Spotify in the USA

[Pano]

Originally Posted by CopperTop

but I would swear that it is acting as volume compression and destroying the dynamics.

I find the same. It kills the dynamics. Maybe not a problem with today's squashed music, but listening to piano solos it really kills them.

Yes, even at $10 a month, it's a great deal. But with the price of things like Netflix and Pandora One, I'm just plain spoiled! Maybe the best comparison here is the Unlimited plan at $5 a month.

[Atilla]

Thanks to the exchange rates, we pay about 18 dollars a month, currently. But as I said, measured in beer, is 2 pints out in the town, so it's all very relative. I find it stupidly cheap here.

The adverts have always been insanely loud, that's true.

As for the normalisation, I've heard people complain that it destroys the music quality, but I never have it on so I haven't checked. And it doesn't normalize the ads.

[DaveCan]

Both Pandora and Spotify are not available in my part of the globe yet Oh well I still enjoy the interaction of playing a disc and reading its contents at times etc

[CJ900RR]

Nice to see that it finally has been launched in the US!

I have used Spotify for 2-3 years now and have paid for it from the 4th month. $15/month for almost all (well) music in the world is no biggie The biggest advantage when you pay for it is the higher quality but most of all, you can use it on your mobile phone. Android, iOS or Symbian OS.

The offline mode is gold. Just sync the tunes you want when on WiFi and you have them where ever you go with no need for data connection.

I have 31 invites left, let me know if you need one!

Best regards,
Carl

[Pano]

I'll probably end up with Premium. I just wish Unlimited had the higher bitrate, I don't need or care about the mobile phone stuff.

[joemana]

Is it possible for the music to pass through Foobar playlist? I need the music to load in foobar to USB>DAC.

Joe

[Pano]

As far as I've been able to tell, no. But there may be a Foobar plugin somewhere. I'd love to run it thru my JRiver player, but no plugin yet. Spotify seems to use its own audio engine, no matter what. At least in Windoze.

As long as your USB DAC is the default, it should not be a problem.
Can the more experienced Spotify users shed some more light?

EDIT: Maybe Spotifoo?

[Atilla]

Hm, I haven't seen any integration being provided to the app, sadly.

As for the mobile app, it's godly, even on older phones. I use it as a music player on my E52, for local files, there simply isn't anything better for S60 that I've seen yet.

[gychang]

google music seems to play my flac files in high rate mp3 mode, free, I upload all my songs and can play any where. realize not the same since spotify seems to have many songs ...

[Pano]

I had a friend over yesterday to listen to my system. He brought his music collection on a big USB hard drive. Unfortunately it was Mac formated and I could not read it. But we found almost all he wanted to hear on Spotify.

I don't have the high quality streaming, just the "No adverts" version. He was still surprised at how good it sounded. He had brought a Cobie Calliat CD and we compared that to the Spotify version. The steaming version was like a lot of mid to high bitrate compression, slightly warmer and flatter than the original. The CD version had more space and depth and sounded slightly cooler. We didn't hear any artifacts in the stream, just the loss of some detail and a warming of the sound.

Just a FWIW.