I had YT premium family plan, but I cancelled at the last price increase. Loved the recommendations which were always on point.
Now we moved to Spotify family, but I feel the recommendation are either crap or always the same ones.
I tried the 1 free month on Amazon music and I was pleasantly surprised with the recommendations.
I also tried Apple music and was blown away by the audio quality.
What music stream service do you use and why?
No offence taken at all 😅. All good points! I am not paying for YT, and YT on Brave (for add free listening) is a burden to deal with for music. At least for me.
I only listen to music on YT when I have friends over and I play a long DJ set in the background. Have you heard/seen the DJ sets from Arwens Faith? She is amazing. Anyway, I digress.
I wouldn't want to use YT for music when I am at the gym or driving. This is only my personal preference.
Have you heard/seen the DJ sets from Arwens Faith?
Listening now. Certainly understandable how she gets over a million views.
😉
Pandora's still pretty good IMO, still has it's 'music matching' thingy as well. Basically you poke in a few songs/artists and it plays them but also finds music like them and plays that as well.
Pandora? I thought it was close to Australian users? I had it years ago until it they closed to in Australia and I used to love it! I'll check this out.
VPN. :)
Got an android phone? Doesn't take long to find an app where you can download songs for free.
If the OP is invested in YT then ViMusic might be of interest.
Obviously you know nothing about reality.
Ugg boots sales are at all time highs, they are one of the hottest items around.
Nah, the 2000s was spent downloading songs from napster using dial up internet on the family pc. Took about 3 hours per song if you were lucky and nobody needed to make a phone call.
The good old days.
Don't even have to download them. Just find an enhanced Spotify apk and enjoy ad-free.
I guess it depends on what kind of music you're looking for.
Game music is hopeless with Spotify, they're hopeless with contemporary pop hits too (atm they keep pushing Sabrina Carpenter to me, nonstop) but for other genres I still like it the best. I discovered a lot of amazing non-mainstream artists from it.
You can just flag an artist as 'never play this' and it goes away.
I use Apple Music personally, don't like Spotify
Apple Music. It's going to get some Apple Intelligence features eventually. Join a family plan to get it cheap.
Spotify family plan $24 per month for 6 family members. Children all had individual plans so we are effectively subsidising it for them
.
YouTube premium for me. Best value all round, despite the price increase.
I just switched from apple to Spotify.
I made the jump as i was annoyed i couldn’t use a 3 month free card that came with my headphones, so decided to make the switch.
My greatest regret is having to redowload and make playlists again.
I do like Spotifys recommendations though.
At the moment Spotify doesn't have hi-res music like Apple music or Amazon music. You can get free trial for Apple music through Shazam.
I haven’t noticed a difference really. But i use it with headphones for the majority of the time.
Is that more noticeable played loudly through speakers?
I still have a free 3 month Apple Music pass, just couldn’t use it with an existing account.
Depends on the quality of the speaker/headphone/earphone and the source files for streaming (mp3 256 Kbps sounds better than 64 Kbps music radio for example). Hi-res streaming music eats a lot more data, so use wifi and if you have big mobile data.
Certain speakers or phones support Dolby Atmos, sound different than normal music files without Dolby Atmos. Apple music and Amazon music have Dolby Atmos tracks too.
Try to send email to [email protected] about the existing account problem with Apple Music or go to the place where you bought the headphone such as Apple Store for example.
@El cheepo: Wired headphone and wired speaker are highly recommended for hi-res music. Wireless headphone and wireless speaker compress the data rate (streaming too) for example CD quality music files (1.4 Mbps) into 256 Kbps AAC codec for Apple music for example. But hi-res music through wired headphone/speaker is not compressed. Hi-res lossless music in Apple music topped at 24 bit/192 kHz. CD quality is 16 bit / 44.1 kHz.
The 192 kHz is frequency. Most phones and tablets use 48 kHz. Need an external DAC (Digital Audio Converter) for 96 kHz/192 kHz or even 384 kHz (downloaded files, not streaming). Otherwise phones and tablets will downsample the frequency to 48/44.1 kHz. Amazon music can detect this and can show the output. For example with phone only, hi-res music source 192 kHz but the output will be like 48 kHz (downsampled) because only using phone. My cheap small portable USB-C DAC that connects between phone and earphone is detected by Amazon Music, so no downsample (example source 192 kHz hi-res music, output 192 kHz).
If I use wireless earphone/headphone/wireless speaker, the hi-res music will be compressed by Bluetooth codec (data rate in Mbps compressed into under 1 Mbps (new Lossless codec by Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound, need new certain phones and wireless earphones that support this codec) or between 330/660/990 Kbps for Sony wireless earphone, or 576 Kbps aptX HD or 276-420 Kbps aptX adaptive (certain wireless earphones that support it), or AAC codec by Apple Music 256 Kbps.
@neoleo: Very interesting to read, hadn’t really considered that before.
I mainly use wireless headphones or truck stereo.
But tbh the truck stereos are absolutely garbage as standard with the exception of a few euro truck brands.
So i don’t think Ive ever experienced or would know the difference between hi res and normal.
A bit like tvs for me… Ive never owned a crazy expensive hi res tv, I'm pretty content with a cheap big one.
@El cheepo: https://www.techradar.com/audio/what-is-hi-res-audio-lossles…
You can read this good article, very long but don't look at the hi-fi speaker price :P
funny I find Spotify freemium’s algorithm quite good.
not sure what you mean by recommendations though, I’m talking about starting up a song and the random ones it chooses after as it continues to play are always great.
So you pay for YT premium and dowload.
Then when you sub ends all your downloads become dead too.
Which would be typical of a streaming service.
I only use free trial for music streaming services that ozb usually gives info like Apple music through Shazam or free trial Amazon music. Both have hi-res music, unlike Spotify or YouTube at the moment. I also have enhanced Spotify apk (ad-free), but haven't listened that at the moment because I have free trial Amazon music.
I also have my own hi-res music downloaded for free ;-)
I have DAC and wired IEM.
Amazon is good especially for the price, importing your music however is a pain in the arse through TuneMyMusic etc. Basically it just does playlists.
Mixlib is a godsend app that can move your library between Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal and Spotify fairly well
For free:
SomaFM is great, no ads - genre stations
Listnr is good for genre stations, but has ads
Amazon Free isn’t bad - the ads are just promoting their own services
There are some free alternatives I haven't considered. Thank you.
If you want quality, join a family plan on tidal in the classifieds here
Spotify free because I don’t mind not being able to choose certain tracks. If I want to listen to a specific track I’ll just open it on YouTube. You could probably also create playlists on YouTube and just use auto play, but on iPhones you’ll need to keep the screen unlocked to play through it.
This is why opening YT on Brave is great, you get no ads and can turn the screen off whilst playing in the background.
Really? Can you do that on mobile?
Revanced
Yes
100% yes
No offense meant, but in this day & age it seems redundant to pay for music streaming services. Isn't this ozbargain? For instance, I just pulled up the Billboard 100 & searched for 2 of the top ten tracks on youtube. Both came up & played.