Solution: Everytime a track is requested by a premium member, if it does not exist in 320 then they send FLAC and the client converts it on the fly while playing it and sends it back to Spotify. Do this 3x for every track and verify that the md5 is the same on all three.
Then, the most popular songs will be available in 320, and the ones that aren't would never have been accessed in the first place.
This solves the CPU issue but I reckon bandwidth is the real issue. This solution actually increases bandwidth usage and there would need to be a lot more checks than just 3 md5's to prevent abuse.
In controlled listening tests most people have trouble distinguishing mp3 at 128-160 VBR kbits from the uncompressed original. 320 kbits is just a waste of bandwidth but people just assume more is better.
In a previous life I was a sound engineer. Under controlled conditions, my own listening equipment and lossless source files, with which I am familiar, I can identify 64kbps vs 128kbps (p = .01), 128kbps vs 192kbps (p = .01), 192kbps vs 256kbps (p = .03), and probably 256kbps vs 320kbps (p = .07), n = 30, LAME=3.something for all tests. If you are in Austin, you can come over and watch me do this in person.
I have no doubt that the general population may be (statistically) unable to distinguish 128kbps vs 256kbps, but that says nothing about a minority of individuals, many of whom are large music purchasers.
And yet it is trivial to teach every one of them to identify 128kbit (at least) from uncompressed in just a few short minutes. And it's the kind of thing you pretty much can't un-hear. Those who want better quality have a legitimate gripe, though for business purposes related to your statement it's best to make a higher bitrate stream as a configuration option and not the default.
I think the author is on the wrong track discussing endoing times for 320kbit - it's much more likely that spotify is interested in keeping down their bandwidth costs.
A major streaming provider that I'm familiar with actually delivered streams that were 15%-20% under the quoted bitrate on many popular tracks for a few years, but only during periods of peak bandwidth consumption. It saved a significant amount of money and afaik was never detected (they no longer do so).
That depends on what you're listening to. For all my progressive/power metal, 128 just sounds terrible and empty. I'm not very well versed in the terminology, so I don't know how better to describe it. On the contrary, 320 sounds full.
"When all 12 trials were tabulated across all listeners, the high school students preferred the lossless CD format over the MP3 version in 67% of the trials (slide 16). The CD format was preferred in 145 of 216 trials (p<0.001)."
From Spotify's perspective, there is a low incentive to offer unpopular songs as 320kbps streams.
If there is only a small number of peers in the network that have the high Bitrate stream (paying users with HQ enabled on desktop clients and with interest in unpopular song X), they benefits of the peer to peer networking are less likely to pay off.
However, that does not explain why they don't offer HQ for some of their more prestigious releases, though I wouldn't be surprised if the labels hand them 'shitty' 192kbps mp3s every now and then.
After looking at the spreadsheet, I’d wager that there is a correlation between lower popularity of tracks and being 160 kbps only. The only track out of the last 40 is Michael Jackson's This is It, and a quick look up in the Spotify client gives most of them a very low 'popularity' measure.
Spotify uses Vorbis for streaming and Vorbis' 320kbit is not the same as MP3's 320kbit.
In fact, MP3 has quality problems (sample/frequency resolution limit per block) that cannot be fixed at any bitrate. Moreover, re-encoding one lossless format to another (edit: not what article suggests) would further degrade quality. You'd get desired bandwidth, but not the quality.
It's a shame that bandwidth became synonymous with quality and MP3's upper limit is taken as "highest quality". 320kbit (and lossless!) WAVE sounds like a phone line! OTOH it's quite possible that Vorbis at lower bitrate has higher quality than MP3's maximum.
I believe you are referring to lossy formats, as re-encoding one lossless format to another will not degrade quality. Re-encoding the lossless format to 320kbit Vorbis is what he's requesting which will ensure minimum quality degradation while still reducing the file size.
I think the ever-ongoing war between audiophiles and "nobody can tell 128/192/256/whatever kbps lossy files from CD" supporters is irreverent here. I am not suggesting Spotify to give us a better quality that maybe doesn't mean too much for some other users, I am asking them why they didn't deliver the goods they promised more than two years ago.
Not to start the "320kbs is better" discussion but with my Unlimited account I only heard one or two albums which sounds very compressed (spotify:album:07hc4SjPjogLqwBc7dUCiD for example: Alan Parsons). Most of the time the quality is just very good. I think the standard 160kbs is great imho.
That really depends on what you're listening to the music on.
If you want to use Spotify at home and are listening on a nice stereo, then compression artifacts are very obvious in almost everything on Spotify.
For that reason, if I'm not listening to local music I tend to listen to KEXP's uncompressed stream. It's a mere 1.4Mbps.
Which then hits on why Spotify are most likely not serving 320. "It's the bandwidth, stupid".
It's all about the bandwidth. How few people are going to hear the difference, and how much would it cost to implement? The bandwidth costs are definitely non-trivial for their subscriber base, so implementing 320 is going to hit their costs hard.
For the article linked, notice the blog title, Spotify Classical.
Classical music really does show up artifacts in compression like Hip Hop, Pop and Rock (and Prog Rock) simply doesn't. The strings and low bass both exist in the upper and lower audio ranges precisely where compression is most aggressive and therefore noticeable. This isn't going to affect greatly the Beyonces of this world, but it affects some delicate string recital.
To be honest, if I were Spotify, I'd probably just rip the classical in 320 as that is a specialist crowd who probably can hear the difference and would kick up a stink. And then keep the vast majority in 160 as the vast majority aren't going to notice and wouldn't kick up a stink. If I wanted to be more intelligent, I'd write something to try and detect artifacts, and if a 160 file exhibited above a certain threshold, then I'd make that a contender to be at 320... thus trying to find a sweet spot between quality and bandwidth costs.
Ogg q5 (approximately 160kbps) is not 160kbps mp3. I can tell 160kbps mp3 from CD very easily, but am unable (headphones, work PC) to tell 160kbps Ogg files from the original CD tracks.
Very unscientific I know, but still...
That said, if they say Ogg q9 it should be Ogg q9.
It's not like high bit rate is the only feature of Spotify Premium. It's definitely a good feature but I ordered premium without even knowing about the high bit rate option.
I'm impressed by Spotify. 20 hours of the same sort of unlimited free music as what.cd and waffles.fm. 50 million Spotify users in the first year seems like a possibly not that unrealistic prediction for them to make. Perhaps Spotify motivates the record companies to launch and relentlessly promote their own Hulu for music. I don't think the record companies can react that quickly though. Maybe a few Swedish entrepreneurs just took quietly over (or become the prime influencers of) the US record industry.
@Daniel Ek: I'll sign up for the $9.95/month plan when you have 95% of your music available at ~192 kb/s OGG. I just want the slightly more bandwidth that ensures I can't tell it apart from CD and it isn't much more bandwidth.
Actually, what I really want is one of those menus where you got to choose your own encoding like allofmp3.com had.
Edit: Actually, these ads are really annoying. I guess I have to sign up. Damn you, compelling product.
well, I guess it can really be only due to bandwidth reasons. It is a lesser known fact, that Spotify (in the same way as Skype), is relying on P2P behind the scenes.
Often, the music you listen to is streamed from other users, and so bandwidth load is a very crucial factor. Looks like Spotify can't afford harder load to their servers and they're gradually increasing the requirements.
But marketing their whole library as 320kbps is really disappointing. As a premium subscriber, I was under impression that it is what I was getting.
So... You are suggesting me to write this entire report based on "from what I heard, about 70% of the 100 tracks I auditioned are probably not at 320 kbps"?...
It is indeed a decent service, and I guess it was worth the money I've paid for it, but there certainly are a bunch of flaws. I miss a lot of my personal music library in it, for example, (and yes, while you can add them, but I pretty much only use/used spotify at work). To be honest, I didn't even remember to enable the HQ option when I had a paid subscription. I also use it on gnu/linux, where the windows client under wine for me is very sluggish (but only at work, not at home), and the native client still has ways to go.
Anyway, I seem to have gotten quite sidetracked, the point I was trying to make is that at least OP is giving them direct feedback and thus an opportunity to improve. While you think it's a great service, surely you can find some ways to improve it? I could, for example, live with a larger cache on the android app so that I can enter a store under ground without the music stopping when the cell service does...
Some of the albums I've been listening to (with HQ enabled) have raised red flags, I've recognized compression artifacts. But I dismissed this as being deliberate, a weird sounding microphone, an effect, or whatever, since the HQ box was checked in Spotify settings.
[+] [-] kenthorvath|14 years ago|reply
Then, the most popular songs will be available in 320, and the ones that aren't would never have been accessed in the first place.
[+] [-] davej|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaoqmasww|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewcrawford|14 years ago|reply
I have no doubt that the general population may be (statistically) unable to distinguish 128kbps vs 256kbps, but that says nothing about a minority of individuals, many of whom are large music purchasers.
[+] [-] rythie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|14 years ago|reply
I think the author is on the wrong track discussing endoing times for 320kbit - it's much more likely that spotify is interested in keeping down their bandwidth costs.
A major streaming provider that I'm familiar with actually delivered streams that were 15%-20% under the quoted bitrate on many popular tracks for a few years, but only during periods of peak bandwidth consumption. It saved a significant amount of money and afaik was never detected (they no longer do so).
[+] [-] Shenglong|14 years ago|reply
My two cents.
[+] [-] modokode|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidrhunt|14 years ago|reply
According to recent research done specifically on high school aged students listening preferences conducted at Harman International the opposite is true: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-new-evidence-that...
"When all 12 trials were tabulated across all listeners, the high school students preferred the lossless CD format over the MP3 version in 67% of the trials (slide 16). The CD format was preferred in 145 of 216 trials (p<0.001)."
[+] [-] robert-boehnke|14 years ago|reply
If there is only a small number of peers in the network that have the high Bitrate stream (paying users with HQ enabled on desktop clients and with interest in unpopular song X), they benefits of the peer to peer networking are less likely to pay off.
However, that does not explain why they don't offer HQ for some of their more prestigious releases, though I wouldn't be surprised if the labels hand them 'shitty' 192kbps mp3s every now and then.
Interesting read about some of their p2p architecture (PDF): http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p10/spotify-p2p10.p...
EDIT:
After looking at the spreadsheet, I’d wager that there is a correlation between lower popularity of tracks and being 160 kbps only. The only track out of the last 40 is Michael Jackson's This is It, and a quick look up in the Spotify client gives most of them a very low 'popularity' measure.
I mean, really? http://open.spotify.com/track/7kBDTeWty0z1MXjcH9twph
[+] [-] pornel|14 years ago|reply
In fact, MP3 has quality problems (sample/frequency resolution limit per block) that cannot be fixed at any bitrate. Moreover, re-encoding one lossless format to another (edit: not what article suggests) would further degrade quality. You'd get desired bandwidth, but not the quality.
It's a shame that bandwidth became synonymous with quality and MP3's upper limit is taken as "highest quality". 320kbit (and lossless!) WAVE sounds like a phone line! OTOH it's quite possible that Vorbis at lower bitrate has higher quality than MP3's maximum.
[+] [-] dirtbag|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulyssestone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tintin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|14 years ago|reply
If you want to use Spotify at home and are listening on a nice stereo, then compression artifacts are very obvious in almost everything on Spotify.
For that reason, if I'm not listening to local music I tend to listen to KEXP's uncompressed stream. It's a mere 1.4Mbps.
Which then hits on why Spotify are most likely not serving 320. "It's the bandwidth, stupid".
It's all about the bandwidth. How few people are going to hear the difference, and how much would it cost to implement? The bandwidth costs are definitely non-trivial for their subscriber base, so implementing 320 is going to hit their costs hard.
For the article linked, notice the blog title, Spotify Classical.
Classical music really does show up artifacts in compression like Hip Hop, Pop and Rock (and Prog Rock) simply doesn't. The strings and low bass both exist in the upper and lower audio ranges precisely where compression is most aggressive and therefore noticeable. This isn't going to affect greatly the Beyonces of this world, but it affects some delicate string recital.
To be honest, if I were Spotify, I'd probably just rip the classical in 320 as that is a specialist crowd who probably can hear the difference and would kick up a stink. And then keep the vast majority in 160 as the vast majority aren't going to notice and wouldn't kick up a stink. If I wanted to be more intelligent, I'd write something to try and detect artifacts, and if a 160 file exhibited above a certain threshold, then I'd make that a contender to be at 320... thus trying to find a sweet spot between quality and bandwidth costs.
[+] [-] shawndumas|14 years ago|reply
Ogg q5 (approximately 160kbps) is not 160kbps mp3. I can tell 160kbps mp3 from CD very easily, but am unable (headphones, work PC) to tell 160kbps Ogg files from the original CD tracks.
Very unscientific I know, but still...
That said, if they say Ogg q9 it should be Ogg q9.
[+] [-] aw3c2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niklas_a|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rms|14 years ago|reply
@Daniel Ek: I'll sign up for the $9.95/month plan when you have 95% of your music available at ~192 kb/s OGG. I just want the slightly more bandwidth that ensures I can't tell it apart from CD and it isn't much more bandwidth.
Actually, what I really want is one of those menus where you got to choose your own encoding like allofmp3.com had.
Edit: Actually, these ads are really annoying. I guess I have to sign up. Damn you, compelling product.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vizzah|14 years ago|reply
Often, the music you listen to is streamed from other users, and so bandwidth load is a very crucial factor. Looks like Spotify can't afford harder load to their servers and they're gradually increasing the requirements.
But marketing their whole library as 320kbps is really disappointing. As a premium subscriber, I was under impression that it is what I was getting.
[+] [-] nateberkopec|14 years ago|reply
Spotify knows most users just don't care - so they don't really care either.
[+] [-] ulyssestone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enra|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modokode|14 years ago|reply
Anyway, I seem to have gotten quite sidetracked, the point I was trying to make is that at least OP is giving them direct feedback and thus an opportunity to improve. While you think it's a great service, surely you can find some ways to improve it? I could, for example, live with a larger cache on the android app so that I can enter a store under ground without the music stopping when the cell service does...
[+] [-] augustl|14 years ago|reply
Time to investigate..
[+] [-] s04p|14 years ago|reply