men, Fläsket Brinner and Träd, gräs och stenar! :-)

[PHOYO]

Spotify is really nice! I use it daily.

Grooveshark is nice too, lots of electronic music: http://listen.grooveshark.com/

[HotshotGG]

It's so easy and convient to use, it is even faster than utorrent, which can't usually be said of many online things. So no 14-year-old needs to use torrents anymore. So far torrents have always been the most convenient way to get things, they work in every pc/mac/linux with no drm or any other bothering difficulties.

Except all of the legalities surrounding certain torrent sites and the growing "elitism" for darknets in the face of piracy. In this case though I believe Spotify is the right way to go.

Why haven't I seen more fuzz of this superb service at HA?

It looks like a great service from what I have heard and can tell:

1. It's not avaliable in the U.S or Canada as of yet (This I strongly disagree with and think it's a huge mistake)
2. Some people don't think they should be using Vorbis to stream there music (This I absolutely disagree with). '
3. I have heard they are dependent upon 7Digital to sell their music including lossless. 7Digital is extremely stingy when it comes to selling lossless downloads. I might be wrong, but the last time I visited the site I saw one album that was encoded with FLAC it was Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul and it was for a limited time!

This post has been edited by HotshotGG: Apr 21 2009, 06:45

[donnie]

Doesn't have a native linux client, although runs fine in wine. Is it possible to download tracks? I don't want to be using their player.

This post has been edited by donnie: Apr 21 2009, 09:12

[kerminen]

Doesn't have a native linux client, although runs fine in wine. Is it possible to download tracks? I don't want to be using their player.

Don't fall into despair:

http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/...-to-developers/

http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/

So native linux clients are coming, many developers already, or you can make on yourself.

BTW: over 1,5 million users.... and counting. The UK passed Sweden with most users.

Spotify is using the "invite" system to limit the growing speed, so that their hardware upgrades can manage the traffic.

It's all over the press and media here.


EDIT:
And no, no download tracks, you stream them. Once a song is fully transfered to your thingy, spotify caches it on hard drive (cache from 1GB to 10%of free HDD)

This post has been edited by kerminen: Apr 21 2009, 09:22

[donnie]

EDIT:
And no, no download tracks, you stream them. Once a song is fully transfered to your thingy, spotify caches it on hard drive (cache from 1GB to 10%of free HDD)

Well, that makes it uninteresting to me, means I can't control my music the way I like or listen to it on my portable.

It does seem like an ok concept but the adverts are annoying (both visual and audible) and the sound isn't great; I'm getting occasional interruptions. Don't know if that's my internet connection, that I'm using it in wine, the service itself or a combination of the above.

[kerminen]

EDIT:
And no, no download tracks, you stream them. Once a song is fully transfered to your thingy, spotify caches it on hard drive (cache from 1GB to 10%of free HDD)

Well, that makes it uninteresting to me, means I can't control my music the way I like or listen to it on my portable.

It does seem like an ok concept but the adverts are annoying (both visual and audible) and the sound isn't great; I'm getting occasional interruptions. Don't know if that's my internet connection, that I'm using it in wine, the service itself or a combination of the above.

It's working alright here with thousands of wine/linux-users in Finland
I get one ad per 3 hours, that's a 30 sec commercial.
or 9 euros per month, no ads.

My music? That's kind of philosophical..... Whose music it is.... Is it artist's or is it the label company's?

I can listen to music from
Universal Music Group, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, EMI Music, Warner Music International, Merlin ,The Orchard and smaller
#House of Akira, #Monique Musique, ~scape, 03 Studio, 14th Floor Records, 1CCrecords, 2 Play Recordings, 24 Bit, 2E2L Recordings, and tens of thousands smaller labels more
check
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psn...BWCZA&gid=1
That's only a one day add.
Spotify adds new stuff every couple of days, and publishes it on
http://www.spotify.com/blog/
So thousands of small labels are added each week in addition to those big player catalogues.

[hybris]

My impression is that the sound quality varies quite a bit, and especially on older tracks I think it sounds compressed, I guess rightly so as they normalise all their tracks. I wonder what method they use.

I'd also love to be able to get a plugin for squeezebox. If they start selling lossless/high bitrate music as well it would be a wonderful way to explore/discover new music and buy it.

[kerminen]

My impression is that the sound quality varies quite a bit, and especially on older tracks I think it sounds compressed, I guess rightly so as they normalise all their tracks. I wonder what method they use.

I'd also love to be able to get a plugin for squeezebox. If they start selling lossless/high bitrate music as well it would be a wonderful way to explore/discover new music and buy it.

You can turn off normalization from player preferences, if you so wish
click Edit-Preferences

This post has been edited by kerminen: Apr 21 2009, 12:29

[hybris]

You can turn off normalization from player preferences, if you so wish
click Edit-Preferences

Cool, I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip

[Miramis]

1. It's not avaliable in the U.S or Canada as of yet (This I strongly disagree with and think it's a huge mistake)

It will be.

[odyssey]

I have tried Spotify and must say i'm very impressed. I have been praying for a license model like this for YEARS!

The collection is excellent, but still a few "important" artists are missing (say Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada).

The application is small and VERY lightweight.

Although I hope they improve the interface a bit. It needs a rating system, and instead of just creating playlists, I would like a collection view of some sort i.e. choose entire albums and select albums you want to hear from a visual view.

It's not gapless

I would like to get better "similar tracks" (alá MusicIP) instead of just chosing a genre.

Genres and year need to be better defined. Choose Pop from this century and much very old (what I would call) non-pop is appearing.

[kerminen]

I have tried Spotify and must say i'm very impressed. I have been praying for a license model like this for YEARS!

The collection is excellent, but still a few "important" artists are missing (say Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada).

In Finland we have access to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada.

http://erihyva.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Public/spotify2.png/full

Blame your country's music companies

Although I hope they improve the interface a bit. It needs a rating system, and instead of just creating playlists, I would like a collection view of some sort i.e. choose entire albums and select albums you want to hear from a visual view.

You can choose to listen to full albums, click the artist's name to get listing of all albums, with cover art

I would like to get better "similar tracks" (alá MusicIP) instead of just chosing a genre.

You get that by clicking "Artist Radio"

This post has been edited by kerminen: Apr 25 2009, 00:19

[m0rbidini]

I'm trying the paid version and I like it although it lacks less popular/mainstream stuff that LastFM has available.

[HotshotGG]

It will be.

This is good news. Right now I have an account on Lala, but I would welcome Spotify with open arms once they move across the ocean. I am sure they are already working on it as we speak.

[krmathis]

It looks like a great service from what I have heard and can tell:

1. It's not avaliable in the U.S or Canada as of yet (This I strongly disagree with and think it's a huge mistake)

Just like how many of us disagree and think its a huge mistake that Pandora is not available outside the U.S.

[HotshotGG]

Just like how many of us disagree and think its a huge mistake that Pandora is not available outside the U.S.

I forgot that Pandora was restricted outside of the U.S. I think these companies need to stop with "country" restrictions. I suppose a lot of it has to do with their server loads and usage statistics. I heard Spotify was getting a tremendous amount of traffic, which is why it was invite only in some countries.

This post has been edited by HotshotGG: Apr 25 2009, 23:27

[m0rbidini]

HotshotGG, it's mostly because of licensing / royalties.

I want ReplayGain in Spotify (instead of normalization).

[HotshotGG]

HotshotGG, it's mostly because of licensing / royalties.

I have yet to find a paper or person who can explain how this works in different countries to me. I am also very curious about this. Maybe a Google search "will" turn up something.

[hybris]

HotshotGG, it's mostly because of licensing / royalties.

I have yet to find a paper or person who can explain how this works in different countries to me. I am also very curious about this. Maybe a Google search "will" turn up something.

Very simply put, it seems like both the labels and the artists can decide wether a said track/artist/album is available digitally for any given country. (at least that is the practical effect of however it works)

This is mostly to protect the outdated distribution companies that earn money pushing actual CDs. (More or less the same reason you have region coding on DVDs)

This post has been edited by hybris: Apr 27 2009, 14:23