Streaming services. Can you actually hear a difference? What do you listen for?

[Sal1950]

Spotify appears to be highly incentivised NOT to go lossless... they own the largest market share. I'm sure they probably look at it as "if it ain't broke, don't rush to fix it!"

Naw, what they're doing is lying to everyone asking for lossless, saying that it's "just around the corner, any day now" for over 3 years now. They're trying to hang onto their old customer base without spending anything to keep them, but if you think about it, it's not working too well. Just a few years ago they dominated the market but millions and millions of new customers have come online and gone with the newer services like Tidal, Quboz, Amazon, Apple, more, offering not only lossless but multich and Atmos, etc. These are numbers they "might" have had if they had got off their butts and produced what they promised. A pox on Spotify for lying and deceiving the good people who have waited for them, I was one for years. That is until Apple brought me Atmos, and for less money even. Bye Bye, Spotify.

 

[ddude003]

I have done some comparisons between Tidal and Idagio, both nominally at CD quality. Tidal sounds slightly better to me, maybe because
it streams directly to my Yamaha receiver, while Idagio goes through my laptop and streams to the Yamaha receiver through Airplay. Perhaps there
are buffering issues with the multi-hop route.

I bet Airplay is your bandwidth bottleneck...

 

[Todd Anderson]

They also treat/pay artists worse than every other platform out there, which is why I avoid them.

I’ve never seen numbers on what gets paid out… but, I’ve never looked, either. is there a source?



Edit:

This is what AI says:

Just imagine… your song get 1,000,000 plays and, according to these numbers (no idea if these are remotely correct), Apple pays up to $8k

Ouch!

 

[AustinJerry]

This has been an interesting thread. I spent some time this evening trying to see if I can hear differences in the streaming services that I subscribe to. I currently subscribe to Pandora Premium, Deezer HiFi, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Music. My streamer is a Sonos Port (with the Wyred4Sound Mod https://wyred4sound.com/products/sonos-port-modified). The rest of the audio chain is reasonably good—a Monoprice HTP-1 with Dirac Live room correction driving PSB Synchrony One speakers.

The Sonos app allows my to select the same song from each of the streaming services, place them in the music queue, and then click back and forth among the song versions to get an almost immediate comparison. To be honest, it is difficult for me to hear any obvious differences among the services. Perhaps my ears are not well trained, or perhaps something in my playback system is masking any differences, but I would be hard pressed to choose one service over the other. On the positive side, all sound very good to me and continue to provide listening pleasure.

 

[ddude003]

This has been an interesting thread. I spent some time this evening trying to see if I can hear differences in the streaming services that I subscribe to. I currently subscribe to Pandora Premium, Deezer HiFi, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Music. My streamer is a Sonos Port (with the Wyred4Sound Mod https://wyred4sound.com/products/sonos-port-modified). The rest of the audio chain is reasonably good—a Monoprice HTP-1 with Dirac Live room correction driving PSB Synchrony One speakers.

The Sonos app allows my to select the same song from each of the streaming services, place them in the music queue, and then click back and forth among the song versions to get an almost immediate comparison. To be honest, it is difficult for me to hear any obvious differences among the services. Perhaps my ears are not well trained, or perhaps something in my playback system is masking any differences, but I would be hard pressed to choose one service over the other. On the positive side, all sound very good to me and continue to provide listening pleasure.

Wondering if the Sonos app does level matching of each streaming platform as each streaming platform masters to a different Loudness Units Full Scale (LUFS)...

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

I’ve never seen numbers on what gets paid out… but, I’ve never looked, either. is there a source?



Edit:

This is what AI says:
View attachment 76898

Just imagine… your song get 1,000,000 plays and, according to these numbers (no idea if these are remotely correct), Apple pays up to $8k

Ouch!

It’s been awhile but there was a lot of news about it a couple years ago. Even these numbers are misleading because Spotify has a sliding scale that allows them to pay the most popular artists more, which comes directly out of the fund used to distribute to smaller artists. Something about “the large artists bring more listeners to the platform so smaller artists should pay them for maybe helping their stream numbers”.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I suppose it depends on what Google AI you are asking, as this is what mine shows...

Tidal pays artists around $0.013 per stream on average, which is higher than most other streaming services.

As of April 2024, Qobuz pays artists $0.022 per stream, which is one of the highest per-stream royalties among music streaming services.

Here are some other per-stream royalty rates for music streaming services:

• Napster: $0.019–$0.021
• Tidal: $0.013
• Deezer: $0.0064
• Apple Music: $0.0056–$0.0078
• Spotify: $0.00437
• Amazon Music: $0.00402
• SoundCloud: $0.0025–$0.004
• YouTube Music: $0.0007–$0.0012
• Pandora: $0.00069

Pandora appears to be bringing up the rear.

I currently subscribe to Tidal and Qobuz, which are apparently the two highest paying streamers.

 

[jschwender]

The quality of the sound is not only related to transmission parameters. On Spotify, the soundquality is extremely different: from telephone sound to good. Even my (pretty old) ears can tell the difference!

 

[ddude003]

It would be interesting to know how the price per stream play is calculated and negotiated... I am guessing is has something to do with quantity of streams plays by each streaming platform... Tidal and Qobuz has a tiny share of the market and also seems to pay more per stream...

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Spotify no longer considers paying a royalty on any song that receives fewer than 1000 streams per year, which is nearly 2/3 of the content on Spotify.

There are many ways Spotify is utilizing to not pay indie artists.

An artist with a family would need to have more than 24 million plays on Spotify per year in order to earn just enough to meet the federal poverty line.

Creators get only about $5 billion a year, or 12 percent, with corporate middlemen such as record labels and streaming services like Spotify sucking up a majority of the profits.

For starters....

 

[JStewart]

Spotify no longer considers paying a royalty on any song that receives fewer than 1000 streams per year, which is nearly 2/3 of the content on Spotify.

There are many ways Spotify is utilizing to not pay indie artists.

An artist with a family would need to have more than 24 million plays on Spotify per year in order to earn just enough to meet the federal poverty line.

Creators get only about $5 billion a year, or 12 percent, with corporate middlemen such as record labels and streaming services like Spotify sucking up a majority of the profits.

For starters....

Thanks for the info. I did not know this. Now its got me thinking and worried because the artists are not making any money and neither is Spotify according to publicly available financials. Has any company made anything at this? If not, it begs the question if this is a viable business model for the long term.

Spotify - Financials

investors.spotify.com

 

[Sal1950]

Thanks for the info. I did not know this. Now its got me thinking and worried because the artists are not making any money and neither is Spotify according to publicly available financials. Has any company made anything at this? If not, it begs the question if this is a viable business model for the long term.

Maybe there is still a thing they used to call "payola" ???

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Thanks for the info. I did not know this. Now its got me thinking and worried because the artists are not making any money and neither is Spotify according to publicly available financials. Has any company made anything at this? If not, it begs the question if this is a viable business model for the long term.

Spotify - Financials

investors.spotify.com

The label execs are still making plenty of money. And as @Sal1950 pointed out, there is still payola, which I don't even believe is illegal for streaming services since they are not bound by the same regulations as terrestrial radio.

Just like with every industry today, and as has been the case in the music industry for decades, the suits are not struggling to feed their families. They're finding new and creative ways to screw the artists out of their due, just like they always have.

I stream to find new music, which then sends me to shows and to buy vinyl directly from the artist, or as directly as I can get.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Spotify no longer considers paying a royalty on any song that receives fewer than 1000 streams per year, which is nearly 2/3 of the content on Spotify.

There are many ways Spotify is utilizing to not pay indie artists.

An artist with a family would need to have more than 24 million plays on Spotify per year in order to earn just enough to meet the federal poverty line.

Creators get only about $5 billion a year, or 12 percent, with corporate middlemen such as record labels and streaming services like Spotify sucking up a majority of the profits.

For starters....

That's crazy.

 

[Todd Anderson]

The label execs are still making plenty of money. And as @Sal1950 pointed out, there is still payola, which I don't even believe is illegal for streaming services since they are not bound by the same regulations as terrestrial radio.

Just like with every industry today, and as has been the case in the music industry for decades, the suits are not struggling to feed their families. They're finding new and creative ways to screw the artists out of their due, just like they always have.

I stream to find new music, which then sends me to shows and to buy vinyl directly from the artist, or as directly as I can get.

I'd guess that probably puts you in the minority. Not that it's not admirable, not to mention a neat way of going about things, but I'd guess most streaming customers are simply hopping around without paying attention to the small details.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

I'd guess that probably puts you in the minority. Not that it's not admirable, not to mention a neat way of going about things, but I'd guess most streaming customers are simply hopping around without paying attention to the small details.

I'm sure I am in the minority, but it's also why I feel the need to point these things out. We need to help the artists, because the labels and distribution systems aren't. There is so much great music out there that nobody is hearing.

Think about this for a minute. In today's music industry, artists like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder wouldn't get a record contract. They don't fit the mold - they're BLIND, they DON'T DANCE.

I'm also not implying that many of the artists on the radio today aren't good. Billie Eilish is fantastic. Beck, the Cure, St. Vincent, there's a lot of great stuff out there on major labels. But gone are the days of a label taking a risk on a young artist that they can't guarantee a platinum record.

The artists who used to get development deals with record labels (we'll give you three records and see if we can't get you heard) are now out there doing it themselves, and the distribution channels are refusing to pay them for their art.

It's sad.

And I'm now going to take this moment to shout about Been Stellar, a band out of NYC that put out my favorite album of 2024. I have become addicted to this record. Yes, I found it on vinyl, and yes, on Friday I bought tickets to see them at a little club in Seattle this spring. Go check them out. They don't sound anything like Charlie XCX.

Been Stellar

Passing Judgment Out Now. Pre-order the album, out June

beenstellar.com