You need to master separately for every format, they all have different characteristics (frequencies they can play, volume changes they can handle etc.) Some years ago streaming services started offering gapless playback of DJ mixes and it sounds fine to me. I think some older stuff hasn’t been revisited. Or maybe they just don’t care as it’s worth nothing or its essentially an orphan work for hire that the DJ hasn’t seen anything from in years.
I noticed some big budget bands having streaming special remasters of old records. Also heard one version of an album that was taken straight from vinyl years ago on Spotify (digital reissues of this record existed, but for all I know that could have been one of the really awful CD remasters they did in the early days of digital. These were the abominations that gave digital sound a bad name that it doesn’t deserve).
ETA
I don’t know how to encode for continuous mix but separate tracks on Spotify (which you have to as you need rights holders to get their streams) but it is done. Before that was the case they used to offer them as separate tracks and a single continuous mix. Haven’t seen that in a while. There were obvious legal issues there.
But then again the obvious legal issue with Spotify is that the record companies treat streams like records and CDs rather than as licenses and thus pay far under the odds to artists. This is pure theft.
It’s also why they can afford to pay Lucian Grange whatever hundreds of millions he just got. There’s lots of money in the music business right now. It’s just that as when every new technology happens the scum at the top work out new ways to steal odd artists.
If you open the album and click the first song to start playing it will play through in order, this is still the case, BUT previously you could open the album and the play button that was shown was a shuffle play button so if you wanted to listen in order you couldn’t hit the play button you HAD to click the first song to get it to play in order. At least that was my experience.
I think its a case of the rights have ended up in the hands of people who don’t care about the end product as long as they get money for it without spending any. A lot of small but popular record labels ended up this way, especially when they were run by people who were really into music but not tax law.
I just looked up how to upload your files to Spotify for gapless playback and apparently it’s the default on the desktop app and pro users for a couple of years now. In the past I believe there were some formatting issues. An ogg file I believe was one workaround.
This. It’s the way I have always played albums in Spotify (and I listen to entire albums a whole lot more than random tracks). The big green play button never even attracted my attention.
If you add in the fact that starting with the first track, then immediately hitting the shuffle button, returns you to the previous default way of listening… a lot of comments above go straight into the ‘storm in a teacup’ category
I’m not sure how listening to Spotify has anything to do with ownership. Seems more like a subscription service to self-directed, commercial-free radio.
The trend towards Spotify and other streaming services is absolutely part of the market shift away from physical ownership. For users it may offer convenience, but for the providers the appeal is certainly control.
Because clicking “play” on track one will play all the tracks in order. Unless you’ve turned “shuffle” on, when it won’t.
As an aside, the buttons in the app have icons that tell you what will happen if you click them. Is this something anyone wants? Or even thinks is intuitive? Because those people are wrong. Having a button to change a state say “off” when the state is “on” is just fucked up.
Ah, that makes sense. I thought you were referring to Adele’s actions in this situation, not to Spotify overall. I 100% agree about Spotify and it’s ilk. I just didn’t see how it related to this particular case, which, if one wanted to own the Adele album and play it in whatever order, then one is free to buy it.
The way it relates to the Adele album is the fact that Spotify have made it marginally more inconvenient to play the album on shuffle: while it’s just an inconvenience for some, it serves to highlight the fact that Spotify could, more or less at their whim, impose any control on your possession, playback, etc., of the music on their platform regardless of your preference.
And that’s where you lost me. If you want control over your music, don’t use Spotify. Wrong tool for the job. Buy directly from the artist whenever possible.
And that’s why I don’t use it either. But a lot of people haven’t done that calculus, and it’s certain to come as a rude surprise to them when their miscalculation comes to haunt them.
As I said: record companies and execs are getting rich out of streaming. They are an industry which has always stolen from the artist (whether by selling their services at outrageous prices to artists - services they had to use, renogatiating contracts to give lower rates on CDs and then stopping making other formats, or simply printing up a “third shift” that went into the execs pockets up to Sarbannes Oxley) and the pivot to streaming was no different.
