Music Streaming Service

[Proinsias]

I've been playing with Spotify & Youtube music for a year or so.

Youtube music seems to have a lot more content than I recall having access to with Google music. Whilst the catalogue has a decent variety, access to basically anything available on Youtube, the quality is often grim. Also as much of it is freely available on Youtube the subscription feature is little more than a payment system that allows the playing of youtube audio when my phone screen is off.

Spotify seems to have far less variety but quality is decent overall and is a little more flexible: it integrates fine with my phone/laptop/ps4 and even runs nicely on a headless server.

I've found all the algorithms on all these services generally annoying, Youtube, human curated, playlists seem a little more reliable for hearing new and shiny things.

 

[Shavely Manden]

There were merits to this process to be sure, but audiophiles aside, streaming is a vast improvement.

Even for audiophiles, there's Tidal and Qobuz. I've been considering Qobuz for a while, but getting bitperfect playback from their browser player in Linux seems like it'd be a pain, and they don't have a Linux version of their desktop client. I've got enough of a library of FLAC already that I don't spend that much on downloads anymore, so I'm not even sure that a streaming service would be worth it vs just buying a download of whatever I'm interested in.

 

[JWheel]

I resisted streaming services for a long time, preferring to spin lps first and foremost and cds when I didn't feel like getting up to change the music every 26 minutes. However, as prime member, I have access to prime music which I find I don't use much, favouring Tidal for which I pay a monthly subscription. For me, the lossless audio files, hi-resolution videos and extensive library is well worth the price of admission.

 

[BradWorld]

I've been a subscriber to siriusXM for over 15 years. I only use it in the car/truck. I like to have a hands off radio like experience when I'm driving, except with no commercials and much better curated channels. At home I use pandora free the most. When playing through the echo it is convenient. the commercials dont bother me enough to upgrade. I also have amazon prime for shipping, so I get the prime music service which isnt bad when I want to listen to a specific artist or album. I also get apple music for free with my vzw account, and that is quite similar to amazon except the UI isnt nearly as good. They all have their place, and they all work well enough.