- Spotify is now advertising its 320 kbps bitrate as ‘high-quality sound’ to its Premium subscribers. Meanwhile, Amazon Music HD tracks have an average bitrate of 850 kbps.
- If you change the quality settings you do need to re-download the tracks though. To do this you first need to remove the entire Spotify cache by opening Spotify, tapping the menu and going to settings. Scroll to the bottom and tap the button to clear the cache. Once done, open Spotify.
- The high quality streaming is also available with the free version of Spotify, but give the Extreme stream quality a try if you have Premium for the best audio quality and test the waters with.
- Annoyingly it's very hard to a/b test with spotify download quality as the quality does not really kick in on things that have already been downloaded. You can do a/b tests with spotify stream quality though.
- To enjoy Spotify extreme quality sound, we recommend you to download and record the Spotify music and keep its original quality. To do so, you can get help from iMusic. IMusic downloader pro allows you to download music from over 3000 music sites and record any song you can play on your computer with original music quality.
Spotify has the default music quality set to 'Automatic' which switches between Extreme 320, High 160, and Normal 92 Kbps, depending on how strong your data connection is. However, as a matter of fact, Extreme quality is only available to Spotify Premium members; Free users are limited to select between Normal or High.
When the compressed music came out, people reckoned that it was only for some time, that the quality would improve. However, lossy music rapidly gained its admirers due to file's small size. It looked very appealing to be able to store thousands of songs no matter what the quality is. Sadly, compressed music was in favor for quite a while, at least, longer than it should have. As a consequence, musicians waste hours and days in studios re-recording what they think of, quantity has taken over quality and what appeared to be a bliss turned out to be evil.
Digital music streaming services is not a brand-new thing. The problem is that there’s so much music to discover and even though some services say they have some exclusives, most music collections are more or less similar, making possible over 30 million tracks for streaming.
Spotify Download Quality Very High Resolution
Spotify doesn't need any kind of introduction. If you don't know what it is, you must be living in the Stone Age.
For those who still haven't googled, Spotify is a digital music streaming service that offers access to millions of songs, playlists, and podcasts from artists all over the world. It rapidly extended as a nice streaming service for several reasons:
- Free subscription with ads.
- Millions of tracks available.
- $9.99 / month .
- Supported in 60 countries.
It seemed like an outstanding service, but the world is now shifting towards Hi-Res music, and Spotify has no victory there. Today I will explain to you why Spotify is already in the past, Spotify Hi-Res is no Hi-Res and suggest a better alternative.
Spotify Sound Quality
Like the rest of music streaming services, Spotify uses compressed audio files so that you can stream and download music without pauses or interruptions. Streams are in OGG (Ogg Vorbis) at 96 kbps on mobile, 160 kbps for so-called 'High' quality on mobile and 320 kbps on mobile and computers for Premium subscribers. These digits are enough to refuse to use the service. If you reckon it makes no difference, you can check out the short-film The Distortion of Sound, where Slash, Snoop Dogg, Michael Shinoda, and the rest will explain in detail why compression is no good for 2017. The worst thing about compressed music is that loudness entirely predominates over the quality thus making the sound more ripped and not exactly what was recorded in a studio. Louder doesn't imply better music experience, and right now is the time we accept it.
Fortunately, there's a better alternative. VOX Music Player for Mac & iPhone plays most music formats including Hi-Res ones (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, etc.).
Spotify Hi-Res
Spotify Interface
Spotify should make it more comfortable to find songs because if there's at least one misspelled letter, it would be hard to find what you've been looking for. Another annoying feature is that you can't put the songs in any kind of order which makes it really challenging to find any song. If you are listening to an album, and then add songs one by one, what you eventually have is that exact album but with songs in reversed order. Storing music a bit pain in the ass, so you have to think in advance in what order you want them to be on your added music list.
As an alternative, VOX Music player has its own cloud storage called VOX Music Cloud Storage. It is a limitless cloud which has only one purpose – store all your Hi-Res library thus tackling the problem of Hi-Res file's size. It instantly syncs with you VOX account so you can enjoy the music you have on the cloud. Additional great feature is the option to download songs, which may be useful if you know for certain you won't be having any internet for some time.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Spotify Radio
What Spotify calls Radio is actually just a set of pre-made playlists of different genres. It is also common that these playlists confuse some algorithms and you have EDM music playing on an Alternative channel. Discovering new music narrows down to Browse. It has dozens of playlists and to know how the playlists work there, read the next section.
For people who tend to explore new music with radio, VOX Music Player makes it possible to listen to more than 30,000 stations from all around the world. It appeals to any taste regardless of the genre or country. You will always find new music and be able to explore new genres with no problems.
Spotify Daily Mix
Playlists, as well as radio, focus on assisting people with exploring previously unknown artists. Spotify has millions of pre-created playlists starting from 'The Best of ... [band's name]' to Top-50 of a country you pick. Unfortunately, Your Daily Mix section is based on what you already have on your music list, so there's little chance to actually discover something new, local or underground. Another flaw of Spotify's playlist is that they usually offer most popular tracks of a particular genre or musician. For example, if you regularly listen to some trip-hop, you will most likely find Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack and the rest of the genre bests on your Daily Mix.
VOX Player doesn't provide pre-made playlists since we believe playlists are very personal and private. Musicians usually spend hours in studios creating something unique not to be put in one line with hundreds of different artist just because someone decided they sounded alike.
Conclusion: Spotify + Hi-Res?
Streaming services have made their contribution to humanity, but it's high time we moved into the future, and it's all about Hi-Res music. We strongly encourage you to stop hurting your ears and choose the best alternative to Spotify for your iPhone. VOX Music Player has everything and more and can satisfy the needs of even the most demandable listeners.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Start experiencing the best audio player now.
Spotify High Quality Audio
How much data does Spotify use? It depends on the sound quality you choose. The higher it is, the more data the streaming service will burn through. In any case, Spotify uses way less data than video streaming services (more on this later) and probably less than most people think.
The Spotify Android app lets you choose between five sound quality settings: Low (24kbps), Normal (96kbps), High (160kbps), Very high (320kbps), and Automatic (dependent on your network connection). You can access these options by heading to Settings > Music Quality on your Android phone.
Don’t miss: After a week with YouTube Music, my heart is still with Spotify
To simplify things as much as possible, I’ve prepared an overview of how much data each setting uses per minute and hour as well as how long you’d have to stream music for to burn through 1GB of data. Keep in mind these numbers are approximate. Spotify can cache songs you’ve previously listened to, meaning they may not eat up the same amount of data the second time you play them.
Low (24kbps):
- Per minute: 0.18MB
- Per hour: 10.8MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 92.5 hours
Spotify Download Quality Very High Definition
Normal (96kbps):
- Per minute: 0.72MB
- Per hour: 43.2MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 23.1 hours
High (160kbps):
- Per minute: 1.2MB
- Per hour: 72MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 13.8 hours
Very high (320kbps):
- Per minute: 2.4MB
- Per hour: 144MB
- How long until you reach 1GB: 6.9 hours
Now that you know how much data Spotify uses, let’s see how the numbers compare to video streaming. Watching HD content on Netflix uses up to 3GB of data per hour or as much as 7GB when the resolution gets bumped up to Ultra HD. Medium quality (SD) is a lot less data hungry, burning through 0.7GB per hour. Still, that’s almost five times as much as streaming music with the best sound quality available (320kbps).
Spotify Very High Quality Download Size
Apple Music vs Spotify vs Google Play Music
What about Spotify’s competitors? Google Play Music and Deezer both offer a maximum audio bitrate of 320kbps, which uses approximately 144MB of data per hour. So does Tidal, although it also has a Hi-Fi plan with a bitrate of 1.411kbps for improved sound quality. It’s a lot more data hungry, using around 635MB per hour. Apple Music, on the other hand, has a maximum bitrate of 256kbps, which translates to around 115MB of data per hour.
What Quality Is Spotify
An important thing to keep in mind is that Spotify — as well as other streaming services mentioned in this post — lets you download songs to your phone, which means you don’t have to use any data at all when listening to music.
Spotify Quality Low
How many hours per week do you listen to music on Spotify or other streaming services? Let us know in the comments!