FLAC files upload

Hi there, sorry for the late reply. Great idea!

Please not that you should create one topic per idea and not mix them up with different ones like the scrobble idea, which actually already exists. You can vote for it here.

I uploaded FLAC files using the MP3 upload feature, and it seems to have worked - but the songs are not playable. Deezer accepts the uploads, parses the files, shows the correct artist and track information, including duration, but when I go to play the song, it shows an error.

Interesting, so whatever audio software Deezer uses for managing file uploads, it can also read FLAC ID tags, probably an open source app then.

By the way, the Spotify desktop app can play local M4A files with lossless ALAC content when installed on a Windows 10 PC, because the OS has a decoder for it. So that would be an alternative solution for people with a large lossless music files collection who want to mix local and streaming files in a playlist for example or simply don't want to use several media players for different purposes on their computer.

Of all the HiFi music stealing services I could find (Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal), Deezer is the only one that allows you to upload your own music, but sadly it doesn't allow uploading (and playing) your own lossless music.

I've started a trial for each of these services, and honestly, I'm having a hard time picking which one is best. The fact that the mobile apps for Deezer do not support HiFi and the fact that the uploading feature does not support HiFi has me leaving toward Tidal or Qobuz.

I still have to continue trying these services to make a final decision, though (it certainly won't be Spotify).

Knowing all options before making a choice is always a good idea, that is why I mentioned playing local ALAC files in Spotify's desktop app, because not many seem to know about this possibility, e.g. Spotify who don't want to support playing of local FLAC files in their app - without mentioning the ALAC option. 😉

Talking about options, playing local M4A files in Spotify also scrobbles to Last.fm which might be interesting for some users as well.

I meant to say: "Of all the HiFi music streaming** services" and "has me leaning* toward Tidal or Qobuz"

OK, if you want HiFi streaming with a mobile device, Tidal probably is the best option now. I read differing opinions about them enabling gapless playback then on Reddit, some say it doesn't work, some say it does.

Regarding maximum audio streaming quality with your own uploaded music files Deezer at least allows 320kbps MP3 the last time I checked. When they introduced this feature back then, there was a limit at 192kbps MP3, I think. And when I started this thread, Amazon and Google Play Music still had a free file upload option which is gone by now, too, as far as I know.

As far as I can tell, most services, including Spotify, support the equivalent of 320Kbps MP3 audio. That's probably good enough for most people and I honestly probably can't tell the different between a good 320Kbps MP3 and a good 44.1KHz 16bit FLAC under most conditions. However, my personal preference is listen to lossless audio and I (and most people I would assume) can tell the difference between a well mastered 192Khz 24bit FLAC and an "ok" 320Kbps MP3. Plus, pretty much all modern smartphones nowadays support playing FLAC natively, so I don't see a valid reason for Tidal and Qobuz having that support (and Tidal supporting MQA) but Deezer not having support on their mobile apps for FLAC at all, including uploading and playing back FLAC files which this thread is about.

Deezer definitely needs to focus on adding support for this feature and HiFi on mobile which is requested here: https://en.deezercommunity.com/ideas/566

With Tidal I get too many errors (on mobile,web and desktop app) when trying to add songs to my library. Qobuz works better but it takes about 5 minutes to load my library, >9K according Soundiiz , and sometimes it crashes .

Both of them don't allow you to upload songs to prevent hacking I think, because their servers must have a high storage capacity. So heavy files aren't a problem, but Deezer perhaps has a lower storage capacity because at the beginning it was thought for mp3 files.

Actually Deezer claims to have 36million flac songs, they are making an effort to improve. Only 4 million behind Qobuz and 24 million behind Tidal (assuming that those 60million songs they claim to have are lossless)