Spotify Web Player vs Desktop Client: Music Quality. The current generation of music lovers is susceptible to the quality of music they listen to. Most people can tell the difference in music quality when using the two option, and others will not even notice it. Usually, the Spotify web player offers a lower bitrate compare to the desktop client.
Music fans are plenty familiar with Spotify, the online streaming service that lets users listen to millions of songs on-demand for free or with a no-advertisement subscription.
However, with Spotify’s myriad settings and apps that extend its functionality, you might not be using it to its full potential. Here, TIME rounds up 8 tips that will help users see Spotify in a whole new light:
Hide Your Guilty Pleasures From Friends
The ability to follow friends’ musical habits is one of Spotify’s best features. But maybe you don’t want everyone to know exactly how many times you listened to “All About That Bass” this summer.
On the desktop version, you can select “Private Session” from the main Spotify menu to stop broadcasting your musical selections for a certain period (the same setting is found on the “social” menu within settings on the mobile version). To permanently stop sharing your listening choices, go to the “Spotify” menu, then “Preferences,” and uncheck the boxes for “Share my activity and what I listen to with my followers on Spotify” and “Share my activity and what I listen to on Facebook.”
Improve Your Search Queries
Navigating Spotify’s massive catalogue can be a chore. Next time, try using qualifiers to narrow your search. They work much in the same way as Google search queries. You can specify searches based on artist, title, genre or year. So if you’re looking for just Jay-Z’s output in 1997, “Jay-Z year:1997” to pull up the desired results. Here’s a full list of the search qualifiers you can use on Spotify.
READ MORE Spotify Now Makes Playlists Based On What Your Friends Listen To
Use Folders to Organize Your Music
One criticism of Spotify is that people’s music collections often devolve into a jumble of playlists and favorites songs. Consider using folders to provide more order for your playlists. On the desktop app, go to “File” and then “New Playlist Folder” to create a new folder. Then you can place any playlists you like within the new folder.
Toggle High-Quality Streaming On or Off
Spotify Premium users have the option to enable “high-quality streaming” from the Preferences menu on the desktop, which plays songs at a bitrate of 320 kbps rather than the standard rate of 160 kbps — making everything sound better.
On mobile, songs automatically play at a lower bitrate of 96 kbps to conserve data. All users can bump that figure up to 160 kbps, and premium users can also use the 320 kbps setting. Just be careful, since a higher bitrate will eat into your mobile data plan faster.
Add Songs That Aren’t on Spotify And Listen to Them Offline
Spotify’s catalogue is hardly comprehensive, but users can easily add songs from outside sources to their libraries and listen to them within the Spotify interface. Simply go to Preferences and enable showing tracks from local sources. Those sources can include iTunes, the Downloads folder on your computer, or specific folders that you select.
Even better, if you have a playlist filled with non-Spotify songs and toggle on the “Available Offline” option at the top of the playlist, you can download the songs to your phone for offline listening.
See the Lyrics to Every Song
Trying to prep for your next karaoke session? Turn on the musiXmatch app (you can find it in the “App Finder” tab on the left-hand sidebar) and you can see the lyrics of most songs as they’re playing within Spotify. There are lots of other handy apps in the “App Finer” menu, including recommendation apps that offer features like curated music lists from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
READ MORE 6 Biggest Tech Debuts to Watch in 2015
Add a Visualizer
If you miss the cheesy visualizers from your days using Windows Media Player or Winamp, Spotify has you covered. In the search bar, just type in “spotify:app:visualizer” to bring up a range of different visual options that will play in time with your tunes.
Terms and conditions apply. 1 month free not available for users who have already tried Premium. Get the family on the Spotify family plan 6 Premium accounts for family members under one roof. Free spotify premium codes list 2020. How to Get Spotify Premium Free on iOS (without Jailbreak) You can update to Premium plan to get. What we like about this site is that it guarantees a working Spotify. Here's how you get Spotify Premium Lifetime Upgrade for free: Go on Pastebin and search for Spotify. Sort by date and go to the newest one with accounts in it. Then go to the newest paste with cracked. Get 6 months of Spotify Premium for free. Only $9.99/month after. Offer not available if you’ve previously tried Spotify Premium. Offer valid thru Dec 4, 2020. Terms and Conditions apply.
Link to a Specific Part of a Song
Want to send a friend “Free Bird,” but skip the pretenses and get right to the guitar solo? Spotify makes that pretty simple. If you’re sharing the URL of a song (a special kind of Spotify-specific link that only works within the Spotify app), add a “#” sound to the end of the character string and then the timestamp you want to zoom to. To get to the “Free Bird” solo at 4 minutes and 25 seconds into the song, for example, you’d write this: spotify:track:1xt1TX045OgURfw0MAcVNF#4:25.
Airpods not working with spotify mac. If not, try setting them as Default and if still not working, restart Spotify. Another thing you can try is checking if Spotify is muted under Windows sound mixer (right-click on speaker icon again, select volume mixer). You can also try checking if muting and unmuting Spotify and then restarting the client will change anything. AirPod Compatibility. AirPods are compatible with devices running iOS 10 and above, and they automatically sync through iCloud so switching from one iDevice to another, to an Apple Watch, or even any Mac running macOS Sierra or higher is easy.
Step 3: Launch Musify and then click on “Paste URL” and then paste the Spotify URL for that song, playlist or album that you want to download. Can i download mp3 files from spotify download.
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Some people reading this may think back to a time when sifting through records at the local music spot was how you discovered new music, but for me that process was downloading whatever I could from services like Limewire. Luckily, we now have music streaming services that make it significantly easier to start building your music library (legally). We’ve already looked at some of the more popular services like Spotify and Apple Music, and today we’re going to take a look at the high-quality streaming service Deezer.
Editor’s note: This post was updated on March 6th, 2020 with new and updated information from Deezer about their service.
What is Deezer?
The Deezer app is available on both iOS and Android, as well as PC and Mac.
If you don’t know, Deezer is an audio streaming service that, like Tidal, specializes in high-quality audio. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing the company has to offer, it’s just an option. Deezer, unlike Spotify or Apple Music, has a library of lossless audio files that you can stream/download to your device if you choose to. If not, the service still prioritizes sound quality in that it’s fairly easy and straightforward for the average listener to choose sound quality and EQ settings that fit their listening preferences.
While Deezer isn’t exactly a household name here in the States, it isn’t a small company that you should overlook. The service is available in 180 different countries and has more than 16 million active listeners. Its music library consists of an impressive 56 million tracks with 52 million of them being high-quality files readily available for you to listen to.
Who should use Deezer?
- Everyone. I was expecting Deezer to be super nerdy and difficult to use to everyone except the most serious of audiophiles, but I was wrong. The app is super easy to use and the music library isn’t lacking.
- Fans of lossless. If you want lossless audio, the HiFi option on Deezer is one of the few options around. You can stream FLAC files right to your desktop.
- Music lovers. While there is a section for podcasts in the Deezer app, I found it to be lacking on all but the biggest podcasts. That said, if you only care about listening to music, then this is for you.
How to get it
Deezer is available pretty much everywhere. You can get the mobile app on both the Play Store for Android users, and the App Store if you’re rocking an iOS device. If you’re not big on mobile and plan on mainly listening via desktop, there are also desktop apps available for both Mac and PC. But if all else fails, you can always use the web player to get access to your music library.
For smart home or home audio enthusiasts Deezer also works closely with a number of brands to get their service on everything from Google Home and Amazon Echo devices to Sonos speakers and Onkyo recievers. For a full list of compatible devices make sure to check out their website, but chances are you’re covered. Notably, the Apple HomePod is not on the list as it doesn’t play nice with services that aren’t Apple Music, so if that’s your speaker of choice you may be out of luck. Still, you can always AirPlay to the speaker from your phone. Google Cast people will be happy to find the app also supports that as well.
As a first step, we'd suggest a quick reinstall of the app and if that doesn't already do the trick, try a thorough reinstall instead, as this should remove any corrupted data left on your device. Just a heads-up, you'll need to re-download any music and podcasts saved for offline listening after reinstalling the app. Hi, since I updated Spotify on Windows, it now has a white bar on top of the window when the window is maximized. I can see part of the unstyled minimize, maximize and close buttons behind the dark Spotify window/layer. I have attached a screenshot of what I mean. The white bar is only visible when I have maximized the window. On my Spotify app, a huge white box started blocking most of the content on the screen as of today. It blocks it on everything except the currently playing screen. There's no way to close it or get rid of it. How do I remove it. I just switched from Pandora for issues I was having with them, and now I run into this. Spotify app white screen. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs.
We reached out to Deborah Jourdan, head of North and South America at Deezer and asked what some of the complications are with working with the assistants. Her response was fairly surprising in that it’s not that hard at all:
Spotify free token. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Listening is everything - Spotify. Login - Spotify. Terms and conditions apply. 1 month free not available for users who have already tried Premium. Get the family on the Spotify family plan 6 Premium accounts for family members under one roof. Get Free Spotify Premium After Buying a Samsung Galaxy 10. Spotify has cooperated with many companies to provide Spotify free giveaways. Samsung is one of them. If you buy a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, you may be eligible for a 6-months free Spotify Premium. The luck devices include Samsung Galaxy S10, Samsung Galaxy S10+, and Samsung.
“It’s actually quite easy to use voice control with smart voice assistants like Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Siri. HiFi subscribers should update their settings to HiFi, and it will automatically apply to voice assistant. For example, just ask Google to play your personal playlists, editorial playlists, artists, albums, songs, genres, moods and even your personal Flow. If Deezer is your default music player, you can start commands with “Ok Google, Play my Flow,” or “Ok Google, play Lizzo.” If Deezer isn’t your default music player, make sure to add “on Deezer” at the end like this, “Ok Google, Play my Flow on Deezer. If you prefer using Siri, you can now use Siri to quickly access your music by saying, “Hey Siri” followed by a command such as “play my Flow” or “play my favorite tracks.”
So if you’re looking to play music mainly via the personal assistant on your phone Deezer makes it pretty simple to do so, even with higher quality streaming if you’re a HiFi subscriber.
Is Deezer free to use?
Yes. If you don’t feel like spending your hard-earned cash on a monthly music service, you don’t have to. Anyone can use Deezer for free just by signing up for the service. However, there are some caveats. For one, you’ll get ads interspersed throughout your music while listening. You also will be limited to listening on mobile devices only and there isn’t an offline mode. So if you happen to be underground on the subway or going through a tunnel, you’ll have to wait until you get signal again.
How much does a subscription cost?
If you want a better experience, then be prepared to pay monthly. Thankfully, the cost of a Deezer subscription is no more expensive than any of the other major streaming services. You have the option to do Deezer Premium ($9.99/mo), Deezer HiFi ($14.99/mo), or Deezer Family ($14.99/mo). There’s also a student option ($4.99/mo) if you can confirm that you’re enrolled in university.
| Streaming Service | Free Model Available | Basic Plan | Premium Plan | Hi-Res Plan | Family Plan | Student Plan | Military Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Music HD | No | - | $12.99 with Prime $14.99 without | - | $19.99 | - | - |
| Amazon Music Unlimited | No | - | $7.99 with Prime $9.99 without | - | - | $6.00 | - |
| Apple Music | Yes | Radio is free | $9.99 | - | $14.99 | $4.99 | - |
| Deezer | Yes | Free with ads | $9.99 | $14.99 | $14.99 | $4.99 | - |
| Pandora | Yes | $4.99 | $9.99 | - | $14.99 | $4.99 | $7.99 |
| Qobuz | No | - | $9.99 | $19.99/$24.99 monthly $299 annually | - | - | - |
| SoundCloud Go/Go+ | Yes | $4.99 | $9.99 | - | - | $4.99 for premium | - |
| Spotify | Yes | Free with ads | $9.99 | - | $14.99 | $4.99 | - |
| Tidal | No | - | $9.99 | $19.99 | $14.99/$29.99 | $4.99/$9.99 | $5.99/$11.99 |
| YouTube Music | Yes | Free with ads | $9.99 | - | $14.99 | $4.99 | - |
The benefit of a paid subscription is basically the reverse of the free plan. You won’t be bothered with those pesky ads, you’ll be able to use Deezer on up to three devices (mobile, desktop, or speaker), unlimited skips, and an offline mode. The HiFi plan gives you access to the high-quality FLAC library that Deezer offers, while the family plan offers up to six profiles for you and your family members.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to have a HiFi Family plan combo, so if that’s something that you and your audiophile family are looking for then you should probably check out the Tidal family plans. If you just feel like trying Deezer out, they’re currently offering a 3-month free trial so that should be more than enough time to see if you like it or not.
What audio content can you find?
Music
As I mentioned above, Deezer has a library of over 56 million songs that you can choose from. Whether you want jazz or classic rock, they got you covered. I didn’t notice any significant gaps in their offerings that aren’t also missing on the other major platforms. If you don’t feel like searching for songs though, Deezer has 50 editors making new playlists and updating old ones so that I found myself listening more to curated playlists than songs I had searched for.
Speaking of playlists, one feature that I love is the “Flow” playlist that Deezer offers. Using what I can only assume is machine learning, it creates an endless playlist for you of songs that you might like based on what it thinks you like and mixes it into a playlist with songs you’ve already listened to. If you’ve used Spotify at all, then you know how great the Discover feature is. Flow does more or less the same thing but instead of just a few songs, the playlist never ends. While I admit that it wasn’t perfect at first, I found that the more I used Deezer the better it got at predicting songs I’d enjoy listening to. Now about two weeks in, it’s the first thing I click when I open the app.
Podcasts
Aside from music, Deezer also offers podcasts. As of 2015, there were over 40,000 that were available to listen to. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but this is where I ran into the biggest problem using Deezer as my only service. About half of the podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis were not available on Deezer. That obviously isn’t a problem if you use another podcast app like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, PocketCast, etc., but it’s something you should know if you’re a big podcast listener. When I asked Deborah Jourdan if there was a more up to date number of podcasts currently available, she said, “We are always adding new podcasts, so we don’t have a set number to share at this time.”
Is there an offline mode?
Yes, if you’re looking to save files to your device for offline playback you can do so with Deezer. The catch is that this option is only available on the paid plans. If you’re using the free version with ads, you won’t be able to download files to your device. Thankfully, downloading songs is super simple and all you need to do is switch a toggle on the playlist or album that you want to download.
Spotify Desktop App Quality Inc
Let’s get technical, what’s the sound quality?
Spotify Windows App Vs Desktop App
Deezer gives you some really good options for taking control of your sound, with a small settings logo located on the apps of both the mobile and the desktop apps. When you click the logo you’ll get two options to choose from if you’re on Deezer Premium: standard or better. Standard quality will stream your songs at 128kb/s while better quality will stream at 320kb/s which is exactly the same as Spotify. If you want to pay the $14.99 per month to take advantage of their high quality FLAC library, then you can expect a bitrate of 1,411 kb/s. One caveat though is that the quality is only available via desktop. If you’re going to be listening on mobile you’re maxed out at 320 kb/s unless you pay for the HiFi subscription. Then you can stream to your mobile device assuming that it’s supported.
| Streaming Service | Max streaming quality | Supported Formats |
|---|---|---|
| Qobuz | 24bit / 192kHz | AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, WAV, WMA Lossless |
| Amazon Music HD | 24bit /192kHz | FLAC |
| Tidal HiFi | 24bit / 96kHz | AAC, ALAC, FLAC |
| Deezer HiFi | 16bit / 44.1kHz | FLAC |
| Google Play Music | 320kbps | AAC, ALAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA |
| Deezer Premium | 320kbps | MP3 |
| Spotify Premium | 320kbps | AAC, Ogg Vorbis |
| Apple Music | 256kbps | AAC |
| YouTube Music Premium | 256kbps | AAC |
| SoundCloud Go+ | 256kbps | AAC |
| Slacker Radio | 320kbps | MP3 |
| Pandora | 192kbps | AAC |
| Spotify Free | 160kbps | AAC |
| Deezer Free | 128kbps | MP3 |
But high quality streaming isn’t the only thing that the HiFi plan on Deezer gets you. You’ll also be able to enjoy the 360 Reality Audio tracks by downloading a separate app called 360 by Deezer. 360 Reality Audio is the newest push by Sony to bring a new format for audio streaming. For a full deep dive make sure to check out the video we made explaining it a while back, but as a quick refresher 360 Reality Audio is just what it sounds like. It’s a new way of mixing audio that allows the engineers to make the instruments sound like they’re placed in space around you.
The result is a pretty interesting experience as songs that you think you know like the back of your hand give you a new experience. Is it revolutionary? Sony certainly hopes so, but only time will tell. Unfortunately, I was unable to use this feature during this review as I only have a premium account and not a HiFi one.
UI, playback, and controls
As far as using the app, I found it extremely easy to navigate both on mobile and on desktop. When you open the app you’re immediately taken to the “Music” screen, which is topped by playlists that the Deezer algorithm makes specifically for you based on what you’ve been listening to. Under that is recommended playlists, followed by new releases and timely curated playlists. For example, today is February 14th (at the time of this writing) and it’s filled with different Valentine’s Day playlists. The same is true for both mobile and desktop.
When listening to music you get all the standard controls for playback. There’s the play, pause, and back buttons and you can also scrub through the track to get to whatever part of the song you need to. You can also like songs by tapping on the little heart symbol. Doing so will add the track to the favorite’s section section of the app which serves as your library. It will also update your “Flow” playlist to reflect your ever-growing taste in music.
One minor thing I’m not a fan of is that when you’re listening to a song on mobile and decide to go back to the search screen to find a new song, you’re only given three options for playback: pause, like, or next. If you want to start a song over while looking for your next tune, you can’t. It isn’t a big deal, but it’s a small tweak that would make it just a little more convenient to use while navigating my way through a busy subway station.
How much does Deezer pay artists?
Streaming services are notorious for not paying artists, but Deezer isn’t one of the worst culprits. From data sourced by independent artists, you can see that Deezer sits right in the middle of the pack, paying $0.00567 per stream. In other words, for every 176.3 streams the artist you’re listening to gets $1. That might seem small (because it is) but it’s also more than what Apple, Spotify, or Google pays artists on their platforms. Please keep in mind, though, that these numbers aren’t official, nor should you come away with thinking that the payment structure is this simple. These are merely ballparks provided from a third-party source.
| Digital Service Provider | $ Per Stream |
|---|---|
| Qobuz | $0.04390 |
| Peloton | $0.04036 |
| iHeartRadio | $0.01426 |
| Amazon Unlimited | $0.01175 |
| Napster/Rhapsody | $0.01110 |
| 24/7 Entertainment GmbH | $0.01050 |
| YouTube Red | $0.00948 |
| Tidal | $0.00927 |
| Deezer | $0.00567 |
| Google Play | $0.00543 |
| Apple | $0.00495 |
| KKBox | $0.00435 |
| Amazon Digital Services Inc. | $0.00395 |
| Spotify | $0.00331 |
| Loen | $0.00205 |
| Pandora | $0.00155 |
| Vevo | $0.00109 |
| Yandex LLC | $0.00051 |
| YouTube Content ID | $0.00028 |
| UMA | $0.00013 |
Source: The Trichordist
Should you get Deezer?
If you don’t already have a subscription to a music streaming service and are just testing out the market, I definitely would recommend giving Deezer a fair shot. It has an easy to navigate app on both mobile and desktop, and it plays well with plenty of speaker systems including Sonos and Google Cast. Plus, both the premium and family plans are priced the same as all the other major competitors, so you’re not getting ripped off. If you’re the type to stream FLAC files to your desktop or sound system, then the HiFi option is also not bad at $14.99, especially considering you don’t even have that option on Spotify or Apple Music.
Speaking of which, the only negative aspect to Deezer that I think will be a problem for people is the popularity of Spotify and Apple Music. If you’re sharing songs, playlists, or albums via social or messages to your friends, chances are they’re not using Deezer and won’t be able to play the full track. Thankfully, that isn’t a you problem and sounds more like a them problem, but if you like sharing your favorite songs that’s something to keep in mind.
Overall, I don’t see myself switching to Deezer over my current music streaming service, but that’s only because I don’t feel like rebuilding my library from scratch. Sure, Deezer doesn’t have the live radio or Apple Music or the Yearly Spotify round-ups that always go viral towards the end of the year, but if you don’t care about any of those shiny features and just want a solid streaming service that will give you the best sound quality you can get, then Deezer might just be for you.