Dean Whitbread 2020
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From Get Satisfaction, to Quora and back again, Spotify’s failure to implement gapless playback – aka listening to music as intended by artists and producers, without audio gaps introduced which disrupt the listening experience – continues to fan the flames of infamy.
This has never been better put than by gapless not in seattle who wrote :
Spotifards: Ever asked yourselves why your premium offering isn’t more popular?
If, instead of frittering months of effort developing failtastic Me2 sub-Facebook social tosspottery which NO-ONE WANTS, you had bothered to identify your most likely premium account holders you would have implemented gapless two years ago when people first started bitching about this.
Green Day fans don’t give a toss about adverts or track gaps or low rates. They also don’t pay for their music – ever. (No disrespect to Green Day fans: I wouldn’t pay for that crap either.)
Serious music enthusiasts – be they fans of Bowie, Beefheart, Yes, Prince, Wagner, Mahler, Zappa, &c whatever – these are the people who wil pony up hard cash for their streaming music.
These people expect – DEMAND – sonic excellence. They will NOT spend £10 per month for the benefit of listening to Das Rheingold or Tubular Bells splintered into 44 bits. It’s the equivalent of trying to sell them a Linn turntable with peanut butter smeared over the platter.
I understand you want to break into the States? Classical music is kind of big there, you know, and they don’t have anything like the equivalent of Radio 3. A streaming classical music library should make a MINT in the States! Unless you go and totally tool it up by putting gaps in the music. Which you, uh, did. Oh dear…
Refusal to implement gapless (and refusal is what it is) is unbelievably dumb and short-sighted. A music service that does not recognise gapless streaming is important is a service run by people who don’t like music and don’t understand people who do.
Spotify will (sadly) fail for a whole bunch of reasons but one of the biggest and plum specimen reasons will be your wilful disinterest in and ignorance of consumers of music.
Don’t bother to reply. I know you’re not reading this anyway.
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Ouch!
Daniel Ek has replied on Twitter and Quora, but still, no murmur of this basic functionality being implemented, just excuses.
