[musical-kage]

I'm not sure if anyone has seen this link, but it confirms what I have thought whilst listening to certain Spotify tracks:
 
http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
 
Basically, some music providers encode a water mark into the tracks that are in fact audible to the ear.
They sound, when in a track, rather like they are lower quality tracks, because of the weird pulsing you get.
 
Has anyone encountered this?
 
Seeing as most Spotify tracks are encoded at 320kbps when in Premium mode, I was surprised to hear weird artifacting on quite a few new tracks, and upon searching, found that link.

 

[squallkiercosa]

A few years ago, some record companies deliberately released mp3's with "watermarks" but they weren't that popular.
 
Conclusion: Do not use Spotify if you can. Nothing better than your own files.

 

[musical-kage]

Quote:

A few years ago, some record companies deliberately released mp3's with "watermarks" but they weren't that popular.
 
Conclusion: Do not use Spotify if you can. Nothing better than your own files.

I use Spotify every day for my music, on the computer, and on the move.
If I can't find an album or track on there, I will buy it, rip to 320kbps and open it in Spotify, which will then encode the track, and allow it to be played offline on my mobile.
 
Its just weird. I've started noticing more tracks do it now since getting my new headphones.
 
I will eventually find all the albums in FLAC form or a a cheap CD (since I have around 767 tracks on my playlist so far) so would be too expensive to buy obviously.
Since the files are 320kbps (mostly), I figured it would be a one stop shop, and in most cases, it has been. I've found many artists on there, and listened to many albums I otherwise wouldn't have done