Yeah, I'm with you on this issue.
― still counting on porcupine racetrack (G00blar), Sunday, 21 June 2009 16:49 (fourteen years ago) link
hook a bro up?
― "jesus on the cross seems like classic homoerotic imagery" (omar little), Tuesday, 23 June 2009 19:56 (fourteen years ago) link
you cant, you're in the US
― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, 23 June 2009 20:01 (fourteen years ago) link
Good luck USA!
― Achtung Blobby (Neil S), Tuesday, 23 June 2009 20:09 (fourteen years ago) link
srsly tho, why don't you have a scrollwheel?
― stet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009 20:13 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm on a laptop and there is some kind of scroll-gesture on the trackpad which I am incapable of doing consistently. Ahem.
― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009 21:06 (fourteen years ago) link
I'll never buy anything from Suitopia.
― James Mitchell, Saturday, 27 June 2009 22:34 (fourteen years ago) link
No shit - and that is the only ad I hear, other than Spotify trying to sell advertising. I've no idea what their costs are, but if they are making 14p a month from each user then I cannot imagine the service can possibly be sustained for very long:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/25/spotify_exclusive/
I'm not trying to revel in schadenfreude over this; Spotify is the *only* streaming music service I use at all and in many ways it's superb. But I just cannot see how they make any money, or how they can possibly pay the licensing on the tracks from such a low income.
― Bill A, Saturday, 27 June 2009 23:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Spotify's demographic is around 40, and precisely the sort of impulsive media buyer defined by 50 Quid Bloke.
― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Saturday, 27 June 2009 23:18 (fourteen years ago) link
What on earth is wrong with suitopia guy's voice?
― ledge, Sunday, 28 June 2009 20:26 (fourteen years ago) link
lol at new suitopia ad being an apology for previous ad
i have actually heard two or three different ads on this now!
REALLY ANNOYING: if you turn the volume on ads down below 40% they pause until you turn back upANNOYING AND KIND OF CREEPY: if you mute sound in yr OS spotify recognises this and again pauses the ads
also, really, really, really bad hot compression - anything with an isolated drum hit really really hurts to listen to
― thomp, Sunday, 28 June 2009 21:06 (fourteen years ago) link
subscribers now get twice the bitrate quality btw
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Sunday, 28 June 2009 21:10 (fourteen years ago) link
i think default compression is 160bkps
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Sunday, 28 June 2009 21:11 (fourteen years ago) link
i mean range compression, it feels like some of that is going on. listening to music on spotify is more painful than listening to it via VLC player or similar. maybe it's me.
― thomp, Sunday, 28 June 2009 21:51 (fourteen years ago) link
oh wait, there's a 'volume normalisation' box to uncheck
― thomp, Sunday, 28 June 2009 21:53 (fourteen years ago) link
That chap on the ad singing David Watts is a champion tool, isn't he?
― a tiny, faltering megaphone (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 9 July 2009 17:34 (fourteen years ago) link
so now that I'm living in France I can use this thing, right? but I guess I need an invite? I filled out the form on spotify.com but is this like gmail where someone who's already using the service can invite others? and if so, would someone here invite me?
― la saucisse est une femme? (Euler), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 16:32 (fourteen years ago) link
you should be good to go sans invitation
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 16:40 (fourteen years ago) link
ok cool
― la saucisse est une femme? (Euler), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 16:44 (fourteen years ago) link
looooooool if you turn the volume right down during an advert, the advert pauses XD
― thank you, flipper, for nickelback (country matters), Wednesday, 15 July 2009 12:54 (fourteen years ago) link
I went premium last month. Worth every penny. And you now get 320k streaming.
― mike t-diva, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 14:32 (fourteen years ago) link
that's odd. so are they compressing the files as they stream them? or do they have both 320/160 versions stored somewhere?
― Crackle Box, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 14:44 (fourteen years ago) link
if the area next to my hifi wasn't some sort of black spot for our wireless connection i'd def sign up for premium @ 320kbps.
― Crackle Box, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 14:46 (fourteen years ago) link
also spotify has done wonders for the middle8haters/30secADD/girl talk fans. i'd love stats on what percentage of each song is played in full.
― Crackle Box, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 14:59 (fourteen years ago) link
re: the 320kb streaming, could you feasibly record the stream from your computers soundcard and save each track as a 320 mp3? would it be perfect quality or would it degrade somehow?
― NI, Thursday, 16 July 2009 10:08 (fourteen years ago) link
it would degrade but not significantly. i'd probably re-encode it lower anyway as it doesn't seem worth having at 320 if it's not prime source.
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, 16 July 2009 10:17 (fourteen years ago) link
seriously, this application makes my ears hurt
― thomp, Thursday, 16 July 2009 10:56 (fourteen years ago) link
nice to see they had the jazz composers' orchestra record on there tho
― thomp, Thursday, 16 July 2009 11:01 (fourteen years ago) link
how would it degrade, is it just something the pc soundcard does and you can't avoid? the end result would be better than a 128 wouldn't it?
― NI, Thursday, 16 July 2009 12:04 (fourteen years ago) link
The most tiny of tiny gripes (that still gets to me sometimes): The song progress bar at the bottom is sensitive far outside of the actual knob-moves-in-slot area. Thus, when only the bottom of the Spotify window is visible behind the bottom of another window on my screen, and I click on it to bring Spotify to the foreground, I usually accidentally skip to somewhere else in the track.
― anatol_merklich, Thursday, 16 July 2009 21:53 (fourteen years ago) link
it's like taking a screen grab of a hi-res jpeg and re-saving that. it won't match the quality of the original source because any compression process (based on already compressed material) never can, but it would probably be equivalent to 256 ie not a big deal.
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, 16 July 2009 22:07 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes. Though it would obv depend on how the rippage occurs. The thing is that soundcard-ripping is probably already one decompress-compress removed from what was sent to the computer. (Also, sounds from other computer activity -- email alerts etc -- will/may then also enter.) However, I've never really understood why it is not easy to simply intercept the received bitstream and just save that? Proprietary formats instead of eg mp3?
― anatol_merklich, Thursday, 16 July 2009 22:28 (fourteen years ago) link
would say why record anything from spotify anyway? doubt there's much on there you couldn't get off slsk (latest version), often quicker
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, 16 July 2009 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, this is the Big Thing -- perceived cost of disk space, cheap as it is, will go below perceived insurance cost of "omg what if ubiquitous net disappears!?" very soon. Ie: why hoard musics when you can just summon them from the cloud?
― anatol_merklich, Thursday, 16 July 2009 23:39 (fourteen years ago) link
> would say why record anything from spotify anyway? doubt there's much on there you couldn't get off slsk (latest version), often quicker
or you could, y'know, *buy* some cds...
― koogs, Friday, 17 July 2009 07:05 (fourteen years ago) link
no they suck
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Friday, 17 July 2009 07:50 (fourteen years ago) link
better than mp3s
― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 17 July 2009 09:32 (fourteen years ago) link
why hoard musics when you can just summon them from the cloud?
yes - this is what Spotify does so well which is why the whole question of people laboriously ripping songs through either the soundcard or a program like AudioHijack is moot - if Spotify works as it should, it makes that activity feel like pointless time-wasting from the get-go
i just feel like it should have been ASCAP or PRS who came up with this, since Spotify is essentially a monthly license fee to listen to music
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 17 July 2009 09:49 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, reason i ask is for sampling/re-editing purposes, not just for casual listening. and as good as ssk is, it's hard to find songs in decent quality, especially 50s + 60s (and most pre-00s even). plus having to wait 3 days for ssk's crappy wishlist function to come up with a song vs spotify + 3 clicks (record/stop/save)
― NI, Friday, 17 July 2009 10:30 (fourteen years ago) link
i don't actually use spotify at the moment btw, just curious if it's any use for the above. is there any chance of a particular label suddenly deciding to remove all their material from the service?
― NI, Friday, 17 July 2009 10:34 (fourteen years ago) link
yes there is, i believe a few have done it
i'm guessing you use a PC (since mac ssk doesn't have wishlist) but Audio Hijack for Mac is pretty fabulous at ripping whatever from wherever, as long as it's going through your computer, and there's little to no real degradation, though my ears are very tolerant
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 17 July 2009 10:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Tracer Hand, don't you live in France or somewhere? You can probably get Spotify there - I think they call it "Le Spotify".
It's been great for educating me about solo McCartney lately, but the adverts have become more and more frequent, and largely irritating. Ads for Spotify, call Spotify, If I Ruled The World and other mobile-phone BS, Alcohol: Know Your Limits by some tosser girl whom you want to disobey because of her horrible voice. It is all starting to make me think of subscribing.
Or is there something good about the horrible adverts, as a form of punctuation, or mortification?
― the pinefox, Friday, 17 July 2009 11:44 (fourteen years ago) link
if Spotify works as it should, it makes that activity feel like pointless time-wasting from the get-go
i did use spotify to record some sound effects type stuff tho (crowd sounds etc.)
― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Friday, 17 July 2009 23:02 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, the creative use rather than listening, that I get. Didn't think of that, because it's not a thing I do.
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 17 July 2009 23:34 (fourteen years ago) link
from a listening point of view, the fact that some labels are actively taking down their music worries me too. as it gets bigger this could become common and doesn't make it much of a comprehensive 'cloud'.
thanks for the Audio Hijack tip, TH. i've got a mac as well so i'll get it for that. isn't there a pc equivalent? are soundcard rips done on a pc somehow worse quality than a mac?
brings me to another question for which i've never been able to get a satisfactory answer. if i take a 192kbps mp3 and stick it in soundforge then save it again as a 192kbps mp3, is the resulting mp3's bitrate the same as the first or are we losing quality somehow, like when you photocopy an image over and over? i'm guessing not, because it's a digital process and surely all the frequencies that a 192kbps mp3 deals with will be transferred over in full to a 2nd gen copy. do we have any pro sound guys on ilx who can answer this?
― NI, Saturday, 18 July 2009 15:56 (fourteen years ago) link
from a listening point of view, the fact that some labels are actively taking down their music worries me too. as it gets bigger this could become common and doesn't make it much of a comprehensive 'cloud'
Ach, I don't think so. I read something the other day -- if I wasn't about to head out the door I'd look for it -- suggesting that, thanks to streaming music services (not just Spotify but also YouTube), "the kids" are now turning their backs on illegal downloading and just listening to shit off the net as and when they want to hear it. (Yes, I know YouTube isn't exactly a paragon of copyright laws, but hey.) I assume most labels see Spotify as a medium- to long-term deal: it might not be making them cash at the moment but it's something they can probably turn to their advantage a damn sight more easily in the future than they could -- say -- Torrents.
Of course, the music industry is also renowned for being fucking cretinous, so I could be way off the mark there.
― a tiny, faltering megaphone (grimly fiendish), Saturday, 18 July 2009 16:02 (fourteen years ago) link
do we have any pro sound guys on ilx who can answer this?
― Siegbran, Saturday, 18 July 2009 16:12 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, can see why spotify is more appealing to the music industry than torrents/p2p. youtube had the whole thing with labels taking down their music videos though, it seems it's still a delicate balance, for now.
thanks siegbran, can you link to any articles/studies about this? how great is the loss each time, and what's the best way around it? ie. save each subsequent file at 320 or wav? is it the case that re-saving a 192 mp3 x number of times would result in an mp3 of nothing more than white noise?
― NI, Saturday, 18 July 2009 16:28 (fourteen years ago) link
Spotify sets its sights on iPhone
― the sniggering about boobies phase (Ned Trifle II), Monday, 27 July 2009 09:13 (fourteen years ago) link
This is a game-changer. If they had this in the US, I would definitely pay for it.
― kshighway, Monday, 27 July 2009 15:44 (fourteen years ago) link