a little poll about streaming music services

I hesitated to include bandcamp, as I consider it more of a store. I have a spotify premium subscription; they were comping it to me until last month, when I learned they'd discontinued free subs for movie stars. I was, by then, too thoroughly addicted to the convenience to do without. we're also amazon prime members, though I didn't pay any attention to the music end of that until we got a Sonos, at which point I started to explore a little - stuff I'd bought through Amazon right there in my "collection," very convenient. I subscribe to Hearts of Space but that's kind of a different deal. considering a soundcloud go account because I listen to a lot on soundcloud right now.

pretty high on subscription services right now, there's so much to enjoy along with a randomization element that's got a different feel from the one where I'm combing through my iTunes library/shelves and eventually go "well I can't look through everything, I'll just play this"

Considered a Hearts of Space subscription but there are tons of ambient internet stations, albums, playlists, mixes etc online for free. What do you get out of the Hearts In Space subscription and do you think it's worth it?

Tidal. Sounds a bazillion times better than Spotify. I've stopped listening to people who can't hear the difference. God bless them, and may they subscribe to the service that makes them happy. Also somewhat contrarianly happy that it generally recommends albums that real people listen to, rather than robots. YouTube is my go-to when the subscription services let me down.

Considered a Hearts of Space subscription but there are tons of ambient internet stations, albums, playlists, mixes etc online for free. What do you get out of the Hearts In Space subscription and do you think it's worth it?

I have loved Hearts of Space for so many years. Even with, like, MANY years of absence at one point -- when I thought of it again and started listening, it became clear to me how much hearing it over the air WAY back when had informed/shaped my listening. I just think Hill has a GREAT ear for a mix, and getting full access to the archives is a guarantee of more great mixes than I'll ever even get around to listening to. Like, I'm a big fan of the Ultima Thule podcast, whose archives are 100% free, and which I use all the time. And they're great. but the care that Hill puts into the HoS shows (and the album collection you get with a subscription) -- you feel it, and I feel his work's worth supporting: he was there for this music when it was very small potatoes.

My wife and I have between us a family subscription to both Spotify and Apple Music. Mobile and Sonos streaming for both.

Really Spotify is the better service - the speed and responsiveness are lovely (even with a crappy signal, you hit play on the mobile app and the track starts immediately), and the recommendation engine becomes spooky good after a couple of weeks' use.

But Apple has those nice playlists, plays with iOS really nicely and also hosts your own files, so I can have the streaming library and all my weird Japanese LPs in one place. So I spend more time in that.

The Bandcamp app is great and a real new music rabbit hole.

I'll be honest, I mainly replied to this cos I was excited by the Hearts of Space chat. I'm a full subscriber too and I LOVE it for all the reasons mentioned above. They're giving the service an overhaul this year to modernise the apps, which are a bit flakey, but Hill's mixes (and velvety voice) are wonderful.

I knew dlp9001 would be one of the early responders in this thread.

I have a Bandcamp account - feel free to look through my collection. (I also write for Bandcamp's site; so far, they've paid me more than I've spent, but we'll see who comes out ahead in the end.)

I am currently in my first-month free trial of Spotify Premium. I pulled the trigger because the ads were never for products or services I would ever buy or use, which made them more annoying than they'd otherwise be. I'm probably gonna stick with it - I can afford $10 a month. I mostly use it to listen to jazz albums I don't actually own, though I've also discovered some really great techno playlists I'll put on and shuffle for a couple of hours at a stretch if I'm editing a manuscript for a client or something.

I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber, too, but I have never used the streaming music service; I only have it for the free shipping and the free movies and TV shows (holy shit, Banshee is amazing).

I listen to Spotify on my laptop. I don't stream music on my phone; I carry a 160GB iPod classic.

Best for local library mgmt: iTunes
Best for streaming my own music: Plex
Best for collaborative/curated playlists: Spotify

I manage my local music library with iTunes and use the antique Logitech Media Server to stream it to antique Squeezeboxes. I use the same Squeezeboxes to listen to Spotify. Sometimes I use the Spotify iPhone app, but if I'm away from wifi, I only listen to downloaded playlists or albums. I rarely use the Spotify desktop app or web client except to do heavy searching or to organize playlists.

The discovery features on Spotify work very well, especially if you've followed or created a lot of playlists.

Also: hell yes HoS; I haven't heard the show in years but I still listen to many artists I first heard there.

i subscribe to spotify, tidal, apple and rhapsody/napster (professional reasons; there's no living human who needs all four). i play around with soundcloud quite a bit, bandcamp a little and pandora hardly at all. i listen to the four subscriptions 70 percent thru sonos, 15 percent mobile and 15 percent desktop (desktop being spotify and tidal only, with spotify's desktop still routing thru my sonos speakers).

my loyalty at this point is more to sonos than to any of the services. i make a lot of playlists directly on there, but i also make them on spotify for various reasons (shareability, portability). i like spotify's social and discovery tools better than anyone else's, and i welcome the occasional email from them letting me know that someone i like has an upcoming show near me. i've gone to a handful of concerts in the past year specifically because of that, thank you. tidal's gotten to know me pretty well and its recommendations are generally good, and it's become my default first choice in sonos. my label friends tell me they're 1 percent nicer to do business with than the others, which matters to me. apple's sonos integration was terrible until recently, which also matters to me. it's gotten a little better with recent updates, but i still don't know what the difference between "for you" and "new" is, and i never know where to start when i'm there. tidal's sonos integration is simple and clean. i use napster when i'm listening to dumb stuff and i don't want anyone to know because i assume they're the least likely to ever tell anyone my listening history simply because they probably don't have any other users that they *can* tell. i am more paranoid than i should be.

i use itunes for my local music library and i wish they and i could both go back to 2005.

i have a pretty good stereo system with better speakers than my sonos speakers and i can't remember the last time i turned it on. it just seems too much a chore at this point.

i don't know which thing to vote for in this poll. would vote sonos if that was an option.

apple music has much better sound quality than spotify. didn't notice until i A/B a record i worked on, sounded horrible on spotify.

This poll would be a lot more interesting with "None" as an option... I'm don't personally know any serious music listeners who use streaming vs. having a library of records/CDs, but maybe it's because I'm 36?

I don't personally know any serious music listeners who use streaming vs. having a library of records/CDs, but maybe it's because I'm 36?

I'm 45. I consider myself a "serious music listener" in that I've been writing about music for money for 21 years. I don't use streaming versus having a library - I use it in addition to having a library.

Yeah agree with Don Van Gorp there on the 'in addition to'. In my case, Bandcamp uber alles etc etc, but my subscription service is Amazon. This grew out of my conscious decision a few years back not to put all my eggs in one basket even though I'm a decades-long Apple user/booster -- Amazon's Cloud Player setup allowed me to bank 250,000 songs for $25 a year so I had that as my backup for my local drive as well as something where I could just play whatever I wanted wherever etc. When they also got around to introducing Amazon Music Unlimited back in October, I had finally decided to get Prime, and then thought I might as well get Music Unlimited -- I didn't have to do a monthly charge, just a basic $79 and done for a full year, so it felt less like a niggling service that you have to pay for each month (and that way becomes a discount overall in turn). I honestly don't use it all that much but it's handy for when I need it, like when the new Depeche came out -- already had the CD version on order as part of their concert promotion but it wasn't due to arrive for a week, so this was the perfect fallback.

I voted Bandcamp in that I like that I can give money to the artists but also cos it's much easier to load a damn album quickly when I get in the car. I listen to it mostly on phone, I usually d/l the albums as FLAC.

Spotify I use a lot - though mostly to either play cheesy 80s pop ballads or albums I previously bought that I can't find. usually through my phone in my car (no bluetooth sadly), but sometimes through my piece-of-crap Chromebook too.

Amazon Prime I sometimes use for the same purpose as Spotify, often if I find albums there I just add em as I do a lot of listening through Amazon's app as well (since I purchase a lot of digital albums there)

Soundcloud I only use to upload my own recordings and listen to those of friends.

Pandora I've only used once while having sex. Lupe Fiasco came on

Yeah this is impossible. Soundcloud, Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube ... they all serve different functions.

i only listen to the local college station on terrestial radio and if it sucks, I will listen to a CD of Gorecki's 3rd Symphony.

apple music has much better sound quality than spotify. didn't notice until i A/B a record i worked on, sounded horrible on spotify.

― flappy bird, Sunday, 26 March 2017 2:07 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bandcamp is the only one I ever gave money to, so Bandcamp it is.

I use Spotify an awful lot and generally find it a great service (like others I use it as an 'as well as', alongside my collection. I'm also midway through a free Google Play Music trial, and I'd actually consider switching - mainly because of the local file management/free upload service - but I'm too deep into Spotify by now, and this is sad) I'd miss the last.fm integration too much.

best for music discovery: soundcloud x100000000000

Apple Music predominantly. Love it and have very few issues. I listen primarily on mobile. Also I amazon unlimited so I can just call up a song or album on my echos whenever the mood strikes. I do no music/library management through amazon, it is purely for impromptu listening.

Is it now possible with Google to upload a designated subset of yr library? I tried it two years ago but it uploaded a random 50k from my 150k songs.

Apple Music's great on my iphone, but it's terrible for playlists. You have to turn on some sort of setting that blocks you from manually adding music from your computer, then when you turn that off to add music again you lose all your playlists. So spotify's better in that area, but everything else about it is great.

also apple music's curated playlists are frequently fantastic.

missing option: streaming music is for dorks and dilettantes

I stuck with the one I signed for years and years ago, Rhapsody (now Napster). I'm in the US, and Spotify wasn't an option when I was looking for a streaming service. Once I realized all the streaming services are the same I just stuck with Napster, mostly for playlists reasons; that and I don't do much social media, so the sharing benefits of Spotify are lost on me.

Ultimately the only vote I'm interested in here is glenn's. What will it be? What will it be?

tbh I haven't listened to any of these while having sex, not voting

i suscribe to deezer which is not on the list. they are ok, the search does not always yield the exact match immediately, sometimes you have to scroll a lot. i especially miss a combined search of artist and album or song. the connection usually works fine but sometimes there can be outages. i enjoy that i have access to an enormous catalogue and even most new albums are covered. the sound quality which i set to the max is fine. you can download stuff for off-line listening.

I don't subscribe to any streaming svcs, but love Bandcamp, and play stuff from regular Youtube every day. Otherwise, don't really get the appeal of pay svcs like Spotify. If I wanted to listen to a radio station, always waiting for something I actually liked to come on, I'd just listen to the (free) radio. As far as finding new music, I haven't yet topped the "read about it /sample on the web / download stuff I really like" method.

last.fm seemed perfect for this, if you were scrobbling all the time

do they still do radio?

actually I should do that more -- as far as I know they do still have radio, or just playing artists from your library

I think Spotify fundamentally satisfies (enables) my mania for novelty. I'd long wanted access to a world jukebox and it's pretty close to that, plus I can store stuff in playlists.

Which is to say it isn't really like the radio at all in that regard as there's too much user-agency.

yeah i use spotify very heavily but i've never used it as a radio station

i use bandcamp and soundcloud for discovery, spotify for having access to the stuff i already know

Soundcloud - what I listen to the most at work, most important for discovering new music and for my own music.

Bandcamp - what I spend the most money on for sure, and most important for downloading tracks to dj.

Spotify - my gf has a subscription, and we use it all the time for home listening on Sonos (but also listen to soundcloud/bandcamp/my music library)

Spotify, Amazon Prime, Bandcamp, Soundcloud

Pandora is for suckers, Pandora is for chumps, down with Pandora

(I guess the Pandora lullaby station is good if you have toddlers but in general I want to pick what I want to listen to)

pandora stations make me hate music

i subscribe to tidal hifi -- i dropped spotify over sound quality and i think tidal is a better app, plus they have exclusives and stuff every once in a while

i also subscribe to apple music, which i should cancel frankly, but it's a good backup in case tidal craps out or also in the case of exclusives

i don't purchase music and don't have to bother w/ itunes anymore at all, which is nice

I subscribe to Spotify Premium, so much of my listening time is on my work computer so having local files saved is not an option.

For work I run Spotify through a DragonFly 1.2 DAC/headphone amp into Denon DT 770 headphones

at home I listen to vinyl and CDs but also have 2 setups into my 2 different stereos - Chromecast Audio > cheap but decent little Fiio DAC > 90s technics receiver and some great old Boston Acoustics 70s speakers i got on craiglist

for my better setup I have Chromecast Audio > Musical Fidelity VDAC > Cambridge Audio amp > Epos ELS II bookshelfs and a HSU Research sub

I did the free trial of Tidal and it DOES sound way better honestly, I kind of miss it....however for on the go/phone listening that doesn't really matter and there were just too many holes in the Tidal catalog, though I'd be curious to hear if that has changes

I did a trial of Apple Music to hear Compton by Dr. Dre, what a fucking piece of shit that service is, terrible UX and design, confusing and muddled, though these are the people who brought you latter day iTunes, I've pretty much stopped even trying to engage Apple people on rational terms, enjoy your AirPod shitty wireless earbuds

Underrated IMO is Google Play, great way to integrated you purchased music and a Spotify like experience, doesn't seem to have many gaps in catalog either

sadly, biggest thing probably keeping me on Spotify is just playlists I've made and subscribed to, quirky ones done by ILXors or friends on FB or irl are so much better than Apple's "curated" by celebrities thing....

Amazon seems ok...I have a fire TV and listen to it on there sometimes just for background music...I dunno, Amazon ain't the best with nice design or interface

that's how I break it down to an extent

oh and Bandcamp is great, but feels like a different thing, but yeah god bless em and it's incredibly cool and does a great job of exposing underground and fascinating stuff

also want to stump for Chromecast Audio has hands down the best value product in the entire audio industry....

i used to pay for spotify premium but rarely used it, so quit a few months back. i listen to whole albums, for the most part, and about 90% of my listening is heavy metal. i stream what i don't own or have at hand, and i find that youtube is a better source for low-visibility metal albums than any streaming service (though the quality is often shit). i do use bandcamp a lot, both for exploration and patronage.

Haha yes youtube has a ton of OOP albums that don't have digi copies avail

also want to stump for Chromecast Audio has hands down the best value product in the entire audio industry....

Is it worth stumping up for a Bluetooth DAC over Chromecast Audio? Been recommended one for around £80 and wasn't sure if the quality difference was that noticeable.

I guess it depends, my goal was to go from CCA into a traditional stereo (btw I am running it, via the optical out thru outboard DACs but that's not necessary, you can run it directly into powered speakers or a amp/receiver it does have its own DAC built in)... Thing is like $35, incredible

Not using any of the streaming services, I am too much in love with building a collection, even if it is digital, but whenever I can I get records from bandcamps/band's label website.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I did a trial of Apple Music to hear Compton by Dr. Dre, what a fucking piece of shit that service is, terrible UX and design, confusing and muddled, though these are the people who brought you latter day iTunes, I've pretty much stopped even trying to engage Apple people on rational terms, enjoy your AirPod shitty wireless earbuds

was on a heavy gear envy vibe for much of yr post (those Boston Acoustics sound rad, right? I just know they sound rad as hell) but I am always just mystified by iTunes hate - there's stuff I hate about it (I yelled at the screen today because I wanted to use different artwork on two home demos in the same playlist / under the same "album" -- you can't do that; you have to change the album name or no matter how hard you CMD-V you're gonna get the album art you used on the majority of the tracks in the playlist, or, if there's no majority, some random default to one of the pictures. drove me nuts) (I arrived at a solution, it's as interesting to hear about as the problem was, I'm sure) but generally speaking it just...stores music which I feed to my Sony headphones via a USB DAC?

Like am I missing something sonically by using iTunes iyo, or is it just the shitty cataloguing / control stuff?

looks dumb too

Before streaming was a thing, I never used iTunes for windows because (limited experience) it's really slow and hogs resources.. but nowadays I tolerate similar performance issues with Spotify because massive library of music... I figure iTunes runs smoother on a mac..

You can use multiple artwork on 1 album (on 1 track even) in iTunes?

i don't sub to any streaming service, as i use my local NAS/digital archive, but i do have access to a lot of the free stuff on soundcloud via the sonos application.

well now i'm curious about tidal. spotify sound quality is just bleh. apple music -- i'm just turned off by the company tbh. i don't have the brainpower or the time to try and sort out how to make my phone's music app not delete all my precious hardwax and beatport downloads which it keeps doing even though i don't have match or w/e enabled. don't tread on me apple. you're like an annoying roommate who's always home. i'm in the apple store a lot more than i used to be though. bandcamp i feel guilty about not exploring enough. soundcloud is always so buggy ime. amazon prime and google play idk. streaming services in general feel like a chore to me with occasional exceptions but i'm just another grumpy guy.

who needs good sound quality every day like he needs psyllium husk

my biggest problem with iTunes is it's hard to add stuff, like I made a "automatically add to itunes" folder on my desktop but when you add stuff (unless you rip a CD that seems to work) it always shows up as "file not found do you want to find it?" really weird and dumb

i generally use bandcamp then upload that stuff to google music

there was a rumor that spotify was going to go lossless quality and have a $15/month tier?

but i do have access to a lot of the free stuff on soundcloud via the sonos application.

how does that work? is soundcloud one of the streaming services supported by sonos? i would surely need a registration at soundcloud, is that free?

yes, it's one of the services supported, and yes, it needs a login.
but my soundcloud account is a free one, which only has access to free tracks.
you have to go through an authorisation process, but the sonos app/controller runs the show once you have given it your login/password.

I use both Bandcamp and Soundcloud, though Soundcloud is a bit easier/more intuitive when listening for new things--streaming music without interruption, and there's no limit to the amount of plays. Can't really choose one over the other, though Bandcamp is obv. better for accessing full albums and it's ideal for purchasing music, physical copies or digital. I recently got a smartphone and started using Bandcamp more often, but prefer to listen to music files using VLC media player. I was a put off by the phone's tendency to default everything to Google music at first.. definitely prefer a more old school approach. There's always YouTube for accessing the familiar/favorites. For music I really like, I'll purchase it on CD/cassette (if possible) for an ideal listening experience.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

None #lolold

As paid streaming subscriptions get mainstream adoption, the big music streaming services – namely Spotify, Apple Music, and Tencent Music, but also Pandora, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, and others – have entered their prime. There are now over 51 million paid subscription accounts among music streaming services in the US. The music industry grew 8% last year globally to $17.3 billion, driven by a 41% increase in streaming revenue and 45% increase in paid streaming revenue.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/30/the-war-over-music-copyrights/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

?__twitter_impression=untrue

lol

I may check this out: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/amazon-music-unveils-hd-highest-quality-audio-streaming-1203338552/

https://www.salon.com/2019/09/13/jeff-bezos-abruptly-cuts-health-benefits-for-nearly-2000-part-time-whole-foods-workers/

tempted to pay for beatport. 10 bucks a month. they have so much stuff! and the sound is really good. and i could make cool playlists. i pay for ad-free youtube but it is hardly ideal when it comes to certain things. i'm not a spotify fan. i dunno. i might stick with youtube. but what i do now is go to beatport anc check stuff out and then type new releases into youtube. which is demented. i could justify it if i cancelled one of my...uh...many streaming t.v. services. i don't watch Shudder much...

I'm planning on switching to Qobuz.

come on you made that one up.

They make good sandwiches

If you're interested in DJing, Tidal is pretty good too.

I just had to make sure that all my label's releases were on Qobuz, because it sells downloads as well as streaming stuff. Only half of them were, but they should all be up there soon, if Distrokid does their job.

Since this poll ran, I switched from Spotify to Tidal.

lol first thing i see on quobuz site is Mount@in Go@ts.

"If you're interested in DJing, Tidal is pretty good too."

i'm not interesting in Djing other than my once every blue moon fumblethumbs version of it at local places when people are desperate and then i just do vinyl anyway. though beatport does have virtual Dj tools you can fuck around with. i'm just interested in new electronic music that i haven't heard. and good sound.

now that i'm working in back at the shop i can actually listen to whatever i want in peace all day.

as far as new music goes, all i really care about is metal/hip hop/edm. for the most part.

(and even with hip hop i am kinda succumbing to old man 80s and 90s nostalgia and youtube has all that basically. they have all the new stuff too.) (i listen to 90% of the new metal i hear on youtube as well. and old metal. 400 album demo tape playlists. you would think it would all be too much at some point.but that point never arrives.)

beatport is good at curating genre new releases. deep tech hype tracks of the week! i dig it.

how good is tidal with classical and also experimental/avant garde? probably a silly question. probably tons of stuff.

because i am stupid and old i always forget how much better YT Music sounds compared to regular YT. i always forget to click the Music link. like a lot better! i'm gonna get cooler speakers for my desktop. it really does make me work better.

I think it tops out at 256kbps though. I like the UI but hafta use Amazon Music for actual listening.

I think Tidal is supposed to be the best one for classical?

Also I think Qobuz had the Tzadik catalog before it was widely available on streaming, I first heard of it when Whiney was doing his complete Zorn project (or maybe they were only available for dl??).

I like Qobuz best for classical, it's very high-rez and also has the booklets which are essential to me for vocal music.

Ooh, if it has liner notes for jazz then it's over

beatport cheapo plan is: AAC 128kbp/s

hmmmm that doesn't seem like its as high a number as 256...

this sounds so cool on the little external speakers i'm using. imagine if those speakers were not so little!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxYDkDTFgF4

xp Yes that will sound like gar-bazge

I am an Apple Music user. A lot of their stuff, particularly classical, is now lossless. Also, I cannot stand the Spotify UI.

Didn't Apple launch an entirely separate service for classical(?)

Maybe? I haven't seen it. It's still a part of their overall service.

I love Qobuz would really encourage people to try it out

I think the Apple Music Classical
App is currently iPhone/IOS only (it’s not available for my iMac).

the Bandcamp app is worth a try, although you may need to fiddle with your library to get it to suggest the type of music you want to hear

Booklets are common on Qobuz for more recent releases, pop/jazz/classical/whatever

I've been an Apple Music subscriber since they started. There's certainly been some bumps along the way, but I think it has steadily improved and is a solid product now. Previously was a Spotify subscriber, but got frustrated with their playlist/offline song limits, which I'm sure have probably been lifted by this point, and lack of local music integration. Every time I do open Spotfy by clicking on a playlist or something, I'm just WTF is this interface, it's so confusing to me. But that could just be a lack of familiarity. I'm so used to Apple Music and finding what I want.

I also think Apple has significantly improved their discovery mechanisms, they always have lagged behind Spotify there. Frequently I turn on the autoplay similar songs so it just continues after I finish a playlist or album and I've discovered a lot of new stuff that way.