151–160 of 176 posts
I am using a music streaming service which is totally free and offers me genres without any subscription lock-in. Additionally it doesn't track my listening habits and thus enables me to discover new music as I am not in a listening bubble. I like that streaming service a lot
I made the switch last September from Spotify back to Apple Music. 1 reason and 1 reason only. Lossless. Why Spotify still doesn't offer this as an option is beyond me. I get that its a small amount of people who care but still why not offer it? I would pay a little more to use their service.
You know, I used to care about lossless but more and more the proof has been stacking on that MP3 compression is an amazing technology and I just don't have the ears to discern. I would love to know how you do in this test: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/... For me, it was enough to prove that lossy is good enough for everyday listening.
Compressed classical music annoys me to no end, although for a long time I couldn’t tell why. Then I found out, the problem is the artifacts, which you may not be aware of but they do affect your emotional response.
This page has an amazing description of the issues: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/what-data-compressio...
sluggish UI aside, I really don't like Apple Music's TASTE in music. Spotify's playlists are reliably more niche. Apple is far more "GRAMMY/Top 40"-oriented and that's just not interesting to me. Also, Apple should have bought Rdio.
I have a slightly more cynical take on why Spotify pushes niche bands and music so much (in fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw an “established” band in my Discover Weekly playlist) — Spotify doesn’t have to pay out that much per listen for these niche bands, while having, say, Beyoncé or Drake pop up on millions of subscribers’ weekly playlist would eat in their margins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have numbers for Tidal or Amazon Music? I'd guess they'd land somewhere between the two.
# of Streams to make US $1: YouTube Music: 1,250 Pandora: 752 Spotify: 315 Amazon Music: 249 Deezer: 156 Apple Music: 128 Tidal: 78 Napster: 53 Source: https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.66835/title.t-pain-disrupts-mus... Original source: https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/1476032631255060490 (not sure why this link isn't working)
Some streaming services are net-equivalents of terrestrial radio, where the user selects the rough genre but doesn't drive the program. Pandora's a good example.
Some streaming services are meant to be in-the-cloud replacements for your record collection, where you select the program. Spotify is like this; Pandora is not.
Their payouts should probably be different.
> YouTube Music: 1,250
That's astonishing, considering YouTube can function as a cloud record collection.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that kills Spotify for me is how pushy it is combined with the frequent unnecessary UI changes. The lack of an API that allows track playback is a huge, huge bummer too (look up the saga of libspotfy if curious) — shockingly, Apple Music is more open in this regard, with multiple alternative third party clients being available thanks to JS and native Mac/iOS SDKs.
I'm curious what UI changes you're talking about. I can't remember the last time there was a UI change, and I've been using them for 5+ years. In fact, as I was reading these comments I was thinking they've been totally stagnant UI-wise, and the only hate I for the iOS app is the pop ups for events, etc. I make a point to never read any text in them and dismiss immediately.
[0] https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-03-25/introducing-a-new-sp...
I am all in on Apple and only a few dollars away from the Apple One bundle being worth it for me but I just don't like Apple Music. The UI is just too difficult to use and it feels slower than it should be, definitely slower than Spotify. While I have no love for Spotify's podcast ventures and dislike them trying to push me to listen to podcasts on their platform, I do love it for music and it "Just Works". Also I ca…
The UI on Apple Music is atrocious. It isn't possible to go back a track when using their radio mode, nor is it possible to even see what the previous song was in case you decided you want to hear more by the artist or whatever. Truly awful design.
I am curious what Google Play Music's share was before they shut it down in favor of Youtube Music. Myself and a few friends were using it until they shut it down; we basically split between Spotify and Apple Music based on what OS we were using.
I was a heavy Spotify member for many many years.
I can’t deal with Spotify inserting podcasts into the music listening experience. Music and podcasts are two different use cases for me. I love both, but don’t love both in the same UI.
So far I love YouTube music and very happy with the switch. I love that I can listen to live sets that people post on YouTube. Great recommendation system too.
Eddy Cue should be fired for allowing Spotify to reach such critical mass. Music and playlists is such a sticky ecosystem that people don't just up and switch services at a whim. The 381 million users that Spotify accumulated over the years will never switch to another platform. Apple lost so many years with trying to spin Beats into something that it wasn't, rewriting clients, and putting out garbage like "Your Stat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. Ad-free YouTube is essential for me, and getting YouTube Music as part of the bundle is a nice bonus. I have the family plan but my kids are always bugging me to get a Spotify family plan instead. If I do ever cave and pay for Spotify, I'll have to keep the YouTube premium plan anyway since I can't go back to watching the obnoxious ads on YouTube.
Both Opera's built-in adblocker and uBlock Origin on other browsers takes care of most of this nicely for me.
However, a weird limitation i noticed recently with YouTube Premium - while traveling i had a local sim card, and while using it for data ( even when on wifi), YouTube earned me some Premium features won't work and i might see ads, and i couldn't watch videos with the screen locked/minimised. When i switch data to my regular card, in roaming ( again, regardless of wifi), both of those work.