UPDATE Feb 2012: Spotify now has gapless playback!
Operating System. My Question or Issue. How can i disable gapless playback? The option is not available in Spotify's settings.
Below is the original post, written when gapless playback seemed like an impossible dream…
Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks without intervening silence or clicks where the song changes. It’s pretty common on a lot of albums. But gapless playback has been missing from Spotify since the beginning. For two years now, a growing army of Spotify users have been requesting this feature via Spotify’s getsatisfaction forum: it’s the most requested idea by far, with close to 1,000 requests. Spotify claimed that they were “seriously looking into gapless playback” about 9 months ago. So why is this request so popular, and what sort of issues might be preventing Spotify from implementing it?
Back in the day, if you were to put on a vinyl record you’d hear that some songs merge and segue together to form continous music. More recently, if you listened to that album on CD the songs would still be gapless. Popular music playing apps like iTunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp can also handle gapless playback. But not Spotify.
Listen to, for example, Shpongle’s album “Nothing Lasts… But Nothing is Lost,” where ingenious joins between tracks are integral to the listening experience. But on Spotify there’s always a little gap between each song. Since the songs are so short (it’s a 20-track album) all these breaks can take away from the enjoyment of the music. Listen to a live album, or a DJ-mixed album, or any number of classical albums and the problem’s the same.
On the gapless playback thread on getsatisfaction, there are a lot of vocal users venting their frustration. It frequently descends into flames and sarcasm but users like Dean, Kimmo, Radian and a few others manage to keep it civil and express their views clearly (mostly). Acclaimed music producer Gareth Jones (who has produced bands like Depeche Mode, Erasure and Interpol) also added to the discussion:
“We are only asking that the music should be presented as the artist intended. Many times in the mastering studio we do leave gaps, sometimes we don’t. Those of us in favour of gapless playback merely wish to experience the artists’ intention.”
So why hasn’t gapless playback been implemented in Spotify yet?
Spotify music is encoded in Ogg Vorbis format, which does support gapless playback. So it’s probably not due to file format issues. It may be that additional metadata is required to describe the length of the gap, and perhaps Spotify’s mechanism to convert the FLAC files received from record labels into Ogg Vorbis format cannot handle the extra metadata.
There are reports that gapless playback works on Spotify for SONOS and Squeezebox. If true, then it would seem that the problem lies with the Spotify clients, not the source music files.
But it’s possible that it’s just not worth Spotify’s effort. Most of the users complaining about the lack of gapless playback could probably be described as “audiophiles.” Amongst Spotify’s vast userbase, these discerning music lovers are just a tiny minority amongst the hoards who think 128kbps music sounds just fine. Besides, they say the album is dead now and we mostly just listen to singles and individual tracks anyway, so where’s the incentive for Spotify to invest resources into fixing gapless playback for albums?
Perhaps there are other commercial reasons not to implement gapless playback: the gap might be required by Spotify Free to trigger the audio ads. There were even rumours that the Spotify client deliberately cross-fades tracks in and out to facilitate the ads. If the lack of gapless playback was due to audio ad requirements, I could see how Spotify might be reluctant to reveal this as it could be thought of as unfairly limiting paying user’s enjoyment.
Gapless playback may still be coming soon though. A Spotify rep said a couple of months ago that “the popularity of the [gapless playback] thread will have an influence on product development.” And Spotify CEO Daniel Ek himself, in response to a question on Spotify’s lack of gapless playback said on Quora that:
“If it is a popular feature request we will add it… We look at and carefully evaluate all of the feature requests people have, but never comment on a timeline. If anything we should have been better communicating that we are looking at this idea.“
The thread on getsatisfaction is now tagged as “The company has this under consideration.”
So while it’s being considered, perhaps you might want to have a listen to one of these albums:
When listening to music, we will hear few seconds pause in the end of one song and the beginning of another, especially on Spotify. This bad and poor listening experience will destory the music experience provided by Spotify and leads to be solved urgently, that is set the crossfade on Spotify. So, how to enable the gapless playback on Spotify? Read this post and get Spotify to crossfade between songs like an actual DJ.
Part 1. What's Spotify Crossfade?
Crossfade, an audio mixing technique, fairly means it fades one track into the next. On spotify, crossfade lets you take out the silence between tracks so your music never stops and avoid being embarrassed in some special occasion, like in DJ live, in parties, or in a bar. This feature can bring you a few seconds (0-12s) while switching between music, so that the transformation are not towering. In this post, the introduction of crossfade on both PC Spotify and mobile phone Spotify are elaborated.
Part 2. How to Get Spotify to Crossfade on PC
This part is specifically provided guidance for PC users on how to crossfade on Spotify step by step.
Step 1. Launch Spotify on your computer, there is a downward facing arrow in the top right corner, next to your account name. Click this arrow, and then select 'Settings'.
Step 2. In the settings page, scroll down to the end of the content section, and then click 'Show Advanced Settings' button.
Step 3. Click the switch button next to 'Crossfade songs' to turn it on.
Step 4. Setting the time interval during each songs by dragging the progress bar. Here, you can set the crossfade from 0 to 12 seconds.
Gapless Playback Spotify Mac 10
Part 3. How to Crossfade a Spotify Song on Mobile Phone
Except PC users, there are also many users listen Spotify on their mobile phone. Thus, this part deals with the procedure of crossfade spotify on mobile phone.
Step 1. Open Spotify and go to the 'Your Library' tab which is in the lower right corner. Then click the 'Settings' icon on the top right.
Step 2. On the setting page, you can see many setting functions are listed out. Here we select 'Playback'.
Step 3. Run the Crossfade slider to set up how long crossfade you want (0-12s).
Part 4. How to Download Spotify Music for Offline Playback
How can we listen Spotify music for gapless playback offline? As we know, Spotify's download function is only open to the premium user. On the contrary, the free users cannot listen to Spotify music for offline nor the gapless playback offline in this software directly.
But fortunately, we can first download the music on our computer with the help of some specific downloader like TuneFab Spotify Music Converter, and play it on other gapless player, such as OooPlayer, Foobar2000. TuneFab Spotify Music Converter is the professional Spotify music downloader as well as the poweful Spotify music converter.
TuneFab Spotify Music Converterallows users to convert and download all the Spotify Music to 4 kinds of general music formats: MP3, WAV, M4A, and FLAC. Besides, 5X faster conversion speed is one of its most prominent features. What's more, we can also reset bitrate to 128, 256, or 320 kbps to change the music effect. As result, we can play these music on other gapless players to enjoy spotify music for gapless playback offline.
Briefly Guide for using TuneFab Spotify Music Converter:
Step 1. Download TuneFab Spotify Music Converter on your computer and launch it.
Step 2. Click 'Add Files' on the tool bar for preparation.
Step 3. Select your songs, playlists, albums, etc. on the interface of Spotify and drag it from spotify to TuneFab Spotify Music Converter's interface.
Note: You can also right click the song and choose 'Share > Copy Spotify Link' and then paste the Spotify links onto the converter's search bar in the bottom left corner.
Step 4. Click 'Add' button on the right lower corner to end the adding process.
Step 5. Click 'Options' button and a small window will pop up. Select 'Advanced' tab to reset conversion speed, format, and bitrate.
Step 6. Click 'Convert' button to start converting Spotify Music.
After it finishes, you can play them on a gapless player to achieve gapless playback offline and for free!
Gapless Playback Mp3
With the method introduced above, it is time for you to crossfade on Spotify for gapless playback on PC or on mobile phone. By the way, TuneFab Spotify Music Converter is really a perfect software to convert and download Spotify music to MP3 files, so that you can play them on other gapless player offline. Have a try!