Hi, does anyone have the facts about Spotify putting watermarks on the music they stream? A little research has revealed some people saying that some of the music on Spotify has record company watermarks. OK, fine. Doesn't matter who might be putting watermarks on the music streamed by Spotify.

My question is this: if I use a Spotify downloader software, like Tuneskit Spotify Converter, which converts the files into MP3s for me, will the watermark disappear when I play it in a club in a mix or on the radio in a produced radio show?

TIA.

 

Depending on the quality of the watermarking, nope.
High qualitiy watermarking survives almost everything, sample-, bit-, analog- and mp3-conversion.

But why disappear? This isn't audible at all - or at least it shouldn't be.

So, it shouldn't matter for clubs, but if someone records the broadcasted stream and checks it...

 

wtf is that all

 

@Thankful AFAIK, Spotify does NOT add watermarks to the music it streams. The watermarking is done by the lables. Some of them are audible watermarks which degrade the listener's experience, including that of Premiun customers.

https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

https://medium.com/intrasonics/hiding-data-in-sound-c8db3de5d6e0

Edit: OP you are very welcome

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2019

You might wanna try Deezer rather than Spotify, the proper downloader can even get you flac (uncompressed) files.

Edit: At least I never heard of watermarks regarding deezer.

 

Until somebody can prove to a court of law that audio watermarking is proof beyond reasonable doubt, watermarking is aromatherapy for record labels.

 

Thanks No Avenger. Any second or third opinions on this. If I made a 60-min radio show with Spotify rips, then Normalised the entire file and bounced it all down to a new MP3, would watermarks still be visible on the Spotify tracks?

 

Thanks The Pirate for the PDFs, there is very good information in those; I have read a couple of them and you would have to conclude that audio watermarking is a deterrent at best, un-reliable to use as evidence because of other factors such the invasion of privacy for the original owner of the song or software who was not informed that his name/adress and personal details were embedded into this thing he bought. OK, but this would be different for record companies, and I doubt very much whether they would go to all the trouble to embed (watermark) the names of all the journalists or magazines, radio stations from where the music was distrubuted. In any case, would the record companies not be happy at the extra promotion their music is getting on a radio show for the masses. They should be rejoicing not complaining.

Am I on the right lines now?

 

Last edited: Aug 26, 2019

What matters is that you want to play it in a club. Softwares like djay and future.dj have Spotify support by design and both are used by pro DJs in a CLUB!
As long as you're not releasing your mixes to the masses and claim its yours, you'll be fine man. Don't worry.
Though if you're super famous DJ I'd recommend using Pulselocker or Soundcloud.

 

+1 for Deezer. their catalog is bigger and their terms of service is also less restrictive than Spotify.

 

This wouldn't work either IF (big fat if) the labels add the watermark.

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2019

What people are failing to grasp here is that protrecting stream content has become big business. Now we have companies like Digimarc, AudioLock, that will provide record lablels, publishers, artists with their proprietary watermarks and also 24/7 scanning and takedown.

 

Thanks for the info. Good stuff.

 

@No Avenger Pulselocker is a service made specifically for DJs, so tell me how watermarking makes sense for them?
They're charging 3 times more than a typical consumer service because you get a commercial license to use it as long as you have active subscription.

 

So the DJs don't pirate/copy/share the files they have access to?

 

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It is used to track airplay and also as an information carrier about the artist , label etc

 

yes, and a deliberate degradation of the artist's original intent.
A corollary from the visual arts is that when Banksy shredded his own artwork, that was the artist's intent.
But if those who claim to represent him had changed the work, let alone gone so far as to shred it, of their own volition, well that's just cultural vandalism.
The same holds true for music, in that those who claim to represent the artists (like labels) take it upon themselves to add noise to recordings that were considered complete by the contributors (composers, musicians, engineers et al) prior to the label distributing it.
It's like keying the paint of your client's expensive car in an attempt to stop folk stealing it and claiming it as a necessary security step. dumb.

I don't know how to get around this, but things can always change. Let's see shall we.

 

Confirmed. Every time I send my work to our national registration company (so someone can't claim it is theirs work), I have to fill a form and present a "material" proof - a score or an audio file. The audio always gets watermarked with my data. Don't know if I could say no to that, as I hardly need it - it is mainly for tracking airplay and I usually work for a client (local gov., short commercial vid clips ..no large distro)

The other thing that usually pops up is the fear of using watermarked libs or samples. I can confidently say this is real, though not the way you'd think. I've never heard a court case against any user of these (I think Cinesamples won a sim case, but vs a guy from south America that was simply reselling the sample library on a large scale..). Ofc the guy never came to USA to pay the fine.

OTOH we had an incident when working on a score for a blockbuster. My colleague was (apparently) using non-legit libs. The devs didn't go after him. Instead they went after our publisher(!). They evidently gave him enough headache so we all got a (nasty) "reminder" email ..and as you can imagine - my colleague is "flagged" (tho very talented guy). No more work for him until he changes his name and gets some plastic surgery.. so, yeah, an indirect hit.

I was eager to find out, which dev was it, as this is rare. Even asked the publisher, but he wouldn't disclose..

 

Youtube-style. I don't know if YT tracks watermarks too but I guess it does. If it tracks and censors 5 seconds of a poor guy teaching how to play a classical piano music in his synth...

It's a big secret for good reasons. They don't want users/hackers to be able to delete the watermark and and they keep us users wondering so we tend to be extra-cautious.

 

Fuck UMG!, if i cant find it on an old CD rip download i have to take their shitty, ruined, modulated files.

The amount of work that goes into producing, and after its all polished and done, its handed to some korean nerd paperturner who buys a patent and modulates the bands and turns it to shit. FUCK YOU UMG!!!! fuck your music catalogue also then i dont need nostalgia