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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Apple One (Apple Music + Apple TV), family plan is like ~$6/month from India. $1/user but they all have to have Indian Apple ID's.
Still have YT Music, but at home have Alexa devices now which prompted me to switch as Alexa devices don't support YT Music.
Radio stations cost nothing
Also full of ads, boring conversation, and a lot of uninteresting music.
Stop listening to commercial radio. Community radio is amazing! PBS and RRR in Melbourne. But there are 1000's of radio stations available on the internet, all for free
Radio audio quality is also trash-tier compared to any of the streaming services
Not sure what you are listening to but they sound great for me
I listen to FM radio and the audio quality is jarringly noticeable with how inferior it is to anything streamed. What do you listen to with better audio quality???
Only time and cognitive cycles (ads / boring talk)
Commercial radio agree, there are 1000s of other stations on the internet
Tidal and seriously how can I not vote for this
I had Spotify before and I loved the big catalogue of music. I’m sure they have the most music. But Apple Music does sound better in my car. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because I use the Apple Music app on my iPhone and they use some sort of apple magic ju ju? Either way, Apple Music sounds better. Spotify has a better user interface and more music. But overall, I tend to listen to independent music on Bandcamp more than either one so I don’t have any really preference.
Do a trial of both and see which one you prefer. The biggest problem is when you start to make playlists. Then you have to commit to one app or the other.
There is also the French radio app “fip” it’s free and they have heaps of interesting jazz and indie music. Could be your sort of thing.
If your smart speaker is google, and you're likely someone who is going to make a big playlist of music to play on shuffle/random (over 100 songs) then DO NOT get Spotify. I like many other ran into issues where Spotify would only shuffle the first 99 songs in a playlist. So you'll never hear most of your music if this is how you like to listen to music.
This might apply to other smart speakers too, I just know it was an issue with Spotify on Google smart speakers for years and it's something Spotify implemented/haven't fixed on their end and refused to fix for some reason.
I and many others switched to YouTube music due to it, but for me Spotify also messed up their phone app and a few other things too which made the choice to switch away from them easier (also the fact you can't share a song to someone who doesn't have an account is just shit of them)
Spotify shuffle could be better but that ain't true - I have my 1.7k playlist that goes through TONS of music, in various locations within the list
No, its true, their shuffle issues are well documented. Pay more attention and you'll start to realise you never hear a lot of your music library and it repeats songs constantly. I had a playlist of a couple thousand songs and would hear the same song multiple times a day and wouldn't hear about 80 percent of my playlist at all when using the app. When you play through a smart speaker it gets worse as it will only shuffle through the first 99 songs.
The latter issue with the smart speakers may have ben solved by now, no idea, I switched away years ago like many others. But a quick google shows the general shuffle issue still persists.
What I'm trying to tell you is that I do pay attention, and the entire 1.7k playlist does get shuffled through. Just had a quick skim of my playlist, and I can roughly remember how recently most of the songs were played. This is at various numbers of the playlist, from the single digits through to the thousands. This is through my phone and through smart speaker and PC.
Pay more attention and you'll start to realise you never hear a lot of your music library and it repeats songs constantly
Yeah, because our brain isn't just amazing at finding patterns that don't exist.
But I'm not trying to say that Spotify shuffle is perfect or even great (there is very likely some weighted bias which skews listening) but I'm just saying that the first 99 songs of a playlist are not all that is played and it is inaccurate@DiscountForThee: The first 99 songs was in relation to the smart speaker issue specifically. Up until a couple years ago spotify would only shuffle the first 99 songs in a playlist (see link below).
A quick search brings up tonnes of support tickets for the shuffle functionality still acting very poorly and skipping massive swathes of music for a lot of people, so seems there are still massive issues going on and many people reporting hearing the same song multiple times in a day (and constantly), and not hearing some songs ever from their large playlists.
I'd not be touching Spotify again until they fix the shuffle/playlist issues. Probably fine if you dont listen to music that way though.
@DiscountForThee: One of many examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/8n8ud8/spotify_shu…
@DiscountForThee: Lol, people have even resorted to creating additional apps to actually shuffle/randomise your Spotify playlists.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.virock.vir…
@SkMed: A few points:
1) If you search the internet for "[music service] shuffle", then you'll literally encounter dozens / hundreds / thousands of posts of people complaining about the shuffle mechanics. The amount of posts is pretty much just proportional to the service popularity (not necessarily with how "bad" the issue is).
2) Things which are truly random or as close to random as a PC is generally able to get, often to not feel random. Well documented with the iPod Shuffle .
3) People are inherently great at finding patterns, and terrible at realising their biases. Gamblers fallacy exists for a reason, and people picking up on shuffle randomness isn't far off on the pattern recognition part of our brains.
4) I'm not suggesting that the current implementation is perfect@DiscountForThee: I see what you're saying, and fully aware re random not really being technically possible with computing etc. and how sometimes random can sometimes not feel random etc. But something is definitely messed up with Spotify specifically, at least its noticeably worse with Spotify than YT music which is what I switched to and never encountered such issues.
From what I've read its to do with Spotify's algorithms forcing popular artists down your throat which I'm really not cool with. They also blatantly and obviously do this when independent artists try share their music and it plays a random mainstream artist if you aren't logged in/have an account which I think is pretty F**ed. (If you're not aware of this one, try logging out of Spotify, grabbing a link posted form an independent artist to a song on spotify they released and play it, it'll start playing Nickelback or something random/shit).
I switched to YT music mostly due to the shuffle issues and can honestly say I've never encountered any shuffling issues since switching about 5 years ago. Seems legitimately random and I hear all my random music, not just a select handful of songs over and over. Spotify got so bad that I legitimately forgot many bands even existed of which I had hundreds of songs from and never heard a single one while shuffling through my music.
FYI, I was a huge supporter of Spotify when it first launched, they began leaving a bad taste in my mouth ever since they removed the ability to load your own music/mp3's into their app to shuffle through with the spotify music. The shuffle issues were the last straw.
Seems they may have finally fixed the smart speaker issues in 2021 or so (reported since 2016). Found one of the original support tickets. They didn't action for YEARS and had thousands of people reporting and asking for fixes for years.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Connect-only…
But alas, the general shuffle issues continue, just jump on google, seems it still has major issues, I'd not be using spotify again until its confirmed as being fixed, seems to just throw a lot of your music in the bin.
I love Tidal as the quality is superb. But It's hard to justify when their integration is so poor.
I recently moved to a Denon 2ch receiver to pair with my Klipsch speakers - for whatever reason Denon used the cheapest of the cheap bluetooth module (no AptX or anything) and the tweeters sound like they oscillate at moderate volume making it unplayable.The network aspect of the received does support Tidal but you can only access it through the HEOS app which is utter garbage. So now I need to spend more $$ on a "Tidal Connect compatible device" which is frustrating.
So for the OP, I'd say Tidal is probably not the best option, especially if integrating with Smart Speakers - I know Google doesn't integrate with it at all.
I rate Amazon music, the unlimited Amazon music has up to lossless playback and the music library is decent and i like the app its easy to use and navigate.
I tried Tidal premium as my DAP supports it and its okay doesn't sound better than Amazon music in HD/ HD ultra. For me Tidal had less songs overall but it has all the new and latest songs, if you want older songs they might be hard to find. The app is just okay and curated playlist are not as good as Amazon and Spotify.
This is where Spotify shines it has best the library you can usually find all those random songs that are hard to find. Music quality is fine for most even if its compressed it still sounds okay. Most older songs won't even be in high bit rate MP3 on any of the apps.
A Spotify apk and youtube ReVanced - $0
ViMusic from fdroid. Basically plays YouTube as audio, no ads, very nice design.
As last century as it sounds, I never stopped purchasing music direct via the iTunes store. I've averaged about 70 song purchases a year for the last three years, which works out to be about $12.65 a month. So it's on par with a streaming service, but I own the music.
Did try Apple Music many years back, but it really stuffed up my dynamic playlists due to messing up play counts so I ditched it. Many streaming services don't even offer such flexibility with song counts.
you own the music, but you dont really "own" the music
'Own' as much as meaning I can make unlimited copies of it, move it around different offline only devices and even burn it on an audio CD if I wanted to.
You don't own the music when purchasing from iTunes. Apple can delete your catalogue, no questions asked
That's interesting. Do you have an article or other evidence to suggest this is a common practice? (IE not for a reason such as stolen credit card or fraud).
This has never happened to me, and a quick Google only brings up local music being deleted in the case of Apple Music Streaming or iCloud Music Library.Read their terms of service
@belongsinforums: Where in their terms of service does it say they will delete my music? https://www.apple.com/au/legal/internet-services/itunes/au/t…
What I can find in the terms says the below, emphasis mine. Yes, if you mean they can remove content from their servers and it's no longer accessible then that's very correct. However, all my content is downloaded onto multiple devices and I can't find mention that those will be deleted.
Purchased Content will generally remain available for you to download, redownload, or otherwise access from Apple. Though it is unlikely, subsequent to your purchase, Content may be removed from the Services (for instance, because the provider removed it) and become unavailable for further download or access from Apple. To ensure your ability to continue enjoying Content, we encourage you to download all purchased Content to a device in your possession and to back it up.
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Content also may be removed from our Services at any time (for instance, because the provider removed it), after which it cannot be downloaded, redownloaded, or otherwise accessed from Apple.
There's also a provision for expiry of content, I believe this is related to streaming services (Apple TV+ and Apple Music) given that iTunes music downloads are not DRM protected.
You may be limited in the amount of Content you may download, and some downloaded Content may expire after a given amount of time after downloaded or first played. Certain Content may not be available for download at all.
@jammy2006: I don’t know, what if Apple kick in your door to confiscate all your media storage devices and then HUMANCENTiPAD you…
@belongsinforums: iTunes Music hasn't had DRM on downloads since 2009. You get unrestricted AAC files.
Home media server with Jellyfin or MusicBee
spotify on a family plan, bargain.
$18.99 for 6 premium accounts………….6 family members…..6 friends………6 randoms on ozbargain. $3.165 a month per account….much easier than all the VPN india turkey bullshit
I use itune match, build my own library. Strip songs from youtube and match it in itune, get the acc format on iphone, ipad and homepod. All for 34.99 a year. Minus any discount from gift card topup.
Spotify, the only thing I subscribe to apart from Kayo during the AFL season. Get free YouTube premium with revanced. Don't need it.
Tidal
Highest quality bit rate, and with VPN sign up to Argentina etc a couple bucks a month.
I found Tidal’s audio quality the best, but but the catalogue sometimes has weird holes in it, especially with some AU/NZ artists missing though it has gotten better. It also didn’t have Siri integration until last year, and I thinks it’s still only Siri on iOS so may not play well with smart speakers. Though they do, theoretically, oh artists more than the other services.
YouTube Music had the best recommendation’s algorithm for me. Tidal and Spotify never really managed to serve me up music that I liked.
I use Youtube music for the kids music (and family sharing). It sucks compared to Google Play music, and they've ruined my recommendations. I still get a lot of value through Youtube premium, so worth the subscription.
For my music I have it all on my home plex server and run Plexamp on the phone. Works wonderfully.
Free spot
Deezer with adblock is okay too
Need to add Spotify Premium for free via piracy
Youtube premium and Spotify Premium is all I ever need.
I am in two family plans one of each so far I don't need anything else and having no ads on YouTube is hard to go without now.
Amazon music was horrible imo.
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I haven't seen anyone mention Qobuz. The service has been available in Australia for a few years, but arrived later than all the other streamers.