[Music] Local FLAC Playback

[Deeb]

A member of spotify team said to separate the FLAC idea post, into FLAC local playback and FLAC streaming. Someone else can create a FLAC streaming post, as I'm only after local playback. The original post with the 2 ideas in one post is here.

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Flac-on-Spotify-at-least-playback-of-your-own-flac/idi...

 
Vote for this post if you want LOCAL PLAYBACK OF FLAC FILES ONLY.

WHY WE NEED SPOTIFY TO PLAY OUR FLAC COLLECTION
Spotify already plays ALAC, all be it with stability problems, but what we really need is local FLAC playback because FLAC is the defacto standard for lossless audio encoding. 7digital has recently started selling FLAC yet spotify can't play them. Why not???

http://www.7digital.com/find-music/7digital-recommends/flac

The most commercially successful band on the planet (The Beatles), have released official remastered versions of all albums in 24bitFLAC format on a usb device.

http://www.everythingusb.com/the-beatles-stereo-usb-limited-edition-17961.html

Numerous bands have sold albums in FLAC format through their websites. FLAC is the defacto standard for lossless encoding, so please start supporting local playback of FLAC.

Another idea that is important to me is fixing the appalling "set the same volume level for all tracks", which doesn't take into account the subtle volume transients of an album that audio engineers spend hours working on. The following volume normalization method retains the intended volume differences as part of the album.

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/VOLUME-NORMALIZATION-IN-SPOTIFY-DAMAGES-INTEGRITY-OF-T...

[aliendude5300]

This would definitely be great to have... I rip most of my music as FLAC. 

[domjohn56]

I have suscribed to a french streaming company in Flac, and I listen through Sonos : the result is a bery impressive quality of sound.

Sonos should do this with perhaps an option a little be more expensive for exigent listeners.

[mrfart]

The only reason why I'm not using spotify and buying my music elsewhere is the lack of flac support. I understand that most people don't care about this, but I still think the group of people who do care is big enough to invest the time. People who care about music quality are also usually people who spend money on music.

[cazzzac]

I currently work for a Hi-Fi/Home Theatre consultancy. We setup music streaming services for our clients who are often purchasing $20,000+ for a stereo system. As such, lossless and particularly FLAC is our recommendation for music storage. Currently, when people are setting up their home digital media hubs, we recommend:

MediaMonkey for management of local FLAC files (and a hardware media streamer for playback)

Spotify for music discovery and streaming on the go

If people could manage their FLAC collection locally via spotify, this program would be our sole recommencation, rather than spanning across multiple programs and services. Please implement FLAC support. 

[Prat]

Please implement FLAC support!

I really want to use Spotify, but I cant if it doesn't reproduce all my FLAC files!

[TheBly]

I also use Foobar2000 for FLAC and Spotify for everything else. I completely understand not having lossless streaming. It's just too much to handle right now in the US (Korea might be a different story, with their highspeed bandwidth). However, using Spotify to play my own collection? Sounds amazing. Not to mention Spotify's EQ (albeit an app from another company) is much easier to use than Foobars (and also, Foobar has very little support...do they still update it?). 

I would die if this would happen. Hope to see more audiophiles give this idea more kudos!

[zaf_music]

I very much want this. I have tons of FLAC from CDs on my computer and I really would like to be able to play  them in spotify without converting them. Converting them is a pain, creates duplicates that I don't need and personnaly I'd rather use a different player (but it's also very annoying to be honest).

Please provide FLAC support for local files !

[user-removed]

I NEED flac support. An important percentage of my local audio files uses this format and it's a pain switching between players just because Spotify won't support it, is it really that difficult to make it happen for an audio software company? Come on.

[user-removed]

Thanks for posting this.  Since FLAC is the single most used lossless audio codec for media servers, downloading services that sell lossless audio, and is open source (no licensing fees), it really makes sense to add FLAC support for local files.

I think the Spotify response is kind of weird: "At the moment, flac is still a relatively uncommon format."  I honestly cannot find any other lossless format that is more popular  -- either in the enthusiast community or the commercial online sale of music community.

[user-removed]

But perhaps most important:  This would further entrench the Spotify player as the player of choice for local files -- which furthers its hegemony.