[anon23432343]

Spotify itself is not sustainable and going for the podcast crowed...

I still think it was not a smart move...

Its like that blue haired streamer going from twitch to what ever the msft clone of it was.

Yes Spotify is super popular but I hear more and more people moving away from it to for example apple music or other services.

They don't focus on the core anymore that much.

For example they are super late on the lossless audio train.

Yes you can hear a difference from spotify and apple music. I tested it with all my colleagues in the office. You can clearly hear that apple music or tidal sounds better then the spotify versions.

[TwentyPosts]

Were these blind tests?

[anon23432343]

I played the same song from random services. They did not see the service nor the laptop. YouTube/Spotify/Apple/Tidal (We did not had access to more). YT usually was the worse followed by Spotify and then depending on the Genre either Tidal or apple won. All of them were in the highest settings.

Sony xm4 as headphones.

[earthnail]

The xm4 use Bluetooth and thus compress audio during transmission. Everyone of your listeners thus listened to lossy audio.

Fwiw there is not a single scientific listening test ever where participants were able to tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and wav. Not even in perfect studio conditions.

[gen220]

Just curious, I have no stake in this, but did you have the "high quality audio" settings turned on for Spotify? I know they've had them in the past, I don't know what the specific name is for it these days.

[jamespo]

how much difference does lossless make on the typical headphones in use with mobile devices?

[BytesAndGears]

At least with my AirPods or my fancy Master&Dynamic over-ear headphones, there is a pretty big difference in Apple Music vs others, but I don’t think it's necessarily about bitrate. I think Apple just gets higher quality masters of some songs. Same thing as Tidal when I used that, but Apple seems even a step further at this point (which is unfortunate because I really don’t want to rely on a mega-corp for everything).

Especially the ones with the Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) mixes. Even if you don’t have super high-res headphones, the difference in dynamic range is pretty obvious, and it makes songs just feel more alive.

I don’t have any stats to back this up but it seems that Apple Music has at least managed to somewhat buck the trend of the “loudness wars” with the masters they use. I wonder if this is actually published or written about anywhere…

[anon23432343]

Apple is probably also fine tuning there music to there products.

[politelemon]

You won't get a representative answer here because tech folk can be specific about what and how they listen, so our answers will make it appear like a big deal.

I will venture that most people don't notice or care.

[anon23432343]

I have AirPods pro and the sony xm4. Even on bluetooth you can hear the difference. The sound stage is just bigger. The highs are more clear and the bass is more subtle.

I was once remaking some hiphop beats from there samples and you can hear the difference even more when you have a remade beat (its not 100% the same) you can hear what the compression has done to the sample.

[joegahona]

It made none for me, even with $400 corded headphones.

I recently ditched both Apple Music and Spotify and am using Youtube Music, which comes with Youtube Premium.

[threeseed]

People also use Apple Music, Shopify etc on non-mobile devices as well as IEMs on mobile.

And for those lossless is a massive difference.