Modern pop music is already compressed to hell, FLAC is a waste of bandwidth unless you’re encoding orchestral pieces.
Comment on Spotify vs. Anna's Archive
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
What use is the metadata? Or is that stuff like the album covers etc?
I’m also a bit concerned about this:
Second, there’s an obsession with audiophile-grade quality (lossless FLAC, etc.) that inflates file sizes, making it impossible to maintain a complete archive of all music ever produced.
Does that mean that this spotify dump is a bunch of 64kbs mp3s, or worse some kind of lossy spotify transcode?
Rooty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
sefra1@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I think you’re confusing two different concepts, dynamic range compression and data compression.
The first is like an automated volume control that lowers the volume really really fast in a matter of ms when the volume reachest a certain threshold, (can also work the other way where in increases below a certain threshold, or both).
The reduces the file size, sacrificing quantity if a lossy codec is uses. Lossless codecs like flac are a bit to bit perfect of the original.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Spotify uses I think 192 or 320kbps Vorbis which is quite good and still has small sizes.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Even that’s 300 TB so I kinda understand. If this is all thar survives into the long term that’s ok I suppose
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
As I remember no one could tell a different in some testing done vs FLAC and 320kbps Vorbis, so I think its plenty for an archive.
trolololol@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not MP3, it’s Ogg vorbis
They’re encoding the top songs with higher resolution, the next bunch ( it’s still millions of songs) with about half that bitrate and not planning to save the next tranche which is like a looooot of songs but each has less than 1000 plays over the history of Spotify.
This is what I vaguely remember after reading the whole original post AND after a night drinking.
No nitpicking.
foofy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They didn’t encode/reencode anything with popularity>0.
What they are providing is the same as the available source.
They did reencode songs with popularity=0.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode.
Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).
Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
BlackAura@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ooohhh I did that test when I got a new speaker / amp setup at my PC and as a musician I thought “I got this”. Plus I was trying to decide if Tidal was worth upgrading to from Spotify.
I did slightly better than average. Like just slightly. I might have the results somewhere.
I ended up doing Tidal’s free trial. I couldn’t tell a difference. Went back to Spotify. (though now my group of people are on an Apple Music family plan).
Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I tried Tidal and could not go back to Spotify.
I guess it also depends on what type of music you are listening to. Simple FM pop or hip-hop works fine compressed. Rock, classical, melodic or more complex music gets the high range completely smashed by artifacts.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They definitely don’t see paid accounts using too much. My library is mostly built from Spotify rips using onthespot. 400k songs.
Everything is broken now and a few patches are up, waiting for it to update and keep ripping.
Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I try to keep lossless on my server for the fact that new algorithms come out all the time. I don’t want to be stuck with a 160k mp3 when a better algorithm comes out or if I need to stream just a little lower than that. I’d rather have lossless quality that can be converted at any time to whatever I need, even though I mostly have it set to 160k for listening if I’m streaming away from home. My work internet and cell service can get really terrible, and being able to buffer 10 songs when I get a few minutes of service is a godsend while not getting stuck with low quality, several times converted files, or keeping multiple bitrate versions of the same song.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Heh, like wine tasting.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Sure but if the purpose of the dump is musical archive, then the music should be stored in an archival format, not a lossy one.
foofy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They are archiving what they could get from Spotify and in this case what they could get was encoded in a lossy format to begin with.
It doesn’t get any “more” lossy over time just being stored as an .ogg
sefra1@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago