For those of you who have used a music streaming service, which would you recommend? I’m not an audiophile but I have a bunch of smart speakers, and a decent stereo setup. I enjoy classical music, jazz, classic rock/folk, and random instrumental/ambient music. Also enjoy discovering new music. I researched the current prices for each service, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Thanks
Best Music Streaming Service
ForkSnorter on 04/06/2023 - 07:42
Last edited 04/06/2023 - 08:13
Last edited 04/06/2023 - 08:13
Poll Options
- 32Apple Music $12.99/month
- 11YouTube Music Premium $11.99/month
- 153YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium $14.99/month
- 232Spotify $11.99/month
- 3Amazon Music Unlimited $11.99/month
- 45Other streaming service
- 9Free streaming service with ads and limited ability to select individual songs/albums
Comments
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Turkey now, new india payment rules make it trickier.
Been using youtube music with youtube premium sub
Hah maybe I did change I’m not even sure anymore had it for years
Can you explain?
I'm still using this service from when I signed up many years ago.
Are you saying it's harder to sign up, but once you are signed up, it's all okay?
Yes
There is also the basic Amazon music free with prime, no adverts but limited ability to select songs.
I suggest using the free trials to find which suits you best.
I had the recent free trial of Apple music (2nd time), I find it's still very R&B heavy, every playlist or 'station' regardless of what genre or style was chosen (with a few exceptions like classical/kids) ends up with a lot of R&B style music in it.
Spotify seemed to work great for a short time with discovery, then it felt like it was replaying all the same songs and nothing new.
I prefer Deezer as I think it does the genre playlists much better, choose Indie get 60 songs in that style, choose lazy Sunday playlist and it's a bunch of tracks I would like to hear on a lazy Sunday.
The 'discovery' also seems to keep rotating in new songs from the other playlists you have listened to (whereas I didn't seem to get that with Spotify).
The deathcore station probably won't end up with R&B
I have had prog metal turn into R&B.
I have had AM since it started and never had this experience.
I've bounced between the services over the years and for me each has unique features:
- Apple Music: apple ecosystem integration and also heard there's a new classical music app
- Spotify: best cross-platform. Spotify connect is just amazing for moving between different devices, and also using one device to control another.
- Youtube Music: love the insta-switch to the music video tab, if you enjoy viewing videos of your music. Also no Youtube ads if you get the bundle, and super cheap cough
- Prime: limited music catalogue
My family is now stuck on Spotify due to habit but if I were completely up to me I would probably go Youtube Music for value and the music videos.
Youtube bundle? Isnt it all under one subscription. Or is it that i have been subbed since it was youtube red (or whatever the name was) and i get it all together for the lower $11.99 price?
I thought so too but according to OP’s post it may be separate now? Dunno.
If you're on it since YouTube Red days, I think you're on a grandfathered plan. Current pricing is A$14.99 for YouTube Premium, $22.99 for family plan. YouTube Premium does include YouTube Music Premium, but you can also get YouTube Music Premium as a standalone. $11.99 and $17.99 (family) for YouTube Music Premium. Assuming no country swap tricks or anything…
Only thing I don't like about YouTube Music is the fact that half the songs are labelled explicit. Then you play it and it's the radio edit/shitty Vimeo version from years ago and becomes a struggle to find the uncensored original
Tidal
If you've spent thousands of dollars on a nice audiophile system, getting a Tidal membership is a no-brainer to help you get the most out of your system.
I've A/B'd between Spotify Premium High Quality Streaming and Tidal's Master streaming, and the difference is noticeable on most songs. It's not night and day mind you, but the Tidal stream does usually sound richer with better clarity and depth. That said, Spotify is a more polished experience, but Tidal isn't too far off.
You can also VPN it for cheaper subscription.
As an Argentinean local, this is a far cheaper option. $0.95AUD last month
@ConsumerAffairs: I was forcefully deported from Argentina by Tidal. They just cut off my membership and won't let me resubscribe.
Tried signing up again with a new email and whatnot and they still rejected my subscription. It was really out of the blue too!
@thegazette: @CBrads4 All I could think is when you need to log back onto your account is to have your VPN on and be located at the right place when you sign in, the other thing is that I believe that you need to use a credit card through Mastercard or it won't accept payment, something to do with Visa cards needing to be registered locally. Hope that solves your issues.
Apple music has lossless up to 24-bit/192 kHz and many tracks are available in Atmos.
No idea if Tidal hifi plus is better but I suspect most people don't own audio gear where they could tell the difference.
Atmos doesn't really make a huge difference on stereo setups, I suspect Apple vs Tidal lossless would be very similar if not identical in sound quality.
Absolutely correct about needing the right gear though, for most people Spotify is perfectly fine and comes with nice social features.
Anything listed as "Master" on Tidal is MQA which is not a lossless format. They do have quite a few lossless tracks still though and from what I've read they are rolling out FLAC but I'm not sure when that is complete. Apple Music's ALAC is lossless but its main problem is that on MacOS you need to use a third party tool like Lossless Switcher for it to automatically do the bit rate switching for you. Hopefully they fix that with Sonoma this year. That isn't an issue on iOS.
I did enjoy tidal when I had a free plan for a few months. But found I really only used it when sitting at a PC. Everywhere else it was Spotify.
It’s got mobile apps 🤷
Anything that you can use on the move isn’t good enough to benefit from it really
1337x and flac them to your phone, so…. self stream
<did I cross the line?>
BT4G is better but agree with local files etc.
RIP in peace rargb :(
To me, 61 and not very special speakers, they're much of the sameness re catalogue and sound. It comes down to price. I've bought Family Tidal and Spotify, but from overseas. $1 and $4, respectively. Re smart speakers, Spotify integrates very nicely wherever you have your Amazon account. To get the Tidal skill you need to have an Amazon US account (free will do). Tidal uses higher bps but without decent kit and ears I doubt it's noticeable.
I have the same Tidal plan. They can pry it from my cold dead hands. I was always disappointed that only Amazon US accounts could use Alexa. I never even considered that I could create a US account to get it working so thank you for the information.
You can stream Tidal to your Amazon devices. Play on PC and id the stream, https://github.com/1Panic/AlexaPcStreaming. You need to follow to step 1. Instead of doing the rest, 2. Find a domain, etc., install https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MQ7LFCT. Set the stream as a custom radio and away you go. Anything you play on your PC you can listen to on your devices. There's a delay between PC and devices so you need to turn the PC down.
Whats the tidal deal with amazon?
Get yourself a US Amazon account and you can use the skill, https://www.amazon.com/TIDAL-Music-AS/dp/B07KK5VKD2. Only available for US.
Join a Spotify family plan on OzB Classifieds and you'll only pay $38 for the whole year.
@CrispyChrispy do you have a link to that?
Can't link you my family specifically because it's full already.
Have you done a search yet? I'm sure there's at least a few if you just search for Spotify.
Use Spotify with xManager on Android and uBlock Origin in your browser and pay $0 per year.
You can also just download an add free apk and sideload. Only issue is you can't have the highest quality bitrates.
Is that like Revanced Manager for YouTube?
It's similar, yes. I also prefer it to downloading the apks because you can get the update as soon as the xManager team roll it out.
Spotify can afford to be cheap because they pay musicians micro-peanuts.
So then just steal it by using one of the various methods.
I still mp3. 128k bps. On winamp.
Cool, forgot about the new version,
Wow old school. I remember winamp, and their different skins.
It really kicks the Lamas ass
whips the llama's ass
I still use Winamp because Foobar sucks. I hope that's 128CBR and not VBR too haha
Still good enough
I'm old fashioned to. I listen to music stored on a hard drive, but my player of choice is "Media Monkey". It supports Winamp plugins though, and I use one called Stereo Tool which, among other things has a parametric compressor. I Android I use "Neutron Music Player", which has a compressor too and can play Opus files. On my PC most of the files I listen to are 16bit 44KHz lossless (Flac or Ape).
I still like Pandora, mostly for their search algo that finds music similar to music you like.
Pandora
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
I like Pandora because I prefer listening to similar artists most of the time. Iheartradio is also good for that.
Tidal gang unite!
Bandcamp
I dropped Spotify to save some money as Youtube Music comes with my Youtube Premium so it's essentially free. And Premium only costs about $3 p/month via India. Spotify is also annoying, constantly pushing their stupid podcasts.
I've got both. I like YouTube because it often has niche songs that can be hard to find on Spotify or other services (probably because someone has uploaded an unofficial version onto YouTube which has been picked up). But I do like the playlists better on Spotify - whether it's creating my own playlists (takes an eternity to try and sort any existing playlist in YouTube) or the range of playlists available.
Yeah I agree with you, the playlists on Spotfiy are definitely better.
Unless it's a large playlist and you like to randomise/shuffle your playlists. It's well know Spotify's playlist shuffling is extremely broken.
I really don’t think you can go wrong. I switched to Apple Music for better integration with my car and devices. What I like about it over Spotify is no podcasts or audiobooks crammed down your throat. I also like that it’s lossless, has music videos and concerts, real radio shows by artists, and integration with TuneIn and iHeart. It’s not as social as Spotify though so if that’s your bag you’ll pretty much miss out.
If you are using apple devices Apple Music is the way to go. Particularly if you are using AirPods. Apple Music with AirPods sounds noticeably better than Spotify. This is because the audio encoding used by Apple Music is the same as the encoding sent to AirPods. So it only has to be decoded once. With Spotify it comes in as Ogg. Gets decoded at the device and gets encoded as AAC to be sent to the AirPods.
I don't believe this is correct since the audio still needs to be mixed in with system audio at some point in the pipeline.
Also, Apple Music has lossless tiers which need to be downsampled anyway.
You could be right. However, if you listen to Spotify and Apple Music side-by-side using AirPods and an iPhone it’s night and day. Using Galaxy buds it sounds pretty much the same. There is definitely something going on here
I don’t like to use earphones for music, as I don’t think they’re good for your hearing long-term.
Never heard earphones are bad for hearing longterm. Excessive listening volumes, yes, but not the earphones themselves. Source
I also find them uncomfortable after about 30 mins because my ears start to become itchy.
Spotify for $5.99/mth "Premium Student"
I have been using the Youtube red for the last few years. $18 per month across six users (different households). Also, paying with 10% discounted gift cards. So, $2.7 per user per month.
DEFUNCT GOOGLE PLAY MUSIC >>> YOUTUBE MUSIC >>>>>
Seriously I can't believe how bad YouTube music on Android is. Doesn't integrate well with Google assistant. Keeps turning on autoplay for no reason. Widget does nothing when you press play most of the time. Randomly stops playing while driving.
The only thing that "just works" is how easy it is to set up the India payment method via VPN.
Spotify user here. Happy with it. Got a family plan to divide up the cost between friends haha.
I have prime, and use prime music sometimes, but it's not that great. What's actually funny too, is prime music doesn't work well with my echo speakers in my home, Spotify actually works better with them.If you listen to non-English songs, one thing to consider is Spotify has much better handling of metadata than Apple Music e.g. lots on Chinese songs have Romanised names on Apple Music which makes searching near impossible.
I'm on Tidal HiFi Plus, and yes, I'm paying a premium for it, but I'm lucky enough to have a really great stereo setup.
If it isn't in my vinyl collection, it is probably being streamed on Tidal as MQA.I'm not a fan of MQA, or SACD DSD for that matter. Losslessly compressed 24bit 96KHz wavs should be the quality standard. That is what Blurays use.
Thanks everyone, most of these services offer a 1-month free trial so I'm going to try them one after the other, starting with Apple Music. I had Spotify premium a few years ago, so don't need to try that.
spotify free is unbearable for classical music, long pieces are split into the shortest possible movements for monetisation purposes - so you'll be halfway through a piece and get an ad
Youtube revanced. I'll pay with my metadata thanks.
Spotify algorithm is the best if you are into exploring new music. I had to save several of their Daily mix because everything was my jam.
However, sound quality is subpar comparing to YouTube music. The volume is painfully low (not an issue if you use headphone, but will be obvious on a speaker) and their compressor is not the best.
Free YouTube and YouTube music with an ad-blocker (including vanced)
not possible with IOS. If you know how, please share. Thanks
Yes I was speaking as an Android user……sorry :(
I have a Google Play music subscription at the moment but am really tempted by Amazon because HD quality is included with the base subscription, whereas it cost extra with the other services. The only thing holding me back is my wife has the free Amazon music service included with Prime and she says the Android app is rubbish and unstable.
Apple also has the dedicated classical app included. Theres also presto but its very niche - classical and jazz only
I dislike Spotify from an Audio Quality standpoint, but as far as integration with devices, playback through multiple devices, algorithms for suggesting music and also more people using it so group playlists for parties etc, it just wins out.
Tidal via an Argentine VPN for signup (and a Mastercard, as laws in Argentina require Visa cards to be registered in Argentina only) for currently (depending on $ rate) $1.40 per month. This is for the highest tier plan with Master quality available and for up to 5 users.
My wife has YouTube Music and it annoys me how disorganized it is, and the sound quality.
Tidal probably doesn't have the best UI but has been getting better since I started using it about 3-4 years ago.
I have the same plan using a Mastercard that expires roughly 12 months from now. I'm worried it won't be easy to change the card or MC will need to be from the country too.
Anyone know if you can use VPN to get cheaper mixcloud subs?
I don't rate apple if you you smart devices. I have google home and when I had default streaming set to Apple music, whenever I ask to play a track it works 50% of the time, and when it does work it almost always plays some random live or remixed version rather than the normal release version. And in the rare case that it happens to play the release version, it's always the radio edit with beeps/silences for anything not G rated.
Switch default back to Spotify or YouTube music and it all works flawlessly shrug maybe google purposefully nerfing apple functionality? Or just my setup working poorly for some reason.
Also, Spotify happily supported spruiking anti vax misinformation nonsense from JRE podcast, so I try not to use them either.
So I guess YouTube music gets the vote from me!
Ask your Google Home to "enable pairing mode" then use it as a bluetooth speaker.
Apple Music. Shared on the family plan is like $7 per person per month, but comes with all the other Apple perks. Apple TV I use a lot, Apple Fitness never, the shared 2TB storage we all use. Ad free news is nice.
Free Spotify with SpotX-Bash
Spotify Family at TRY39,99 / month
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You can get YouTube and YouTube music for cheap with the India trick btw
If you love classic apple has a whole dedicated service for it. I share an apple 1 sub with some others here and for 1 year it’s 80 something. Worth imo especially if you have headphones/earphones with spatial audio support