Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

wireshock.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#41

Post by vanilla_nut »

lprd wrote: post #17

I’m winding down my reliance on subscription based services. There’s been a noticeable shift in the world when it comes to ownership; specifically the media and housing market space. Perpetual renting seems to be the way of the future. While I have my own opinions on that, I think it’s important to (at the very least) own your media library. Not only does it benefit artists and studios more, you will not be subject t…

Likewise. I've been running my own Jellyfin server and listening to media using Sonixd and FinAmp since the beginning of this year. It was surprisingly easy to set up on my raspberry pi, and I'm really enjoying no subscription and no dark patterns in my music apps.

It really bothers me how companies convert people to subscription services, then twist the knife in ever deeper with scummy dark patterns. I would have been happy with Spotify's old app from 2015 or so pretty much indefinitely... but they just have to shove podcasts in every crevice of the app in the name of profit. And the app continues to get laggier and buggier every month (oh, how I grew to loathe that spinning green circle).

I understand that they're trying to survive, but when I can literally run a more reliable music streaming stack from my living room with FOSS, I question their technical prowess. And boy does it make me wonder what those thousands of engineers are up to.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#42

Post by FumblingBear »

techdragon wrote: post #10

Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists. Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc. Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'…

The biggest technical difference between the two that actually made me switch from Spotify to Apple Music is that Spotify has a 9,999 song limit for songs stored in your library, whereas Apple Music has no limitation.

My music library is around 18k songs, so not being able to store them all in my library on Spotify was not tenable.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#43

Post by anderber »

sph wrote: post #25
hedora wrote: post #5

Do Spotify and Apple Music have artist bio's and related bands / albums? Those (and the spotify-style mixes) are my favorite features of Tidal. I had mixed luck with Spotify years ago, and never looked back.

What's Tidal's killer feature? I've used Spotify, Deezer, currently Youtube Music because bundled with my premium. I don't like it, I'd like to move, but I'm not sure I can tell why Tidal would provide a better service that's worth the hassle of importing all my playlists. They're all a little crap in their own way. FLAC audio is cool I guess, but honestly that would not be a good enough selling point for me.

I think Tidal's biggest feature is the HiFi audio that is included in their standard subscription. But aside from that, they do have a great app that does Chromecast (for me) better than YouTube Music even.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#45

Post by jononomo »

jononomo wrote: post #44

Sheesh, this guy is concerned about exactly which codec is used, so I hope he also has one of those $10,000 home speaker systems with gold wiring because the placebo effect is really strong with that stuff.

When a song has a groove you dig, it sounds good even without the lossless codec and the gold-plated wires. But when you're listening to traditional Chinese music you're better served with a speaker system that has had the wires chewed through by mice.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#46

Post by jononomo »

techdragon wrote: post #10

Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists. Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc. Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'…

Spotify works perfectly on my iPhone -- what you do is hit the icon to open the app, then hit the play button. Pretty slick integration, if you ask me.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#47

Post by denhaus »

bunnyfoofoo wrote: post #21

Anecdotally, Apple Music sounds much better than Spotify, but I had to unsubscribe because it didn't work on a flight earlier this year (2022). All music was downloaded in lossless, but I guess some small bit still required network access.

I think this usually happens if your wifi/cellular is still on and connected but there is no actual data connection (ie AM thinks it can contact the server but it actually can’t, so it waits forever). Usually can be fixed by just turning on/off work/cellular and making sure it’s off. I download all my music on AM in lossless and haven’t had this issue once I turn off wi-fi/cell

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#48

Post by brundolf »

puyoxyz wrote: post #36
brundolf wrote: post #14

> The desktop app for Apple Music has been updated with the newer versions of Mac OS and performs well It abbbsolutely does not. Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used- certainly the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used. It is shockingly, shamefully bad for what's supposed to be a flagship se…

Have you tried https://cider.sh ? I use it and it’s great, but I haven’t tried the AM mac app since I don’t use a mac

I think I tried this one several months ago and it had too many problems of its own; nicer in some ways, but with some features missing entirely. I ended up switching back, but maybe it's improved since then?

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#49

Post by azemetre »

frxx wrote: post #39
azemetre wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use to be a big fan of Spotify but they keep showing me similar songs that I just happened to listen to. My weekly lists contain synth, down tempo, and if I’m very lucky a pop song. I don’t mind these genres but looking at my personal collection I have 400 gigs of rock, 500 gigs of rap, and 800 gigs of jazz. None of these three genres ever appear for me on Spotify. Spotify is by far the worse way for me to discover…

Bandcamp has Bandcamp radio. It's very good.

Bandcamp is great as well! I'm really curious how Epic handles it as an acquisition.

Re: Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

#50

Post by lprd »

willsmith72 wrote: post #33
panxyh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where GP claimed that it does.

I mean if you're weighing in on a discussion of Spotify and Apple and sharing your alternative, I think it would be fair to think about drawbacks or missing features along with the pros of anti-subscription life

How did you discover music pre-streaming? Either go back to that, or use something like Last.fm which is far superior for music discovery and also gives you listening stats. In addition, there are plenty of YouTubers who love talking about music and reviewing albums. I've discovered far more artists through them than Spotify. Curation will always be better than algorithms, which is why some people prefer Apple music more.

As far as drawbacks are concerned: - Requires some technical know-all

- Maintaining your services - though this is fairly minimal

- UI not as polished as Apple or Spotify

- Takes time to import your media

Obviously, its not for everyone and streaming services aren't going anywhere soon. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Post reply on HN