Spotify launches CD quality audio
Earlier this year I wrote about my enthusiasm for music app Spotify and today I’m pleased to read it’s going to get even better with CD quality streaming for premium users. A premium account currently costs around $10 per month and essentially means that your music doesn’t get interrupted by adverts. However, for the time being, only the most popular tracks will be streamed in CD quality with the rest being converted over the coming weeks.
To enable higher quality streaming, simply access Spotify’s service’s preference menu and tick the “enable high bitrate” box. The move will effectively double the quality of streaming on Spotify with the company claiming they now offer the highest quality music streaming site on the net. I may be tone deaf but as far as I can tell, the current 128kbs streaming quality is already pretty good so I’ll be very interested to hear what the new quality sounds like.
However, signs are that Spotify users are still opting to use the free service rather than upgrade to premium and this latest move is another tactic for Spotify to try and change this situation. They’ve already tried a few other methods to encourage people to convert such as releasing exclusive remixes to premium users, allowing them to enter compeititions and offering exclusive releases of new albums.
Free users haven’t been neglected though. A new mobile service is due to be rolled out shortly and will allow you to sync Spotify with your mobile device and will be available to all users. There have also been plenty of cool new features added to the free service since it was released which I’m going to cover shortly to help your get more out of Spotify.
Posted at 8:22 pm on Jun 26th
The Spotify announcement falls quite short of reality - a CD represents
2 channels x 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample = 1,411,200 bit/s = 1,411.2 kbit/s. Just check out the size of any WAV files which you may have against a 320kbps file. No comparison, certainly not CD quality.
Posted at 1:29 pm on Jul 22nd
To be fair to Spotify their high bit rate stream is very good indeed. Most people would be hard pushed to tell the difference between 128k and higher bitrates, though anything lower does become unpleasant to listen to. After all, it’s on a par with DAB radio which although not perfect is pretty good.
As to whether people will pay £9.99 a month for something they’re probably not going to notice I would be very surprised if they do.