bye bye Spotify..

To me, it is a better value than Cable TV, which I have jettisoned; but I have the Sports aversion, which is somewhat remarkable, I am informed, after today's (American) football results.

Nick

engjoo

Hard to justify 10USD/mth (UK£6.60/mth approx.) which gives you access to over 30 million tracks in 320kbps Ogg Vorbis? Less than the cost of one CD, or download, a month. Worth it just for the albums I end up not buying after hearing them on Spotify.

Sorry to hear you've fallen on hard time.

Dave

Dave, little but relevant detail, Spotify is NOT mp3. It uses quite a different lossy codec called Ogg Vorbis that has its own different sound signature. Ogg Vorbis is supposed to favour network transmission and is supposed to be better performing than mp3 at low bandwidths.

Simon

Thanks Simon. You got there before I realised the error and my post correction.

Dave

Dave,

Yes, I need to save up for the new cables they had released for the statement amps! :-)

You can't "keep" anything after you've been to a concert either; but you've had the experience. Similarly with streaming services; you're paying for the right to listen. And you can keep on listening!

LOL - at $10/m you will have to save for over 20 years to buy a Statement interconnect - maybe 30 given likely future price rises

I have a 3-month trial of Spotify Premium, and I won't be keeping it either.  It just doesn't fill any voids for me.  But I'll keep an open mind and try again in the future I'm sure. 

I also have the 3 month trial, and at the moment am researching some Puccini arias which is quite useful, but I doubt if I shall keep it as I can do that on the free version......... 

Said good bye to it myself many months ago, but have since been paying twice as much per month to Qobuz.  And I still think it's better value than any TV-type offering. 

Likewise no interest in £10 monthly for Spotify.

Happy to pay Qobuz £20 a month for over 25M losless titles and thoroughly enjoying it.

G

I signed up last week but will review after the 3 months. So far it has more than paid for itself by letting me listen before making a physical purchase - a few planned purchases were reevaluated after a quick listen on Spotify. 

Gary

I signed up for the 3 months for 99p trial after Christmas (something of a no-brainer). It's been fun testing the Spotify integration with Naim and using Premium with Squeezeboxes and mobile devices but I won't be paying for a £10/month subscription at the end of the trial. The "free" account with ads works for me from a discovery point of view.

I'm kind of glad I hadn't yet bothered with the streamer update. I think I'd rather wait until Naim Audio offers Tidal (like our friends north of the border) or Qobuz or similar. I guess I'll probably still have to do the last update followed by that for lossless streaming, but at least it'll only be one period of sleepless nights worrying about it!

But of course you can enjoy streaming services now with your Naim by using a front end like Sonos or equivalent. You also have access to subscription free services via Sonos as well. Thoroughly recommend it.. It really opens up the world of music to you and your Naim system

Simon

Hello Simon

Do you mean adding a Sonos in to a NDS, NDX, ND5 streaming system? If so, would this purely be for subscription free services?

Thanks

A 'Sonos Connect' digital out into NDS, NDX or ND5 will allow you to access lossless FLAC 16/44 via Qobuz, Tidal (or whoever supply's lossless) for a monthly subscription.

It sounds superb too!

G

Yes plus NDAC, DACv1 and anything with a SPDIF input - and as said above this works for all Sonos services - just under 40 in the UK - which are free as well as subscription based.

S

I tried spotify for one week but the sound quality is not good enough for me...

Difficult. I have Spotify 3 months trial too but what worries me is that after paying for months once I stop paying I will have nothing to listen to. If I buy a 1 or 2 CD's per month (roughly £10) I will have a nice collection of music which I can enjoy anytime and even without an internet connection. Additionally I believe that less is more. Do I really need an access to 30 000000 tracks? Maybe 10 traks on CD each month will be better and will give me more chances to get closer to the music.

Not sure I follow the logic on this one.  It may be true that less choice means you spend more time getting to know the music you can play, but it takes only a little discipline to override the kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome.  The only further consideration is whether sound quality compromise from Spotify means that you're not drawn in, and therefore loose interest in an album quicker.

The logic appears to be that you can pay Spotify as much as you like to listen to music but you will never own a copy of anything. So you're essentially paying someone else to flick through their record collection and occasionally put one on. It's not like new music was difficult to research and sample before streaming services. The difference is that now you pay. A lot of people won't pay or don't see the point. What are you paying for? Nothing you can keep.

I pay for lots of things that I can't keep (power for example). You are paying for access, not ownership.  It is no different to renting a house, leasing a car, or even using uber etc.  Amongst the younger generation there is a definite shift away from ownership, many of whom are questioning why they need to own something (for example a piece of music) if they can simply have access to it whenever they want to hear it.  Likewise "Why should I own and maintain a car if I can simply use uber to get me where I want to go?" or "Why should I worry about owning and maintaining a property if I can just pay someone to live in it and when I feel like moving I just go etc.?"  

I admit that for those of us who are used to owning stuff it takes a bit of a mind shift to understand but, in the case of music (or movies or books), it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people.  The internet and digital domain is all about access - the concept of buying a digital file is a transitional one, as you never  actually own a physical product, just a virtual collection of 1s and 0s that, when put together in a certain sequence and fed through a converter, play music.  Surely the logical extension of that is that you don't need to 'own' the 1s and 0s either, especially if you can access them whenever and wherever you want across multiple devices?

My iPhone and iPad are both full of digital music files whereas the account manager at the digital agency we use has an iPhone and iPad with loads of unused space simply because he consumes music via spotify and is happy to pay for the right to access without the hassle of ownership. 

Of course this concept may not appeal to everyone but the idea of access/consumption (as opposed to ownership) makes a lot of sense to a lot of people.   

I agree in so far as £20 a month is nowhere near as expensive as buying and storing a large digital music collection. For me, this falls down because I can't find an ISP capable of providing me with a reliable connection, and I spend a lot of time travelling, again with no guarantee of an adequate connection when I need it. 

I think that is the point for a lot of people too, If your internet connection is flakey or unreliable you have zilch music to play.......