Audible watermarks degrading sound on Spotify premium

[kkh1114]

I'm a Spotify premium subscriber.

I was listening to this track (in highest quality streaming):

https://open.spotify.com/track/4JO5eK1uiI6MvJIrtBrhI3

It's a beautiful recording rendered unlistenable due to the fluttering sound of the digital watermark Decca (Universal) is using.

I have removed the entire album from my music (a shame) and I realize there are other performances of the same work available, but can't understand why they would ruin a recording like this for the people who are paying for the premium service in order to hear high quality recordings!  How much do we have to pay to hear the original unaltered recording?  I am afraid to even buy the CD or download now because it may have the same watermark applied.

I would hope Spotify will refuse to stream recordings like this, at least for premium subscribers.

[silex]

This problem is out of control, particularly on classical recordings (Decca and Deutsche Grammophon are the worst). This is clearly an issue of digital watermarking, as outlined on Matt Montag's site. Now, I have tried to see if my friends can hear it, and have learned that 1. most people don't notice it, 2. it's nearly inaudible in much of pop music, even to me, and 3. it's nearly inaudible without nice headphones (I have a pair of studio monitors at home and i need to be very close to them before it's audible). That said, when listening to classical recordings on nice headphones, this fluttering watermark is painfully audible to me--to the point where I hear it immediately and am forced to restrict my listening to only recordings that have not been watermarked. This problem is unbelievable, in my opinion. I find it SHOCKING that these recordings are being deliberatedly defaced prior to sale--as far as I am concerned, this constitues knowingly selling a defective product. Spotify should push back on Universal. Stop buying watermarked recordings from them! It undercuts Spotify's reputation. If a friend asks me "How do you like Spotify Premium? How do you like the sound quality?" My response is always "It sounds great, except for the tracks that have been deliberately damaged." Please, please, please fix this or I will be forced to cancel my subscription. I can't in good conscience pay for a service that knowingly sells defaced recordings.

[Erziram]

Stumbled upon Matt's post while researching audible differences in streaming services and I must say it's unacceptable that Spotify let's this happen (but on the same par, other streaming and music services as well, like Tidal). For instance: tidal.com/track/8334755 sounds the same as on Spotify Premium, which is horrible.

All in all this is bad news for any streaming service, as uncompromised high quality audio is not delivered through a payed subscription service. The alternative is either buying physical albums again or pirate the content (i.e. EAC-downloads). While this issue has been known for years, I'm assuming that most streaming services calculated this as a business risk. Most people wouldn't probably hear the difference and still pay up anyways. The very minor group of critics probably won't make a dent in the business case of a streaming service, so I'm guessing nothing will change anytime soon.

Except when all paying customers start to understand they are not getting what they should be getting, which is uncompromised, high quality audio streaming or the streaming services decide to draw a line. As long as Spotify accepts compromised audio, I see no justification for paying for a premium subscription.

As for UMG and the like of them: there are unhearable ways to watermark audio, like hiding a watermark within the compression algorithm of a stream. By now, the industry knows that any form of marking (or DRM, for that matter) yields far lower results compared to very accessible and affordable alternatives like streaming services (Spotify, Netflix, Tidal, Amazon). By crippling the experience, you are moving people towards alternatives that are not necessarily legal.. 

[silex]

The crazy part, now that I think about it, is that the watermark is not a product of high compression, so not only are we getting a degraded product, but we are downloading a compromised waveform at higih bitrate. So we are using a large amount of bandwidth to receive a damaged product. That just makes no sense.

[russellh1]

@silex,

I agree with pretty much everything you said. 

I'm hoping that Universal can come to some kind of agreement with the streaming and digital download companies.  Maybe some kind of marketing promotion for cleaner sound or something would work -- whatever it takes to fix this.  

Years ago, Spotify fixed their problem with gapless playback after a reviewer from the New York Times mentioned that opera was un-listenable on Spotify without it.  It seems strange to me that no one in the music or audio equipment industry has called any attention to this.  I guess I can hope.

[user-removed]

It's super obvious on classical songs. Please fix this, Spotify! This is not acceptible for a paid "Premium" service.

[Hubo]

Hey folks!

Spotify publishes music as they get it from the Record Labels. You can reach out to them for more informaion on digital watermarks. If there's anything I can help you with, just give me a shout! 🙂

Have a great day!

[silex]

I think we all understand that, and are not blaming Spotify directly for adding the watermark. My goal is to bring this to Spotify's attention so Spotify can stop reselling a incomplete, damaged products as part of their premium service. There are plenty of unaltered recordings out there, and Spotify, as such a large player in the streaming game, has a lot of influence. Remaining silent on the issue and telling your users to take it up with the record companies is a silly response. As an analogy: if I go to a grocery store and buy cheese that I later find out has spoiled, the store does not tell me to take it up with the cheesemaker. They make take responsibility for the product they sell. Spotify should do the same.

[demanmetdeneus]

It is completely understandable that record companies fight piracy, but this is obviously not the right way to do it.

Yesterday I listened to the spectacular 1993 recording of Mahler's 5th symphony by Claudio Abbado for DG. The opening trumpetsolo is ruined by watermarking artifacts.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5Y5nq6qQMU0oIm5E2275dH

Have a listen, it's clearly audible when listening with decent headphones - which is what one would listen this kind of content with. 

Is there a list of recordings / labels that are not effected? At least not audibly.

[silex]

Yeah, I agree they ought to be allowed to fight piracy, but it must be inaudible. It is truly ironic that their antipiracy measures lead to a situation in which I get better quality audio by engaging in piracy than by paying a legitimate service like Spotify.

[HenrikStevn]

I just gave it a listen (the track linked by @demanmetdeneus) and the watermark is definitely absolutely still there, and very bad.

Is there any update at all on this issue?

[cstak]

I am also experiencing this issue and really hope Spotify addresses this defect in their product.

[Erziram]

Actually moved away from Spotify because of this. And since other music services do not fare better and it's variable at best, I once again download EAC to screw the music industry back for not letting me enjoy music in a really high quality through easy, payed channels and means like Spotify, Tidal, etc.. Besides going to a concert (which I do a lot), I really don't have much options here to enjoy the content at it's full extent.

[EvilCoincoin]

As already pointed out, UMG since then fixed the faulty technology but Spotify have repeatedly refused to redownload the corrupted music. I contacted Spotify directly, they told me they knew about it and they wouldn't do anything. It's been 5 years now and Spotify are still ignoring this.

[russellh1]

It is no better on any of the other music services that I am aware of.  There seems to be no way of getting UMG music online without the watermark.

[russellh1]

Please let me know where you went after leaving Spotify.  I would happily move to another premium streaming service if I could get better sound from UMG recordings.

[richbs]

I've been noticing this on recordings more often recently, I don't know if something has changed but it seems the exact same recording on Apple Music often has a non-watermarked version. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/02JXg8buWnM0BlSM6drL28?si=3IoAZaDfRciitTAD3CyWIQ

vs.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/poulenc-gloria-stabat-mater/83873541

Newer UMG recordings are not affected.

[richbs]

Hi Russelh1,

Just to let you know I've been trialling a lot of alternative streaming services including Tidal, Deezer and Apple Music. I compared several releases on each service. The best I found for lacking the watermark was Qobuz, which also caters for the "audiophile" audience. If you're more into popular music, Apple Music seemed to have fewer instances of watermarking.

I did find watermarking on some recordings on all services and not necessarily on the same tracks!

[user-removed]

I've been having this battle with UMG and Apple Music for quite a long time. I only listen to classical music, most of it solo piano and symphonies and I noticed it immediately on most DG, Decca, Philips (and other UMG sub-labels) records. I didn't know it was digital watermarking so I have exchanged a lot of emails with Apple Music, even sending them my own rip of Chopin's ballades with Krystian Zimmerman by DG where it's like night and day difference. Ultimately they acknowledged they hear the difference but can do nothing and never mentioned it was digital watermarking. I then discovered Matt Montag's post and everything came into its place. So, it's been a year since and what can I tell. Nothing's changed on Apple Music. So I decided to just ban UMG. I started researching other performers and labels and I have now completely swtiched to Sony Classical releases. They have recently remastered and re-released RCA Living Stereo recordings. I have deliberately removed all UMG releases from my library and I won't ever listen to any of them. If I have to, I will deliberately download a pirated copies form well known torrent sites. But I am not gonna pay for an abomination like that.

[user-removed]

Ohh, BTW, there's a new streaming service dedicated only to classical music called IDAGIO. I've tried it and there are no watermarks on any of the DG releases and the premium service stream in lossless FLAC. I believe since they are a small team, they probably just rip the CD-s themselves which is why no watermarks.

I've tested it for a month, however I've had many problems. First of all, they do not support the notion of "album", so you can't simply listen to a well-known CD. You need to know a particular composer, work, performer and year of relase but since there are not CD-covers and many release years are acutally re-master or re-release years, it's very difficult to find what you llok for. Add to that bugs, high load on macOS, etc. But they promised changing their ideology about the albums, so maybe in a year or so they will get better.

[richbs]

Thanks for fighting the good fight, CyberGene. I think your idea of listening to non-UMG recordings is great. It's a good opportunity to support indie labels.

Idaho looks great—it seemed to be missing a couple of records bit I admire their ethos.

I might subscribe to another service occasionally but I do find Spotify's interface and integrations to be the best in the business.