[Discussion] What music streaming service do you use?

[ELECTRISK]

Pirates and youtube users be gone.

 

For those who pay for a premium music streaming service (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, etc.), What do you use any why?

[xdeathshot20]

i personally use spotify.  have a great selection of music with some remixes that i like.  

[it_dont_work]

Maybe I'm too old now, I still own all my music...and still use winamp 

[Max_Settings]

Tidal.

[uspoloassassin]

I really like spotify because they have the best value for students. With a student account you get premium and the basic hulu account. The sound quality holds up well when compared to my FLAC files too.

[lieder1987]

Apple Music all day.

[Volbet]

YouTube Music, but I rarely use it as I prefer to create a local music library over streaming my music.

[kirashi]

3 hours ago, ELECTRISK said:

Pirates and youtube users be gone.

 

For those who pay for a premium music streaming service (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, etc.), What do you use any why?

Spotify because it's the only music streaming service that offers true cross platform compatibility, social media integration, and just enough of a developer API that we can have custom playlist generators as well as music recommendations that actually make sense. That being said, I do miss Songza, so Google Play music would be my second choice since they bought & integrated that into their playlist system.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

10 hours ago, it_dont_work said:

Maybe I'm too old now, I still own all my music...

Oh, I'm definitely too old. I have 585 CDs (each ripped to my computer as both .wav and 320kbps .mp3), 76 downloads, mostly singles (I prefer buying CDs because they have better quality and documentation than downloads), and one audio extraction from a Celtic Woman Christmas DVD.

[Doobeedoo]

None.

[jasonvp]

Slacker.  Been using it for... oh Jesus... almost a decade?

[Lathlaer]

12 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Tidal.

Same here, though once I'm done compiling my playlist I'm thinking of getting specific separate HD tracks to compare them to the quality of hi-fi/master stream

[johnt]

Amazon Music. Decent quality... I don’t notice the compression as much as other services. Let’s me download music to our devices for offline playback. Pretty much every song under the sun for $80 a year. The AutoRip feature is pretty slick because we still buy 1 or 2 CDs per year for our older cars.

 

Although I do wish they provided more refined family plans. It jumps from 1 user for $80 to 5 users for $150 a year. I can’t justify a nearly 2x cost increase for my wife and I.

[NuclearPenske7]

YouTube Music (subscribed to YT Premium). I find it having the most extensive library and exploration is second to only Apple Music.

[ShredBird]

I've been jumping around.  I've used Spotify, Tidal and currently I'm test driving Deezer.  From a usability standpoint, Spotify is on point.  Their apps are the best designed and have the most intuitive features.  That being said, I like having a large amount of tracks in my virtual library and it caps out at 10,000 which is way too small.

I've tried Tidal for their Hi-Fi which I like a lot, but their track availability didn't hold a candle to Spotify, maybe it's better now.  Deezer is okay, it needs some more polish and ability to download lossless on the mobile app, I might be switching back to Tidal or Spotify soon.

Haven't given Google/YT music a shot, might be worth a try.

I wish streaming services would use a better codec than MP3 these days.  There are much better codecs out there these days.  I guess that's one thing Apple does right, they could just stand to use a higher bitrate.

[NinJake]

Used Spotify all through college due to the 4.99/month plan. Now I still use Spotify and think the 9.99/month is very reasonable for the amount of time I have music running in the background.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, JohnT said:

Amazon Music. Decent quality... I don’t notice the compression as much as other services...

I won't download music from Amazon anymore. Their rips are often flawed and the tagging is a joke.

[Max_Settings]

4 hours ago, Lathlaer said:

Same here, though once I'm done compiling my playlist I'm thinking of getting specific separate HD tracks to compare them to the quality of hi-fi/master stream

Always a good idea. I also have a good bit of local FLAC files.

[it_dont_work]

8 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Oh, I'm definitely too old. I have 585 CDs (each ripped to my computer as both .wav and 320kbps .mp3), 76 downloads, mostly singles (I prefer buying CDs because they have better quality and documentation than downloads), and one audio extraction from a Celtic Woman Christmas DVD.

Being I was a studio recording engineer for 12 years, and now work higher up in music business, I kinda like owning stuff.  

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, it_dont_work said:

Being I was a studio recording engineer for 12 years, and now work higher up in music business, I kinda like owning stuff.  

I agree. Why keep paying for the same thing over and over? I can also build my own playlists and access my music anytime I want without depending on an internet connection. Then there is the better quality that usually comes from CDs.

[johnt]

8 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

I won't download music from Amazon anymore. Their rips are often flawed and the tagging is a joke.

Really? My wife and I haven’t come across any weird tagging issues or flawed rips.

 

Sometimes I hear distortion in some songs. Can’t tell if it’s my DAC or headphones or home speakers or what. I want to try tidal but the price is a bit steep. 

[FezBoy]

Spotify, with audio coming from the web app, controlled via the desktop app.  Paired w/ uBlock origin, it's essentially free premium, as long as you don't listen with your phone.

[Rauten]

I'm gonna be the odd one (so far) and say Pandora.

Started using it looong, long ago, shortly after they began to operate I believe, and my main music station is so tweaked and trained I can't imagine switching to another service and starting from scratch.

[Exaco]

Youtube, i know it has the worst quality, but it has video and overall everything and most comfortable to use and if needed i just find FLAC's to bring into my local library, but usually it just sounds the same to me even youtube vs flac besides that youtube is being slightly more muffled so i dont bother too much with HiFi formats.

On mobile: Spotify

@JohnT I bet its the audio files, because in my case some FLAC's sounds really good even they cover pretty much same audio frequency, while others ( mostly modern 2014+ ) sounds distorted af e.g. Ellie Goulding - Codes.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

8 hours ago, JohnT said:

Really? My wife and I haven’t come across any weird tagging issues or flawed rips.

 

Sometimes I hear distortion in some songs. Can’t tell if it’s my DAC or headphones or home speakers or what. I want to try tidal but the price is a bit steep. 

I listen mostly to classical music and I'm pretty darned particular in how my music sounds. I frequently got stretches of distortion or even outright static in Amazon downloads (any distortion or static, even if only occasionally or briefly, is completely unacceptable). Tagging often has composer and artist transposed (if it has even been tagged), etc. or the tagging doesn't even get the name of the music correct. Bit rate ranges from 128kbps to 220kbps; 220kbps isn't too bad but 128kbps is definitely unaccptable. I've redownloaded bad downloads with no joy so it's the rips themselves, not the downloading process that is the problem. My speakers play my own rips just fine so the speakers aren't the problem.