Best Music Streaming Service

[TechPhobia]

So here is my review of the best music streaming services at the moment. All criticism is welcome, in fact please do criticise.

What is a music streaming service?

This is a service that allows you to stream (or listen to) songs over the internet. Think of it as your personal radio. These services will collect a fee and in return you can listen to an unlimited amount of music.

How much do they cost?

Most of the streaming options available will cost you around £10 per month. They all offer a trial period and some offer a free option that has adverts.

I’ve already bought loads of song on itunes, is all that money i've spent a waste?

Yes and No. Some of these services allow you to upload songs that you have already bought, however the process can be hard to do with some services, and the songs might already be available to stream.

Which one is the best?

Until about a year ago there was only one big service out there, Spotify. However in the last year TIDAL has been launched by Jay-Z, Google decided it wanted to have a go and more recently apple launched their new streaming service

Before we get started I just wanted to mention a amazing service called Soundizz that allows you to transfer playlists from one service to another or from one account to another. Just go to soundiiz.com to find out more.

Also DO NOT BUY these services though the apps in the apple app store as they will be 30% more expensive instead go to their own website.

Tidal

TIDAL has two pricing tiers: £9.99 and £19.99, both allow to access all of the 30 million songs that are available on tidal but the more expensive option allows you to listen to music at cd quality, but be careful this will eat through your data. There is currently no student option available.

The service offers a 30 day free trial.

The service was easy to setup. After installing the app you have to choose which tier you want, we choose the cheaper. You can then either register with an email address or login with facebook or twitter. It then asks you to enter you billing info, after this we just clicked ‘get started with tidal’ and that was the setup process complete.

Tidal offers playlists, articles and interview from music journalists, meaning there are professionally made playlists ready for you to listen to from the beginning. They also offer over 75,000 full hd music videos straight in the app. Another feature that should be standard on all streaming services in offline mode, which means that you don't have to have internet wherever you go to listen.

The app interface is clean and easy to use. I really liked the TIDAL rising and TIDAL discovery areas that lets you find new and upcoming stars as well as great music that is increase in popularity on TIDAL. Audio quality is great but don't get the £19.99 per month option unless you have got some seriously nice headphones to listen through (more than £250). The genres section is great, making is easy to find great music. TIDAL also has a fair amount of exclusives or early access songs.

Overall TIDAL is great but there is nothing that makes it shine over spotify, apple music, or play music.

Spotify

Spotify offers both a free service and a premium service. Premium costs £9.99 per month. However a student discount is available bringing to cost down to £4.99 per month, to get this deal use this link to sign up to unidays, anyone with a school or uni email address can use this. There is also family option available, where you pay full price for the first account and 50% for any other accounts after that, not really worth it.

The free service isn't great, you're going to be much better of using youtube.

The signup process for spotify is really really easy. You download the app, type in you email, date of birth, username and password. And that’s it you're done. You know have a free account, to upgrade and use a free 30 days trial, swipe across and click get premium for ad-free listing.

There is no option to upload songs that you have already bought, however it does let you play music brought on itunes but only if you are using the pc or mac version.

The app is good well designed, with a discover section for finding new music, a charts section that is missed out on some other apps.  My favorite thing about this app is the radio feature. This allows you to pick a song and spotify will play other songs based around that one, it doesn't sound that great but believe me it is.

One thing that annoyed me is that you can only play music from one online device, forcing you to buy another account.

Playlists are easy to make and if you can't  be bothered there are thousands already created. Nearly any song you name will be on spotify with a few exceptions. These playlists can be easily saved for offline use. Spotify plays great with sonos and other network speakers. Overall spotify is a solid option for music streaming.

Google Play Music All Access

Well that a long name. Play Music is google's attempt at the music streaming. And well it's really good.

It costs £9.99 per month (spotting a trend yet) and also you guessed it comes with a 30 day free trial to see if you like it.

The app is available on ios, android and online, and is really orange. It is a great app to use and with over 30 million songs available you are never short of songs. A massive feature that I love about Play Music is the ability to move you music you bought on itunes or already own (or stole?) up to the site so that those precious itunes gift cards haven't gone to waste.

The setup process is easy you just log into your google account and click the subscribe button in the menu. After entering your payment information, you are asked to take a quick quiz about what music & artists you like.

You can take with you up to 20,000 songs of you personal collection to the service to add to their 30 million that are available. They also allow you to download for offline play up to 20,000 songs per device.

They have loads of great stations(playlists) that can be searched by genre, activity, mood or decade. As well as a new releases and top charts section.

Another great feature is that you can use your account on upto 10 different devices at the same time. We also liked that fact that you can listen to music on youtube without adverts and you can close the youtube app or turn your screen off and the music will keep playing.

Another feature is the radio stations that constantly update based on the type of music that you like. You can also reorder, add and delete songs on any radio station as they are all personalized to you.

One thing we thought that play music missed was the interaction with artists and social media.

Apple Music

Apple has jumped in on the streaming market with Apple Music. There are two tiers on offer £9.99 for an individual subscription or £14.99 for a family account that allows up to 6 different family members, provided family sharing is turned on.

The app comes pre installed when you update your ios device to ios 8.4 and an android version is coming in the autumn. You can also listen through iTunes on on both pc and mac.

The service comes with a 24hr radio station based out of london, LA and New York. It features well known radio DJ’s such as Zane Lowe. As well as social features that aim to bring artists and fans closer together. The best thing though is that apple is giving you a 3 month free trial.

With the standard subscription you can only listen on one device at a time, on the family account upto 6 devices.

There are 6 main sections in the app. For you, this features songs and artists based on what you have chosen as your favourites as well as songs that you have hearted. This section also features playlists created by real life music experts. New, shows newly released songs, albums and charts. Radio, this is where Beats 1 lives the 24 star studded hour radio station. This radio station has a focus on new and upcoming songs and artists. Connect, is a sort of music social network letting you ‘connect’ with artists and bands by following them like on instagram of twitter. My Music, this is where all of you music is found. Playlists, this is where playlists that you have created or followed live.

I dont like the design of apple music, it's cluttered and full of well just stuff.

Overall apple music is an alright service that a lot of people will end up using because it’s got apple in it.

Conclusion - Price

They all basically cost the same £9.99. If you are a student spotify offers a 50% discount that no others offer at the moment. Apple Music offers a decently priced family plan, spotify does not. Tidal tries to charge £240 a year for it’s high quality streaming service.

The Winner: Tie for individuals, Spotify wins for students and Apple Wins for families

Conclusion - Quality

Spotify offers 320 kb/s, apple offers 256 kb/s, google offers 320 kb/s, tidal offers 1411 kb/s.

The Winner: Tidal

(kb/s are the unit used to measure digital music quality)

Conclusion - Features

Spotify offers a decent personalized radio service as does google. Apple goes one better and provides an entire category in their app dedicated to personalized music. Tidal is the weak link here not really offering any of these features. Apple also offers a 24hr radio station.

The Winner: Tie between all of them - Apple Music and Spotify

Conclusion - User Interface

Spotify wins this hands down with tidal and google coming in second, apple comes in last here.

Verdict

Apple Music - Families ( However you might have to wait till autumn if you have a android phone)

Google Play Music - Googlers

Spotify - Individuals and Students

Tidal - Audiophiles

Overall Winner - Spotify

 

For original Review - techme.xyz/1eh16lR

 

Thanks, Ben

[OfficialJsP]

Read the CoC please.

[Volbet]

Directing traffic to your own site is unfortunatly not allowed: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/95599-linus-tech-tips-forum-code-of-conduct/

You are more than welcome to post your review directly onto LTT, which I would recommend, since you have written a pretty nice review. 

 

However, there is a couple of things.

1. Why did you skip Xbox Music? I know it's not a big competitor, but it's still a competitor.
2. I would have like to see some sort of test of the music quality, since most of the services stream not only at different compression rates, but also in different audio formats. Blind test it with a couple of your friends. 

[TechPhobia]

Thanks will post directly, the review is aimed more at those that don't really get technology, will edit first post now. 

[TechPhobia]

Read the CoC please.

Is that ok now?

[TechPhobia]

 

Directing traffic to your own site is unfortunatly not allowed: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/95599-linus-tech-tips-forum-code-of-conduct/

You are more than welcome to post your review directly onto LTT, which I would recommend, since you have written a pretty nice review. 

 

However, there is a couple of things.

1. Why did you skip Xbox Music? I know it's not a big competitor, but it's still a competitor.
2. I would have like to see some sort of test of the music quality, since most of the services stream not only at different compression rates, but also in different audio formats. Blind test it with a couple of your friends. 

 

Is that ok now?

[Volbet]

Is that ok now?

The formatting is a bit off. The pictures need to be reinserted, and you might need to play around with the colouring of the letter. It's pretty hard to read on the dark theme.

Other than that, everything should be in order.

[msvelev]

I'm using Google Play Music All Access and can't be happier

A plus is that it's 8BGN/month here, which is roughly 4.5USD...

[PC POWER]

Spotify is amazing, it's all you need.

[TechPhobia]

What did you guys think of the article

[TechPhobia]

The formatting is a bit off. The pictures need to be reinserted, and you might need to play around with the colouring of the letter. It's pretty hard to read on the dark theme.

Other than that, everything should be in order.

Hosting the images on my server now, seems to have fixed the problem and made load time faster