It’s over two years since Spotify announced that it was enabling 320kbps streaming for Spotify Premium subscribers but it looks like it still has a long way to go before every track is available in that higher quality form. An investigation by a blogger dedicated to seeking out classical tunes on Spotify suggests that more often than not the tracks are streaming at 160kbps. That includes new songs and Spotify Premium exclusives.
Though the original July 2009 announcement and the Spotify website make it clear that “not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate”, 320kbps streaming is still one of the headline features for Spotify Premium. The company hasn’t prominently indicated how many songs are available in that format which makes the blogger’s research and the company’s responses interesting reading…
The Spotify fan who goes by the handle, UlyssesTone, tested 115 tracks taken from the among the most popular on the service and randomly selected using sites like the Spotify playlist aggregator, Spotibot. Only 35 were available for streaming at 320 kbps but 100 were up for purchase at that bitrate from the Spotify MP3 store. You can see the list of songs here. It includes major hits by Beyonce, Rhianna and Bruno Mars. Spotify has previously confirmed that tracks are converted to higher bitrate according to their popularity.
Spotify has not officially revealed how much of its catalogue has been converted to the higher quality format but in July 2010, a Spotify employee on the GetSatisfaction support forum said the figure was around 60%. Clearly with tens of thousands of new tracks being added to its database every month and the Spotify US launch to contend with, that figure may now be sustantially different.
Responding to UlyssesTone, the company said: “All music we get is in lossless format. All music is intended to be converted to all three qualities. We get thousands of songs each day and the converting process is always chewing new data. Surely we might need to upgrade and enhance our methods and equipment to make this go faster but, for the time being, I can tell you we’re doing all we can to provide the users with 320k Ogg Vorbis on every song.”
That email sums up Spotify’s general response to the fan’s campaign. Rather than giving any real sense of when Spotify Premium subscribers can expect to see the majority of tracks streaming in high quality, it simply asserts that it is doing its best and that it will get there eventually.
We’ve contacted Spotify for comment on the conversion process and when Spotify Premium users can expect to see the bulk of the library available at the best bitrate. In the meantime, let us know: do you feel let down by the amount of time it’s taking to get those tracks converted? You can read UlyssesTone’s claims in full at the link below.
Out now | From £free | Spotify (via Spotify Classical)
