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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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

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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.

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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

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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)

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This is useful information. I'll probably be dropping Qobuz and Deezer after the trials end, and switch to being a paid subscriber to Tidal. It's sad that I'll be losing the lyrics feature that Deezer has, but what's more important to me is a large collection of lossless audio. If and when Deezer adds the ability to upload your own FLAC files and, most importantly, adds the ability to stream lossless audio on mobile devices, I'll almost certainly be switching to Deezer, as those things will make it a clear winner out of the bunch.

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Hello Deezer. The FLAC quality should also be enabled in the browser. There is absolutely no excuse not to go ahead. If on the same machine it can be streamed via the app then it can be streamed directly into the browser and played back. Does not matter whether mobile or desktop browser.

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So I just checked my own idea from a year ago, and it seems the Google link still works, the Amazon Music link does not, as they don't allow (free?) uploads anymore, but still play your old uploaded files (which also scrobble with browser extension Web Scrobbler in their web player). Furthermore they offer HD streaming now in lossless HiRes format, as some of you might know. The link of @Flo.Deezer to the separate idea about scrobbling MP3 files was broken, the idea is marked as "Not implemented" now.

Anyhow, I still would like to have the option to upload FLAC files anywhere. 😉 As @Rudi mentioned somewhere else recently, the HiFi/FLAC catalogue on Deezer is almost as big as the general catalogue now, i.e. above 50 million tracks, so the need for uploading FLAC files may not be as urgent anymore. For example my old uploaded MP3 files were by Peter Gabriel who was not available back then, but is now, even in FLAC streaming. Probably there are enough examples of other less known artists who are still not available or not anymore on Deezer, so please vote for this idea if you want to upload this kind of music in a lossless format and listen to it on any device.

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Let us upload our own flac files to deezer if we are premium and if we are not premium let us upload mp3s and then you auto match the metadata so the artwork appears and lyrics and let it be synced with the cloud if we are premium so we can have some sort of private cloud playlists to play our music if we are premium

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Hi there @sergisanztora 

Thank you for your suggestion. I've moved your comment here so that you can support an already existing idea :thumbsup_tone2:

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Uploading mp3 files is an outdated thing. We would like to be able to upload our own flac files.

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Hi @sergiesainz please vote for it at the top of this page. The more user voices we have the easier it is to convince our product managers to implement this feature 

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Right, FLAC upload would also be another advantage for Deezer vs. competitors. I think the uploader tool needs an update anyhow, as some important features are missing like a progress bar while uploading, so why not just add the FLAC format while you’re at it? 

Meanwhile HiFi streaming is also available on mobile devices and in the web player, so uploaded FLAC files should of course also be playable in those devices.

By the way, the former idea of scrobbling uploaded MP3s is a normal thread now, so you cannot vote for it anymore, only like it. I don’t know if this is a good or bad sign or no sign for anything at all.

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We'll be looking into that @bluezzbastardzz I believe it's because we've passed the idea to our devs already. Likes or votes work roughly the same.

About the other suggestions, we'll pass it on 

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Yes, uploading flac would be great, we really need it. Do this for a Hi-Fi subscription. And if this will heavily load the server, I think you can increase the price by 5-10%.

But in the meantime, let's talk about unofficial ways. If you rename it .flac to .mp3 on your PC, it will still be lossless (you can see this by looking at the spectrogram), as well as the size and bitrate will be saved. This way you can upload it to deezer. And the size will remain the same, you can check this by pressing F12, and opening the Network tab before starting the song. But the only problem is that playback will not start, you will get an error. I tried using a web player, and a PC app. Perhaps someone can write some extension and get around this error. I've also tried it on my phone and there's no error there, but I don't know if it's lossless there. Since I can't hear the difference on the phone

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Thanks for sharing your experience @FiftyFour it's quite interesting to see how you creatively looked for a solution. Will pass your feedback to our devs 

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Do you plan to add this at all? If so, is there at least an approximate time frame? In the coming months?
 

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It isn't on the plans for now, as we've got other exciting features coming up this year but things can change pretty rapidly @viviano - because of your comment I've also asked our devs for an update. If anything comes up, we'll be sharing here in the community 

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This idea needs more votes 

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Hello, I'm from Brazil and I would love if I could upload my flac files. I renamed the flac files to mp3 and I could upload them and they are playable on the android app but on the web player they aren't but I don't know if the files are really lossless when I play them on my smartphone because I don't if the used decoder is for mp3 or flac.

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