Maybe, but this could easily be refined, e.g. by using fingerprinting. Perhaps even the fingerprint of the Flac data (assuming that fingerprinting is much cheaper than lossy compression).
However, it would be odd if CPU power is the real bottleneck here. I read the article, but can we actually be sure that licensing is not at fault? Or simply, the lack of proper management?
Given how much more revenue iTunes sales would give for the average Premium user, it could be possible that they (RIAA and others) want to keep the incentive to buy iTunes tracks (or the physical album). Not that Spotify would ever admit this, since it would effectively change their status to 'music preview/demo/shareware' provider.
The quality plus the 'disappearing tracks' issues, make me think that it is all about preserving buying incentive. At least, that's what it did for me.
Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre-releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point? To force the audiophile users to buy 320 kbps mp3s or CDs? Many of the premium users don't even know it's not 320 kbps.
Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre-releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point?
The very same reason they pay some television and radio stations to broadcast particular material: to get people to buy the albums.
It's a combination of things that make Spotify subpar for many music enthusiasts. The lack of availability of lossless streams, incompleteness of the catalog in 320kbps, missing tracks on many albums, uncertainty about future accessibility of music, etc.
When Spotify was introduced in The Netherlands, I absolutely loved it, and was convinced that I'd never need to spend much more on music than 10 Euros per month (imagine what a save this is when you buy at least 4 albums per month). However, given the reasons listed above, I am now mostly using Spotify for music discovery, and still buy albums. It only helped me to make more 'accurate' purchases. As a side effect, I ended my Premium subscription, because the 2.5 hours/week, 5 plays per track is plenty enough for evaluation.
However, it would be odd if CPU power is the real bottleneck here. I read the article, but can we actually be sure that licensing is not at fault? Or simply, the lack of proper management?
Given how much more revenue iTunes sales would give for the average Premium user, it could be possible that they (RIAA and others) want to keep the incentive to buy iTunes tracks (or the physical album). Not that Spotify would ever admit this, since it would effectively change their status to 'music preview/demo/shareware' provider.
The quality plus the 'disappearing tracks' issues, make me think that it is all about preserving buying incentive. At least, that's what it did for me.