A question about Spotify

[Johnny Robbo]

I tried Spotify a few years back when it first came out, but a lot of the music I searched for was unavailable, so I binned it. I decided to give it another go recently when I bought myself a tablet and it has improved beyond measure from what I remember. The only artists I can't find are AC/DC, The Beatles & Garth Brooks, but given that I already own pretty much the whole back catalogue of all those guys anyway, it's not a big problem.

What I love is the fact that I can re-discover all those bands I grew up listening to but somehow mislaid... Brinsley Schwartz... Brand X... Rockpile... BeBop Deluxe... Lindisfarne... so many memories come flooding back. I'm also loving the ability to check out the entire back catalogue of bands/artists where I may have had a couple of albums, but never really got around to the rest of their work. I don't know whether I'm just being lucky at the moment, but I don't seem to be getting more than 2-3 ads per hour, which I don't find particularly intrusive.

Anyway... here's my question: If I choose to go for the premium option so that I can download the songs to listen when I don't have an internet connection, how much space do the tracks take up. My tablet will accept a max. 32GB SD card, so how many songs will I be able to sync offline with that amount of space?

It seems such a good deal that for a tenner a month you can have, to keep, as many songs/albums as you like. Imagine if you tried to make that arrangement with your local record shop... "I'll pay you ten quid every four weeks and for that I want to be able to visit your shop any time I want (including in the middle of the night) and leave with an armful of albums. And I want to be able to do this as many times as I like each month!" You could imagine the response you'd probably get.

Cheers,

John 

[Greeny]

If you live in the UK, Blinkbox is pretty cool. You search for a 'base' song and it creates a playlist that fits around it. The playlists are very 'accurate' and usually interesting, and you can filter further by liking or not liking certain tracks - so it can learn more about what you want.

It's free, but you have to put up with an advert now and again.

I'm pretty impressed with it.

[danieldesete]

I use deezer, the catalogue seems endless, but there are quite a lot of adds.  don't know what the premium version is worth.

[64Guitars]

Anyway... here's my question: If I choose to go for the premium option so that I can download the songs to listen when I don't have an internet connection, how much space do the tracks take up. My tablet will accept a max. 32GB SD card, so how many songs will I be able to sync offline with that amount of space?

It depends on the length of the songs, the method of data compression (mpg, wma, flac, etc), and compression settings (bitrate, sampling frequency, etc). I would estimate that the MP3 files uploaded to Songcrafters average about 5 MB each. Using that as a rough guide, a 32 GB SD card would hold about 6,400 songs. That's assuming the songs are in MP3 format, the compression settings are similar to Songcrafters', and the average song length is about the same as Songcrafters.

By the way, for anyone who has a budget like mine (none), Grooveshark is pretty good and it's free.

http://grooveshark.com/

[Johnny Robbo]

Anyway... here's my question: If I choose to go for the premium option so that I can download the songs to listen when I don't have an internet connection, how much space do the tracks take up. My tablet will accept a max. 32GB SD card, so how many songs will I be able to sync offline with that amount of space?

It depends on the length of the songs, the method of data compression (mpg, wma, flac, etc), and compression settings (bitrate, sampling frequency, etc). I would estimate that the MP3 files uploaded to Songcrafters average about 5 MB each. Using that as a rough guide, a 32 GB SD card would hold about 6,400 songs. That's assuming the songs are in MP3 format, the compression settings are similar to Songcrafters', and the average song length is about the same as Songcrafters.

By the way, for anyone who has a budget like mine (none), Grooveshark is pretty good and it's free.

http://grooveshark.com/

That sort of sums up my question... what format and what bitrate does Spotify use? It's not like you receive a file with a recognisable file extension, all that happens is you go into the spotify app, hit the "available offline" button and you can then listen to it without having to stream it from the internet. It must therefore be downloaded in some way to a local folder. What I want to know is, how many megabytes does, say, a 5 minute song take up in whatever format spotify use? Any ideas, chaps?

[64Guitars]

According to the following page, Spotify stores the offline tracks in a cache, so you don't have access to the song files individually. That means you can't copy the songs to other devices or listen to them with other players. You can only listen to those tracks by using the Spotify app.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-spotify-cache.html

It says that "1GB holds around 200 tracks", so that's about 5 MB per track. As I said before, a 32 GB SD card would hold about 6,400 songs at 5 MB per song.

However, the following page says "You can sync a maximum of 3,333 songs per device".

https://support.spotify.com/se/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Listen-offline

At 5 MB per song (average), 3,333 songs would consume about 17 GB.


I think it sucks that you "buy" tracks from Spotify but the tracks aren't yours to do with as you wish. You can only play them in the Spotify player. What happens if you switch to a different tablet, phone, etc. and the Spotify app isn't compatible with it? You'll no longer be able to play the songs you've paid for. And even if your new phone or tablet is compatible, how do you copy the songs you've paid for from the old device to the new one? And you can't backup your song collection, so if your phone or tablet is lost or stolen, your entire song collection is gone forever.

[Johnny Robbo]

According to the following page, Spotify stores the offline tracks in a cache, so you don't have access to the song files individually. That means you can't copy the songs to other devices or listen to them with other players. You can only listen to those tracks by using the Spotify app.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-spotify-cache.html

It says that "1GB holds around 200 tracks", so that's about 5 MB per track. As I said before, a 32 GB SD card would hold about 6,400 songs at 5 MB per song.

However, the following page says "You can sync a maximum of 3,333 songs per device".

https://support.spotify.com/se/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Listen-offline

At 5 MB per song (average), 3,333 songs would consume about 17 GB.


I think it sucks that you "buy" tracks from Spotify but the tracks aren't yours to do with as you wish. You can only play them in the Spotify player. What happens if you switch to a different tablet, phone, etc. and the Spotify app isn't compatible with it? You'll no longer be able to play the songs you've paid for. And even if your new phone or tablet is compatible, how do you copy the songs you've paid for from the old device to the new one? And you can't backup your song collection, so if your phone or tablet is lost or stolen, your entire song collection is gone forever.

The songs are linked to your account, as I understand it. So when you get a new phone/tablet etc & log into your account on the new device, all the content is available there once you sync the device with that account. I think I remember reading that you can have up to 3 devices associated with any one account, so you can listen on your home PC, a phone and a tablet if required. Also, you don't "buy" the individual tracks, you pay a monthly subscription and that covers you for everything.

When you play any song/album/playlist on the free version of spotify, you have the option to make it available offline (ie no internet connection). Click on that option, though & it invites you to upgrade to premium, as the offline mode isn't available in the free version. Interesting that all you seem to be doing by going that way is accessing a cached version that is there anyway. Definitely think I'll be going for the premium version at some point.

Thanks chaps :-)

[taffsdad]

I love Spotify just because I can type in Ivor Cutler, listen to him then Hawkwind listen to them, then Professor longhair.......etc, I have the same budget as 64 Guitars lol so will check out groove shark......sometimes I accidently connect my tablet via the headphone socket to the mic/line in sockect on the laptop and for no good reason press record on Audacity......because of lack of space on the laptop I have to burn the music onto CD to get it off the hardrive.....the Ads on Spotify don't really get in the way....

[T.C. Elliott]

I use Spotify sometimes. Especially to listen to a song that has been referenced or to check a key signature or something. And I definitely don't want to imply that I or anyone else has a right to judge who uses what legal service to use to listen to music. In fact, I think listening to music only makes a person find great musicians that they can support through seeing live shows or paying for deluxe packages or making sure they buy and spread the word about new releases. But I thought it might be interesting to look at the business model for musicians. Spotify actually payed 75% of what pandora did for about a tenth of the plays.

Here is a link to the blog post by David Lowrey a while ago:
http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-million-times-and-all-i-got-was-16-89-less-than-what-i-make-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale/


And here is a link to the picture showing his royalty statement:

[Hilary]

I use Spotify sometimes. Especially to listen to a song that has been referenced or to check a key signature or something. And I definitely don't want to imply that I or anyone else has a right to judge who uses what legal service to use to listen to music. In fact, I think listening to music only makes a person find great musicians that they can support through seeing live shows or paying for deluxe packages or making sure they buy and spread the word about new releases. But I thought it might be interesting to look at the business model for musicians. Spotify actually payed 75% of what pandora did for about a tenth of the plays.

Here is a link to the blog post by David Lowrey a while ago:
http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-million-times-and-all-i-got-was-16-89-less-than-what-i-make-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale/


And here is a link to the picture showing his royalty statement:

I can't help but feel for the musicians too . . .