I want higher bitrate for premium user

I would love it! Lossless!
I think it's quite reasonable, it would be the Ultimate Motivation to go for the "pay" version!

And how about 16 bit resolution instead of 14 bit...

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/to...

I would love to pay if I could get prefferrably flac or at least 320kbit vorbis stream for it.

I'd happily pay a monthly fee for FLAC quality tracks. As things stand, 160 isn't high enough to do classical music any justice.

I don't really think lossless is necessary, the pricing for premium service isn't really that bad. 256kbps would be perfect I think, as I highly doubt anyone would notice a difference in sound quality between 256kbps and 320kbps. But 160kbps is far too low for a premium streaming service, where you have to pay $15 each month.

I'll go premium in a snap as soon as I can get a higher bitrate. 320kbps minimum. Lossless for preference. Pretty please.

I'm reluctant to subscribe to any music streaming service because the bitrate isn't good enough. 320 Kbps should be minimum or at least 256 AAC!

Not everyone has high speed broadband. I'm just over 1MBPS in my area so i'd not be able to benefit without major lag

Choose it ourselves? [ Options ]
* This won't solve the problem, just tellin' where it could be placed and you could choose if you'd like to change it yourself *

Don't get me wrong, i like high quality audio, but streaming it isn't practical yet in any form, yet alone on a free service.

256 is what i rip my CDs to on my Zen, that should be sufficient. Of course the no buffering would have to remain, so that might not be feasible.

mattybigback: It's easy to implement it as an option.

"but streaming it isn't practical yet in any form" That's incorrect. Radio stations like ETN actually have streams for 256kbps mp3 or something, and it works perfectly. I actually think most people can stream in 256kbps today.

John, I was referring to lossless. Of course 256 is possible, video streams are much higher than that, but streaming lossless audio with no buffering (like spotify) isn't feasible at the moment. That's 800kbps to contend with (lossless compression), which is a push even with buffering time.

If Spotify suddenly developed loading time then it'd be a step back in my opinion

mattybigback: Oh sorry, my bad.

Andres: Good to hear that you're at least considering the idea now :)

I use spotify on my PC while I work...
But in the lounge I have a PC in the HiFi rack, which plays my CD collection which I have ripped to a NAS as .WAV.
I would not consider listening to spotify in the lounge because the sound quality is too low when using good HiFi separates.
When spotify does lossless or at least 320, then I will pay...

You can't hear the difference between 256kbps mp3 (LAME) and lossless anyway curry-kid. I think it's impossible for a human to hear a difference actually.

Audio compression has its place for portable audio. But you have to remember that by reducing the size of an audio file, you are throwing data away. Lossless encoding is an exception, but the file sizes are still quite large.

In MP3 / WMA / ATRAC encoding the data is selectively removed using the premise that the human ear can only hear the loudest sound at any one instant. This is largely true and mp3 etc sounds reasonable.

However the sounds that you can't hear do effect the sounds that you can. Some high end HiFi systems use "super tweeters" which produce sounds higher then you can even hear. But these high frequencies interact with the audible frequencies, making the music sound more natural.

When you listen to (even a low-end) HiFi system, you expect more than just the music. You expect a good presentation with soundstage, depth and full frequency extension. You loose these things with even the highest bitrate mp3.

I disagree that you can't hear the difference between high bit rate mp3 and lossless. On my HiFi it is easy to hear the difference. An mp3 sounds ok, but there is something missing - it sounds a bit smeared and grubby compared to the wav.

You would never hear the difference in the car or on an ipod, but a quality HiFi lays the music out to be heard properly...

I think it would be a great idea, as there really isn't too much incentive to spend £120 a year at the moment. Sure there are pre-releases and VIP tickets, but what else? Invites? I think this would be the deciding choice.
How about a better connection too? I always have problems listening to songs after 5pm!

That is interesting that you have problems after 5pm. I often work at home, so I listen while I work ;-)
Spotify works using p2p, so in some respects it should work better when there are more people online.
Of course their servers are still the bottle neck.

I guess one issue of streaming very high bitrate / lossless audio is server / internet bandwidth. But the BBC seems to be able to stream pretty high quality video from its iPlayer servers.

Just looked this up, the latest iPlayer streams at 1500kbps.
A .wav file is 1411kbps, so there is no technical reason not to stream uncompressed audio. I would pay for it...

curry-kid: You have a valid point there, which I didn't take into consideration. Yet I dare to say, that I highly doubt you'd be able to hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and any form of lossless. Remember to take into consideration the placebo effect.

Well, this is word against word I guess, and we're not going to agree in the end. As I don't have the opportunity to listen to your hi-fi stereo, I suppose I can't really back up my statement anymore, so I'll leave it by this :)

Certainly I won't hear a difference between 320kbps mp3 and e.g. WMA lossless, neither won't you, when listening over the computer's integrated sound board and the PC speakers. But the situation may be something else when "it comes to" a Terratec Aureon or Phase X24, two Martin Logan ESLs driven by two Bi-Amped Krell power amps, and an active cross-over. A sound-board driver able to also act as a cross-over unit, using the "5.1" outputs fro BiAmp output would eliminate the separate cross-over box.

/dindea

dindea: I'm aware of the fact that the demand of sound quality increases as the quality of the equipment rises. I'm currently using a custom xfi-xtremmusic (changed op-amp etc) with a Beyerdynamic DT770PRO. But I still highly doubt that when you go over 256kbps there's anything to get out of it as a human :)

I disagree there, I am able to tell the difference betweek 256 and 320, and 320 and lossless. I'm training to be sound engineer though, so I have a bit of an advantage ;-)

To be honest if you want high quality audio you should get the CD/SACD/DVD-A and keep spotify for previewing the album - that's what I'm doing with it at the moment, or for playing odd tracks. At parties nobody really notices sound quality either, so when I use it for that it's not an issue.

Hehe, I guess you do have a bit of an advantage there. I kind of disagree on the part of where you say that Spotify could be used as some sort of "preview" though. The goal has to be to get rid of all kinds of CDs, DVDs etc. It's extremely convenient and it has the ability to halt/stop piracy as well. If they don't change the quality of the stream, I still think pirates has a fair excuse to why they still download illegal copies of music.

Piracy will always exist though, because not all artists want their music to be available on ad-supported platforms. The market for physical media is still huge, indeed vinyl is making a bit of a comeback (not that it ever went away).

I attended a seminar recently with people from all areas of the business, including a chap who dealt with digital streaming and downloading, and the head of a large market research group, and streaming accounts for something like a quarter of 1% of music distribution in the UK, and only 7-8% is digital download.

Physical media isn't going anywhere. However, once spotify is mobile, it might give MP3 players a run for their money, if the price and speed of mobile internet become tolerable.

Piracy will always exist, true. But it's very likely that products like Spotify can seriously limit the scope of it. I hardly doubt a small market of piracy can hurt that much.

I disagree, I think physical media is almost going to disappear from the market in the future. Of course it will take a while. For music I don't think it will take that much time, but for movies it might take a while. I have no doubt it will always exist, but only as a small fraction of the market.

It is in human nature to want property, to want a physical item they can hold in their hand, and CDs/DVD-A/SACDs/Vinyl fulfils that desire. Not everyone wants digital to be the way to get music. Paid for downloads and streaming are still a minority thing, and I think they'll remain that way because consumers don;t have control over the physical source of the media, and that is important to a lot of people.

It would be wonderful if you could choose a higher bitrate. Since most of us is using quite fast connections that shouldn't be any problem. I recently bought an external DAC so I can get a decent sound from my computer and now I can really notice a problem with the 160 kbps stream. The sounds in the higher frequency range tends to "sizzle" quite a lot. A bit annoying.

mattybigback: I disagree. I think most people would like to get rid of the physical media, as it's space consuming etc. It probably is a minority thing now, but I promise you, that will change soon. Not to mention the impact on environment which physical media has.

You do realise Vorbis q5 is practically transparent already?

melat0nin: What do you mean by transparent?

melatonin: practically transparent? If you mean that there is practically no difference between a -q5 and a -q9 then I couldn't disagree more.

I mean practically indistinguishable from the source. People get so caught up in the numbers without considering the sound itself. Search google for Vorbis ABX tests and you'll see evidence for what I'm saying.

I spent some time deciding what Vorbis Q rating to encode at for my mp3 player (sound fidelity is important to me) and have been very happy with q5.

Well. I also read that students in America preferred mp3-sound instead of CD and that's makes me sad.

I guess the most important thing is that you are happy with the quality of the music you listen to !!

Many find mp3 etc fine, and I do too in the car, on my PC speakers and on the iPod.

But under critical listening, it is just not good enough for me (and many others)...

But if you are happy with mp3, I am happy for you !!!

I think this is an excellent idea. I would without a doubt subscribe to Spotify if the music was made available in v0 or 320kbps cbr. That and of course doing without the audiocommercials will make it worth it for me to subscribe. I feel a lot of music has been removed due to regional limitations lately though..! Am liking it less than for a month ago.

Seeing as you won't hear any difference, and its fine now - how about you just lower the quality of the free one?

matthew: I hear a difference, and a many others as well. I'll admit I doubt I can hear differences from 256kbps and up though.

WMA 256kbps is better than MP3 256kbps, it can compete with MP3 320kbps.
/dindea

dindea: Could you add a source to that as well?