Renewed Spotify Premium after waiting long for HiFi

aurobindosaha

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Joined
Mar 2, 2015
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Kolkata, India
For the 3rd year, I have renewed my Individual plan for a year today, after hoping that for long Spotify HiFi will launch in India. For the last 1 year, there are rumours that Spotify HiFi will launch soon, but we are yet to see that happen. Many would suggest why to stick to Spotify, and why not Tidal and other better audio quality streaming services. Two reasons, are specific to my preference.
  1. In my knowledge, Spotify is the music service that can be streamed to Volumio and thus play easily in RPI. There are other choices, however, I have to go via BubbleUPNP, or VPN, or some other intermediate hurdles. Spotify nicely offers an option to choose the output device
    1656861115236.png

  2. I like Spotify music discovery and suggestions, Over time Spotify baked itself to my liking and the long playlist I have. Now going for something else will mean training it from the beginning. Moreover Spotify interface is very intuitive.
And frankly speaking, I do not find Spotify quality not so bad.
At least in my set-ups, Spotify sounds very pleasing.
(Acoustic Portrait Thyaga>SwaraAmp>Thyaga MS610 Speaker or Dragonfly Black>Sennheiser HD598)

Your preferences? Open to listen to your thoughts.
Kind regards
Aurobindo
 
Hi.

Off topic but want to chekc - how d you subscribe for a year ?

I am on the Premium Family plan, and Spotify debits my card every month.
I would prefer to make a 1 time annual payment, but cant find any option to do that.

Btw - I agree Spotify sounds fine. I use it extensively.
I find the Spotify Connect feature a huge differentiator.

My Marantz amps all have Spotify Connect built in.
 
Hi.

Off topic but want to chekc - how d you subscribe for a year ?

I am on the Premium Family plan, and Spotify debits my card every month.
I would prefer to make a 1 time annual payment, but cant find any option to do that.

Btw - I agree Spotify sounds fine. I use it extensively.
I find the Spotify Connect feature a huge differentiator.

My Marantz amps all have Spotify Connect built in.
Do you not see "View other plans" option?
You get the annual option from there.
 
Do you not see "View other plans" option?
You get the annual option from there.

I am already on Premium Family.

It shows me an option to select a lower tier plan.

Does not show any option to stay with PRemium Family, but switch from monthly to annual billing.
 
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And frankly speaking, I do not find Spotify quality not so bad.
At least in my set-ups, Spotify sounds very pleasing.

Frankly you will not hear the difference unless you compare side by side. There is a difference of course. I started using Spotify during Covid and ended up discontinuing TIDAL after a while. The music algorithm is fantastic in helping you discover new music and Spotify Connect is amazing. I walk from my house into my car and continue listening to whatever was playing earlier seamlessly. It's a great tool for music discovery.

For critical listening, local HD files are still better. For streaming Qobuz is really good but has nowhere near the features that Spotify offers. I end up switching back to Spotify quite often.

For 95% of music listeners and friends I would recommend Spotify.



.
 
Frankly you will not hear the difference unless you compare side by side. There is a difference of course. I started using Spotify during Covid and ended up discontinuing TIDAL after a while. The music algorithm is fantastic in helping you discover new music and Spotify Connect is amazing. I walk from my house into my car and continue listening to whatever was playing earlier seamlessly. It's a great tool for music discovery.

For critical listening, local HD files are still better. For streaming Qobuz is really good but has nowhere near the features that Spotify offers. I end up switching back to Spotify quite often.

For 95% of music listeners and friends I would recommend Spotify.



.
+1. I just discontinued my ytmusic subscription. Currently using apple music and spotify and like you, I keep on using spotify. Apple music isn't seamless or I still haven't figured out how to use it properly. In fact I had put a question in this forum and not even one FM who uses apple music has answered it. In apple music, I play something and If I have to pause music and I come back after few hours, my entire playlist is gone. At the moment I scrobble my tracks to last.fm and that's how I figure out what song I was playing. But the position of the song is gone and I have to start from beginning. The interface and suggestions are lousy. spotify is bang on and that best is that I don't loose my playlist regardless of the time or the device I switch for playing songs when moving from one room to another. There is nothing like spotify connect in the apple ecosystem and you have to use the apple music app individually on each device.
 
+1. I just discontinued my ytmusic subscription.
Does one have to take a subscription for YTmusic specifically? I was under the belief that it came bundled with YT premium!
For the 3rd year, I have renewed my Individual plan for a year today, after hoping that for long Spotify HiFi will launch in India. For the last 1 year, there are rumours that Spotify HiFi will launch soon, but we are yet to see that happen. Many would suggest why to stick to Spotify, and why not Tidal and other better audio quality streaming services. Two reasons, are specific to my preference.
  1. In my knowledge, Spotify is the music service that can be streamed to Volumio and thus play easily in RPI. There are other choices, however, I have to go via BubbleUPNP, or VPN, or some other intermediate hurdles. Spotify nicely offers an option to choose the output device
    View attachment 70438

  2. I like Spotify music discovery and suggestions, Over time Spotify baked itself to my liking and the long playlist I have. Now going for something else will mean training it from the beginning. Moreover Spotify interface is very intuitive.
And frankly speaking, I do not find Spotify quality not so bad.
At least in my set-ups, Spotify sounds very pleasing.
(Acoustic Portrait Thyaga>SwaraAmp>Thyaga MS610 Speaker or Dragonfly Black>Sennheiser HD598)

Your preferences? Open to listen to your thoughts.
Kind regards
Aurobindo
A major USP about Spotify insofar as I'm concerned is that just about anybody can play music on your system through their own device by simply connecting to the same Wifi Network. I have found this to be especially helpful when i have guests over or get visits from FMs. Gone are the days of pairing and unpairing bluetooth devices or passing around the Ipad.
 
For the 3rd year, I have renewed my Individual plan for a year today, after hoping that for long Spotify HiFi will launch in India. For the last 1 year, there are rumours that Spotify HiFi will launch soon, but we are yet to see that happen. Many would suggest why to stick to Spotify, and why not Tidal and other better audio quality streaming services. Two reasons, are specific to my preference.
  1. In my knowledge, Spotify is the music service that can be streamed to Volumio and thus play easily in RPI. There are other choices, however, I have to go via BubbleUPNP, or VPN, or some other intermediate hurdles. Spotify nicely offers an option to choose the output device
    View attachment 70438

  2. I like Spotify music discovery and suggestions, Over time Spotify baked itself to my liking and the long playlist I have. Now going for something else will mean training it from the beginning. Moreover Spotify interface is very intuitive.
And frankly speaking, I do not find Spotify quality not so bad.
At least in my set-ups, Spotify sounds very pleasing.
(Acoustic Portrait Thyaga>SwaraAmp>Thyaga MS610 Speaker or Dragonfly Black>Sennheiser HD598)

Your preferences? Open to listen to your thoughts.
Kind regards
Aurobindo
Apple lossless >>iPhone / ipad >> dragonfly black >> rest of your setup.
 
How does Spotify differ to airplay when streaming to the Pi?

MaSh
For Airplay, the stream originates locally on the device that you initiate the stream from i.e. your computer, phone or ipad and is transmitted through your local area network to the Pi.

With Spotify, the phone/ipad/computer only works as a remote control whereas the stream originates in the Pi itself.
 
How does Spotify differ to airplay when streaming to the Pi?

MaSh
The mode of operation is totally different. @DB1989 has explained this. Just want to add that the way spotify does the streaming is vastly superior to airplay. The streaming happens directly between the spotify server and the PI playing the music. The spotify client (regardless from where it is run) instructs the application named librespot on raspberry pi, to stream the music directly from the spotify server. librespot is an extremely well written application in C.

In Airplay the first streaming happens between the apple server and the device where you are running apple music app. When you do airplay to raspberry pi, there are totally 3 machines involved. First the apple music server streams it to your apple device. Then from that apple device, another streaming happens to the raspberry pi. It is very prone to stutter. So in reality there are two streams happening simultaneously when using airplay. This is like a relay race. If one end drops the batton, the runner will have to stop. I suspect, that the shairport-sync application on raspberry pi isn't as well written as the spotify librespot. Even without any music playing it is consuming CPU. See the below screenshot. The librespot is happily doing its job with much less resource.

Till date, I have never found spotify (even once) streaming to raspberry pi stutter, even at bitrate of 320 kbps. airplay to raspberry pi however stutters quite often and there is always a lag between when you hit the play button and when the song starts playing.
Screenshot 2022-07-05 at 19.54.27.jpg
 
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The mode of operation is totally different. @DB1989 has explained this. Just want to add that the way spotify does the streaming is vastly superior to airplay. The streaming happens directly between the spotify server and the PI playing the music. The spotify client (regardless from where it is run) instructs the application named librespot on raspberry pi, to stream the music directly from the spotify server. librespot is an extremely well written application in C.

In Airplay the first streaming happens between the apple server and the device where you are running apple music app. When you do airplay to raspberry pi, there are totally 3 machines involved. First the apple music server streams it to your apple device. Then from that apple device, another streaming happens to the raspberry pi. It is very prone to stutter. So in reality there are two streams happening simultaneously when using airplay. This is like a relay race. If one end drops the batton, the runner will have to stop. I suspect, that the shairport-sync application on raspberry pi isn't as well written as the spotify librespot. Even without any music playing it is consuming CPU. See the below screenshot. The librespot is happily doing its job with much less resource.

Till date, I have never found spotify (even once) streaming to raspberry pi stutter, even at bitrate of 320 kbps. airplay to raspberry pi however stutters quite often and there is always a lag between when you hit the play button and when the song starts playing.
View attachment 70501
Oh that clears up some doubts. So does this application come built in volumio, moode, etc or needs to be installed? Volumio has a Spotify plugin which I found very buggy. Hence switched to airplay which is much easier to use. But if my device can stream Spotify as easily i don't mind giving it another shot.

MaSh
 
Oh that clears up some doubts. So does this application come built in volumio, moode, etc or needs to be installed? Volumio has a Spotify plugin which I found very buggy. Hence switched to airplay which is much easier to use. But if my device can stream Spotify as easily i don't mind giving it another shot.

MaSh
Install librespotify yourself. Don't depend on volumio. If you absolutely have no knowledge of linux, moode will be a better distribution. moode comes with both librespot as well as shairport-sync

Regardless of the distribution, this is all that is needed on any raspberry pi to have spotify
sudo apt-get -y install curl && curl -sL https://dtcooper.github.io/raspotify/install.sh | sh

You need to know how to do ssh to your raspberry pi or connect a display to your raspberry pi and login to run the above command

EDIT: volumio doesn't use the librespot. They have written their own plugin and looks like it is quite buggy
 
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Oh that clears up some doubts. So does this application come built in volumio, moode, etc or needs to be installed? Volumio has a Spotify plugin which I found very buggy. Hence switched to airplay which is much easier to use. But if my device can stream Spotify as easily i don't mind giving it another shot.

MaSh

Install librespotify yourself. Don't depend on volumio. If you absolutely have no knowledge of linux, moode will be a better distribution. moode comes with both librespot as well as shairport-sync
I was using spotify on volumio at the very moment and lamenting the fact that it was buggy as heck when i came across this post. Quite the coincidence! For some weird reason, I can play spotify through volumio while using my phone and iPad only to the exclusion of my PC, which is confounding to say the least.

My go to OS for Spotify through Pi is Moode as suggested by @mbhangui . Rock solid no nonsense connectivity. I have kept both OS'es on two separate SD cards to swap at will. Volumio, for the extra features, Moode when I need rock solid connectivity.
 
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Oh awesome, moode is the flavour of the month then. Will check out Spotify on pi via moode. Thanks guys.

MaSh.
 
Moode is very strong for Airplay/Spotify/UPnP etc. its a stable distro for streaming on Pi with all free/subscription free access unlike Volumio. Using it from years without any problems..
 
Okay, so moode is in place. However, I have an issue. The connect does not stick for more than 7 seconds in the android phone. For those 7 seconds the Pi shows connected and music plays quite well. However, after 7 seconds device gets disconnected and then the music stops. I do not lose connected when connected to the Moode UI on the browser. Tried rebooting it, rebooting my router, restarting spotify service, etc.

MaSh
 
Okay, so moode is in place. However, I have an issue. The connect does not stick for more than 7 seconds in the android phone. For those 7 seconds the Pi shows connected and music plays quite well. However, after 7 seconds device gets disconnected and then the music stops. I do not lose connected when connected to the Moode UI on the browser. Tried rebooting it, rebooting my router, restarting spotify service, etc.

MaSh
The android phone as no role to play other than sending command to librespot on the pi to play a song. So if android phone shows disconnected it means that the pi is getting disconnected for some reason.

Is this by any chance the allo boss player with the metal case?
 
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