Why spotify?

It sure is the future that the labels want. Deliver low quality stuff all day long to people who want to pay to listen to music they don’t own a physical copy of.  It’s their Utopia. Nothing for something.  How will they shut down radio and the internet? Some of us are getting it for nothing – that’s got to stop. 

I'm perplexed by this thread; surely if you want HD music, subscribe to a suitable service, buy and download to a NAS drive and stream it to your network attached player.  The provision of access to what seems to be the market leader makes perfect sense from a product marketing point of view.  If you don't like it don't use it...

A-f***ing-men

  +1 x 100  +  

I listen to gazillions of bytes of low resolution music over the course of the week for entertainment and company, not necessarily quality. And however much I like it I won't post things along the lines of

My choice should be imposed on everyone.

I can't believe that anyone else can hear a difference in quality because I can't.

It's all lossy so why bother chasing quality?

The future of music is paying to own a personal copy of nothing.

This is utter crap.

Why Spotify?  Because the target audience for greatest sales do not sit down to episodes of 'critical listening'.  Instead, they turn on music to be playing in the background or instead of listening to 'sound' they listen to music.

The proportion of any population that obsesses over the final degree of sound quality is a very small one.

Agreed.

If you want lossless, subscribe to Qobuz. Just acept the catalogue is limited - particularly for contemporary music. That is not Naim's fault.

Also, many of these people are more about critical listening than just enjoying music.

One wonders how Robert Johnson ever made such good music on a $2 guitar that it cannot be appreciated by a $10k system nowadays.

I like Spotify because it is not endless classical and boring middle-aged rock. They will go lossless too - just a little patience required.

A little patience...

"At the moment, we don't think we can do it. We're testing it, we're looking at it, but we don't want to go back to that pre-Spotify time where you'd double-click on a track and you see a little timer going, and only after five seconds the music starts. That's an experience we don't really believe in.

"At some point, of course, we will go to lossless. Whether that's in 2020, 2030, 2040, it depends on bandwidth and how quickly we can upscale that."

That from an 'interview' on 'Gizmodo' Sept 2014.

G

Why would offering an additional functionality be described as an imposition?

 Yes, there is a difference of quality between lossless and lossy, what varies is the subjective value that people give to this difference and to what point this 'gap' stops one (or not) from enjoying the music. 'Cause this is all about music. Right? 

 You lost me here... care to elaborate? 

 I am afraid that yes, that is the future of all media consumption. We cannot un-invent the bomb. By the same token, we still enjoy a day at Alton Towers or a nice dinner in a good restaurant. Both experiences that leave us without 'owning' anything. But then again, it's all about the experience, the pleasure that that experience gives us and the lovely memories we have afterwards.

If we compare the music streaming services to the video streaming services, I wonder how long it will be before we see beyond CD quality content. Or sole license content. Are Spotify in a position to make deals with content creators in a similar way to Netflix? 

A significant disadvantage of Qobuz against Spotify is the lack of remote support.
While this can be avoid using the Plug-in XBMC reasonably or via teamviewer a workaround realize but comfortable as the solution of Spotify vie app is not.

There is, unfortunately, the shots from the ECM label not in the stream.
A significant disadvantage.

It remains to be seen whether future Spotify streams in CD quality.

Actually you can get 3 months for the price of 1 with Spotify.

Not yet, but I think it's coming, which will be a big step forward.  See below, specifcally the Qobuz connect part.  The blurb is pretty vague, but sounds as though they're working to provide a solution.

http://www.qobuz.com/GB-en/inf...of-new-updates176453

Tanks for the Information.

An appropriate app is necessary.

A Head to Head race is something I can live with.

But there is as well the High Price in comparison.

I Jeep cool...

Never joined the spotify bandwagon. Low quality, high expense and erratic. Stick to physical media.

Have spent more in a werk in the past for CD than for Spotify and Never have has this collection.

For me Spotify is a revelation. Never used it before. Now I have access to all the worlds music. Easy to use for a non technical person, good software. It sounds as good as the radio paradise 320 I listen to, which by the way no longer cuts out, yay. For background music it is great, and also to discover new music. I suspect that when we can get high resolution spotify, eventually my unitiserve will almost be redundant. We would be the owners of the worlds ultimate jukeboxes!

+1, Kiwi cat.

There are gaps in what's available in whichever streaming service is used, and for that reason, as mentioned by others in other threads, the future will be a combination of our own rips from hard to get CDs together with lossless streaming.

At least until one service can provide a complete catalogue (though I doubt this will happen anytime soon!).

I guess you only have a couple of hours now until Christmas Day in NZ, have a great day!

Happy Christmas ChrisH and all. It was 27centigrade and clear blue skies in Wellington today, no wind-miracle!Just watched Home Alone and now onto Love Actually. Then Zulu will bring us into Christmas. 

I have contacted Naim and asked if they are planning to integrate other services. The answer was 'no, unless other services have world wide appeal and more market penetration'.

Which is a shame I guess, but understandable. It takes some effort to integrate and maintain that integration into your own software and I understand that Naim is weary of 'broken' services. Spotify has been around for a while now and they have some serious money backing their growth (Facebook).

Of course, you can add another box which does have all these services, but then you need another box and another app. The appeal of the Spotify connect is that it streams directly onto the Naim from your home network.

So, lets hope they will add more services. If I look at Qobuz it seems they have been expanding a lot since I looked at them 6 months ago. The Naim record label is present on Qobuz too, so I guess they are ramping up to be a serious competitor for Spotify.

Which might mean that Spotify might feel compelled to offer a cd quality stream option at some point, or compel Naim to have a "Qobuz connect" in the future.

Even if they were thinking of it, there wouldn't publicly say they were, as it would inevitably impact on commercial discussions. We will just have to wait and see.

Why Spotify?

Because I have found Gregory Alan Isakov via Radio Paradise and listened to his albums.

Have now purchased The Weatherman and This Empty Northern Hemisphere. That's good enough for me.

Merry Christmas All.

Launched in Sweden in 2006, Spotify has 30 million licensed tracks in its library, and over 1.5 billion playlists. To date, the service has 50 million active monthly users, and 12.5 million paying customers across 58 countries.

Launched in France in 2007, Deezer has 35 million licensed tracks in its library, and over 100 million playlists. To date, the service has 16 million active monthly users, and 6 million paying customers across 180 countries.

I can understand Naim's view of Tidal as a risky startup. Also, I can not find any user count data for Qobuz. But Deezer is very comparable to Spotify. Deezer obviously has worldwide appeal, and with 6 million paying customers, they have achieved significant market penetration.

Using their own decision criteria, Naim would be wise to add Deezer support as soon as possible.

Hook

I'd rather they just add support for these on the Uniti series. I can understand why they'd want support for all kinds of services, but maybe an add on unit that is configured to just do that - with better software support is a better bet. It just needs to have an digital out.

Just like 'radio' tuners in the past.