Poll: Given Spotify HiFi; are you planning to switch to Spotify by next year?

Audio Gear Talk Music Services
22

I’ve had a Spotify sub for years, but rarely use it so it will be interesting to see what they do with lossless.

The major issue I have with Spotify is their cloud-based Spotify Connect streaming. This means that a phone/tablet/computer can still stream to your Spotify Connect device(s) from outside your network if it has previously been attached to your network and had streamed to that Spotify Connect device. This has happened to me on a several occasions when suddenly some other music suddenly starts playing through my amp (which has Spotify Connect) - on one occasion the volume ramped up to almost max, although fortunately I was able to shut it off immediately before the speakers were blown. A Google search unearthed the fundamental flaw, and I traced it to the couple that had been house-sitting for us. Getting them to log out of all devices through the Spotify app releases the link, but I consider this to be a major problem with Spotify Connect.

2 Likes
23

whoa… I never heard of this or realized it. While not ideal, I don’t know how often it comes up in usage. But, i prefer this to streaming to my phone and then streaming to the device (a la Air Play). So there are tradeoffs.

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24

Totally agree with the “killer experience” comment above. Major benefit in Roon to be able to drill into the Artist I hear and learn/play more on Tidal. I only purchased Tidal for the Roon integration and would switch to Roon/Spotify if they had the same interface, particularly with Spotify Lossless on the horizon. My family is big into Spotify and they are not interested in migrating to Tidal.

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25

I love Spotify Connect so I will use Roon a lot less when lossless becomes available.

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26

Nope. Very happy with Tidal.

27

Very happy with Qobuz for my needs.
Works perfectly fine mobile in any of my cars so who needs Spotify Connect.

And obviously with Roon it is Da Bomb!
:wink:.

Oh…so that’s a no BTW.

28

CarPlay is a must for me, and I can’t use Roon in the car. The Tidal CarPlay app is a clunky mess and it never carries on where it left off - it either says nothing is playing or it starts again way behind where it had previously got to. Spotify just works.

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29

Nope. I mean I already have it because I’m too lazy to cancel the family membership that my wife uses. Spotify with Hifi likely won’t matter because they have pretty bad source material. I imagine few things will be in Hifi and you’ll have to spend a lot of time finding the better recordings.

This is somewhat true with Deezer as well.

Qobuz and TIDAL do a much better job with content curation. They secure good quality content. Even though TIDAL’s MQA is complete snake oil, they still have good source content. I use Qobuz because it has the best library and quality and price. It’s a combination of factors that really make Qobuz a clear winner here for Hifi.

That said, always happy to see more services enter the Hifi arena (and I’ve used all of these streaming services for a while at different points in time). I think the more that do, the better odds we have of streaming services ditching their lesser quality content. Not from a bitstream or compression point of view - but from the actual material. If people are paying attention to quality then they will also complain about the poor source content and hopefully, just hopefully, the streaming services will remove the lesser quality content and stop adding it.

I think streaming services (and Spotify is a big one here) amass a bunch of terrible rips and mixes just so they can claim their library is large for marketing. I imagine also for licensing costs as well. So fingers crossed they don’t just give us high bitrate terrible recordings.

30

I’ve decided against subscribing to Spotify. Their lack of communication about HD means to me they really don’t care about lossless. In fact, I think they are reconsidering lossless and may not do it. They seem to be more interested in podcasts subs.

Ill stick to Qobuz and Apple. Plus Someone gave me a Tidal sub . Thats plenty.

1 Like
31

Can you explain more what curation you think Tidal and Q. does better? What genres do you favor?

Also, what region are you in? I’ve heard Q. is bigger catalog in Europe vs US and Asia?

32

I listen to a variety of genres. Rock, pop, EDM, downtempo, trip hop, and more. I’ll just read off my “my albums” page on Roon here; Adele, Aerosmtih, Audioslave, The Beatles, Chris Cornell, Daft Punk, Dawn Richard, Depeche Mode, Everything But the Girl, DJ Shadow, Dishwalla (man I miss the 90’s), Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, Fluke, FC Kahuna, Foreigner, Heart, Journey, Imagine Dragons, Kid Loco, Goldfrapp, Leftfield, Ladyron, Kid Loco, Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Tricky, ODESZA, and so many more.

I enjoy listening to artists I’ve never even heard of before but are related to some of the more well known ones. So I can’t always place a name of some artist not found on another service, certainly not off the top of my head…but when I was subscribed to a few at once I definitely found myself flipping between the services to listen to songs I had listened to before but then couldn’t find.

What I realized was that one day I was listening to related artists and noted a few, maybe favorited them or put a playlist together. Then the next day I couldn’t find them because I was on a different service. So I had to go back to where I found them.

It was through this process that I realized all things were not created equal and the libraries could differ greatly. I Googled it a bit and saw other mentioning the same. So that’s when it clicked.

I went back again and was paying closer attention to the quality of the tracks too. I realized that there were duplicates and you ahd to find the “right” version of a song.

It makes sense. If a business can get the “same” thing cheaper, why not? If most people don’t notice, it could be a very cost effective solution.

That’s why I think some of these services will never have “great” collections because they are more focused on licensing costs and getting more expensive better versions of the same song is only going to appeal to a small fraction of their user base. It’s kind of a niche thing. Though I hope that changes.

I’m in the United States. Qobuz seems bigger to me, though I haven’t checked TIDAL in a few years. TIDAL likely has grown, but it started off pretty small. I’d say it certainly had the smallest library of all the services.

Deezer I believe is still larger than Qobuz (at least it was a few years ago, but a healthy margin) and was among the best in terms of its library. Spotify may have more, but Deezer’s was better quality.

I’m not saying Spotify doesn’t have good source material. For the popular stuff, it definitely does. Again, most people wouldn’t realize to begin with either (not really anyone here using Roon, I think if you’re using Roon you’re more concerned with audio quality and Roon again has that niche audience - it’ll never be mainstream and that’s ok). I’m just saying that Spotify has a lot of “filler” content. There’s even some downright bad quality stuff on there that’s worse than old school low bitrate mp3 files.