Comparison of audio quality in streaming services

 

            With rapidly increasing demand for streaming services in the past ten years, major companies like Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify had to overcome many difficulties on their road to success. One of the major problems, most platforms had to solve, was storage capacity and availability. While we as consumers are enjoying our content without ever thinking about what is happening behind the curtains, YouTube, for example, has changed its video loading from full to partial, to decrease the load of thousands of users on its servers. Netflix, like many others, adopted this approach, but the most valuable helper for all of them is compression.

            Without compression, streaming would not be possible as we know it today. It decreases the size of raw files and reduces the bandwidth required to transmit the stream to any compatible device. Without it, raw files would exclude many from streamed content over the internet due to normal connection speeds not being adequate. The second reason is compatibility. Being able to stream content on any popular device on the market is crucial, therefore the container, where the raw files are compressed, needs to be universally playable. Although compression enables us to enjoy our movies and songs whenever we want, it comes with a major drawback. In order to decrease the size of a file, some data has to be removed. Upon decompression for playback, an approximation of the original is created. In my work, I will compare audio from major streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and band platform Bandcamp with original uncompressed wav file from a studio recording, to find out how these platforms handle compression and subsequent decompression of their streamed audio files.

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