What use is the metadata? Or is that stuff like the album covers etc?
I’m also a bit concerned about this:
Second, there’s an obsession with audiophile-grade quality (lossless FLAC, etc.) that inflates file sizes, making it impossible to maintain a complete archive of all music ever produced.
Does that mean that this spotify dump is a bunch of 64kbs mp3s, or worse some kind of lossy spotify transcode?
The first is like an automated volume control that lowers the volume really really fast in a matter of ms when the volume reachest a certain threshold, (can also work the other way where in increases below a certain threshold, or both).
The reduces the file size, sacrificing quantity if a lossy codec is uses. Lossless codecs like flac are a bit to bit perfect of the original.
Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode. The only difference is they re-encoded all the songs with a ‘popularity’ of zero at a lower bitrate, because that saved an enormous amount of data for all the AI crap pumped into Spotify that nobody listens to.
Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).
Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
They’re encoding the top songs with higher resolution, the next bunch ( it’s still millions of songs) with about half that bitrate and not planning to save the next tranche which is like a looooot of songs but each has less than 1000 plays over the history of Spotify.
This is what I vaguely remember after reading the whole original post AND after a night drinking.
What use is the metadata? Or is that stuff like the album covers etc?
I’m also a bit concerned about this:
Does that mean that this spotify dump is a bunch of 64kbs mp3s, or worse some kind of lossy spotify transcode?
Modern pop music is already compressed to hell, FLAC is a waste of bandwidth unless you’re encoding orchestral pieces.
I think you’re confusing two different concepts, dynamic range compression and data compression.
The first is like an automated volume control that lowers the volume really really fast in a matter of ms when the volume reachest a certain threshold, (can also work the other way where in increases below a certain threshold, or both).
The reduces the file size, sacrificing quantity if a lossy codec is uses. Lossless codecs like flac are a bit to bit perfect of the original.
Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode. The only difference is they re-encoded all the songs with a ‘popularity’ of zero at a lower bitrate, because that saved an enormous amount of data for all the AI crap pumped into Spotify that nobody listens to.
Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).
Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
It’s not MP3, it’s Ogg vorbis
They’re encoding the top songs with higher resolution, the next bunch ( it’s still millions of songs) with about half that bitrate and not planning to save the next tranche which is like a looooot of songs but each has less than 1000 plays over the history of Spotify.
This is what I vaguely remember after reading the whole original post AND after a night drinking.
No nitpicking.
Spotify uses I think 192 or 320kbps Vorbis which is quite good and still has small sizes.
Even that’s 300 TB so I kinda understand. If this is all thar survives into the long term that’s ok I suppose