Spotify… I’ve had the chance to use it today as it was launched in Australia on this date. What makes it a pretty good service in my opinion is not syncing mechanism or the ease of access to a large range of songs (rare ones too), but it’s more so due to the sound quality of the tracks. All songs were noticeably more crisp in clarity and didn’t know why until I read that all tracks are encoded using Ogg Vorbis q5-q9 compression instead of standard 192-320k MP3.
I can’t differentiate between the sound quality difference on my pair of Logitech 2.1 speakers, however even on my average Sennheiser CX-200’s in-ear headphones, the difference is awesome and makes listening that bit more enjoyable.
However, one small downside I can faintly detect is when there is a lot going on in a track, the bass begins to break down into fragments and you can begin to hear the compression come through. This doesn’t bother me too much as I favour the clarity of sound.
With that in mind, it’s hard to shy away from a premium account.