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Has Spotify bitrate increased??

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I haven't seen anyone talking about this, apart from @greentheonly mentioning it on twitter recently. This morning I checked for myself, and I think he might be right!

For context; I stop short of claiming to be an audiophile, but I am pretty picky when it comes to music listening. I always found the in-car Spotify streaming quality to be terrible, and so have been using bluetooth instead, for the last 20 months or so. Every now and then, after the car software updates, I would check to see if there had been any improvement in the sound quality. I have a few "go-to" songs that I use for this, where I can easily pick a low bitrate stream. I will switch back and forth between the in-car Spotify and my phone bluetooth, running Spotify at "Very High" quality and "Normalize volume" turned off. Usually the difference is night and day; easily distinguishable. As I said, I'm not an audiophile; I can't pick the difference between my bluetooth stream and a 320kbps mp3 via USB, but could easily hear the low quality in-car stream.

Today, when I used my usual test method, I really struggled to pick the difference between in-car Spotify and my phone bluetooth. My 3LR is on 2021.36 and I'm located in Australia. I've setup my hotspot so I can test it for longer going forward, but at this point I think Tesla have finally allowed the full Sportify Connect bitrate! I think they've also added a little cache too.

Has anyone else had a noticed this? Has anyone managed to check the data transfer rate to verify?

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The immersive sound update 2021.32.2x seems to have made some changes to the sound stage of the car even on the same setting. This is both per my own experience and other feedback I’ve read online. Maybe that’s what you’re hearing?

It’s been a few days since I listened to anything on Spotify in the car, I’ll see if I can notice any differences the next time I’m in the car, in case something was updated on spotifys end.
 
The immersive sound update 2021.32.2x seems to have made some changes to the sound stage of the car even on the same setting. This is both per my own experience and other feedback I’ve read online. Maybe that’s what you’re hearing?

It’s been a few days since I listened to anything on Spotify in the car, I’ll see if I can notice any differences the next time I’m in the car, in case something was updated on spotifys end.
I don't use immersive sound at all. I always have it off. I doubt it's anything on Spotifys end, since Spotify Connect already streams at 320kbps by default. The consensus is that Tesla have likely been throttling it to save data. Now it sounds like they've lifted the restriction.
 
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Has anyone tried to verify this? Like see how much data is required for each song? I did this years ago with an LTE hotspot a few years ago in the Slacker days and the data being downloaded was roughly 1MB/minute which would be a 128kbps bitrate.
 
This thread has left me in suspense... Should I cancel my Tidal trial or stick with Spotify premium (logged in on car not via phone bluetooth). Personally I think Spotify is still being throttled where Tidal is not.

To be continued.....hopefully.....

I am in uk
 
This thread has left me in suspense... Should I cancel my Tidal trial or stick with Spotify premium (logged in on car not via phone bluetooth). Personally I think Spotify is still being throttled where Tidal is not.

To be continued.....hopefully.....

I am in uk
Go with what you think sounds better. It's possible that it's different by region, so you'll have to go by your own assessment.
 
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I haven't actually used the built in Spotify but now I'm wondering if they're finally not restricting it. If so then I'll probably switch to it instead of Bluetooth.
Yep that's what I've done. I'm convinced that it's streaming at the full 320kbps now, which is better than bluetooth (256kbps). Tidal should only be better if you download tracks in your car.
 
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I'm an avid Spotify user, listen to it all day. I was really excited when I got my 2022 M3 LR to have all my Spotify music and playlist show up in the ca app, so much easier than fiddling with my phone via bluetooth. But I wanted to compare the sound so I listened to the same selections on both the in car Spotify app and my iPhone 13 pro bluetooth. I was dismayed to discover that I thought the bluetooth coming from my iPhone sounded better than the in car app. Then I realized that on my iPhone the Spotify app has a very useful effective parametric EQ that I've tailored to my liking and the Tesla in car Spotify app has no EQ, just the Tesla overall sound EQ that is woefully inadequate with only 5 bands to adjust. So I'm resigned to listening through my phone for the best sound but its so less convenient when looking for music while driving. It may also have to do with the in car app steaming at a lower bit rate and the fact that all the Spotify music on my iPhone is downloaded at the highest quality. It would be great if Spotify in car had some settings you could tweak as for bitrate and EQ, for that matter I really wish the Tesla overall EQ settings had at least 8 or 9 bands rather than 5.