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"?...
Well, it would have been interesting. There is, of course, quite a bit of controversy over what bitrates a normal person can distinguish. You make it sound like Spotify is being unreasonable, but I think they're being completely reasonable - if people can't hear the difference, why should they devote a large amount of their operational capacity towards making sure all their library is 320kbps?
I'm guessing Spotify would need to receive the 320kbps version from the label for it to be legal/work with their licensing. Can you imagine working with record labels? These are the guys that brought you the RIAA...working with them must be like pulling teeth. And doing all that work for almost no appreciation from your users (who can't tell the difference?).
If the listening experience is the same, your perception of the end product is the same - does it really matter? I mean, bad on Spotify for false advertising and everything, but I wouldn't chalk up their behavior as being a big deal.
I understand that for someone with good taste in music, like yourself, this matters. But for 90% of Spotify's users, I'll bet it doesn't.
Yes I understand, actually I know quiet a bit about how dinosaur like RIAA/IFPI make their lives:P
But as I quoted in my article, Spotify staff admitted that they got music in lossless from labels, and have the rights to convert and stream them in HQ.
To be frankly I know how this will end: most users don't care and the story sinks into nowhere. For my own interest I don't even want to do this, @Spotify tweeted about my blog about eight times since last year, and I'd assume it won't happen again after this post. The US launch tripled the traffic of my site, a post like this will only bore the new visitors away. I did this because I believe it's the right thing to do, and I still have faith in Spotify. That's all.
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.
Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre-releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point? To force the audiophile users to buy 320 kbps mp3s or CDs? Many of the premium users don't even know it's not 320 kbps.
Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre-releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point?
The very same reason they pay some television and radio stations to broadcast particular material: to get people to buy the albums.
It's a combination of things that make Spotify subpar for many music enthusiasts. The lack of availability of lossless streams, incompleteness of the catalog in 320kbps, missing tracks on many albums, uncertainty about future accessibility of music, etc.
When Spotify was introduced in The Netherlands, I absolutely loved it, and was convinced that I'd never need to spend much more on music than 10 Euros per month (imagine what a save this is when you buy at least 4 albums per month). However, given the reasons listed above, I am now mostly using Spotify for music discovery, and still buy albums. It only helped me to make more 'accurate' purchases. As a side effect, I ended my Premium subscription, because the 2.5 hours/week, 5 plays per track is plenty enough for evaluation.
