I am surprised that people know what amazon music is.
“Loved” and “included with Prime” aren’t necessarily the same.
Neither is “loved” and “most subscribed to”
Most tolerable is far more accurate.
More difficult to cancel
“Americans voted for Biden, they must love him!”
It’s like saying Microsoft Windows is the most loved OS on PC. People just go with the option in front of them. Spotify is the biggest streaming service now, Amazon Music ties in with Alexa.
I’ve got prime but I’ve never even heard of amazon music before.
Some people say indifference is worse than hate, but that probably doesn’t apply to graphs.
I thought Amazon Music was a small up-charge on top of prime?
I honestly kinda did to, but I double checked here in Canada and it’s included. Search results did have me think that it may vary though in other regions.
I did take one for the team here and log in. It looks like it’s included, but there’s also a premium for $12 making me think you gotta pay to make it comparable to Apple/Spotify.
The Unlimited tier is extra but the regular tier is included
Paying for Amazon Music and using Amazon Music are two different things.
Meanwhile, Deezer is completely unknown. No one in the comments even mentioned it. RIP.
No one’s mentioned Qobuz either. It’s like Spotify+iTunes except lossless.
How do you pronounce ‘Qobuz’? Is it ‘quo-buzz’?
Ko-buz
Can someone give me the rundown of Deezer vs. Qobuz vs. Tidal? I’ve been using Tidal and I like it well enough but I’m curious about the other lossless options.
Short summary: Tidal is the best overall.
Balancing the content, quality, and amount paid to artists, I put it on top.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read Qobuz has the highest payout of any streaming service, plus you can actually buy music. Also afaik Qobuz never jumped on the mqa scam train. Tidal wasn’t even giving you lossless music when you asked for lossless music for the longest time.
It’s true that Qobuz pays more per stream, although I’ve heard that they pay an amalgamated sum to the label instead of direct payment by artist.
Furthermore, while MQA was a bit of a bait-and-switch (basically lossy versions of much higher quality), Tidal always offered pure lossless as well.
Qobuz apparently has a better classical catalog, but worse customer support.
Basically, I’ve found Tidal to be - at this point - a bit ahead of Qobuz. Not a real complaint, just a “if I had to choose…” opinion.
I haven’t tried to use Qobuz’ customer support, so I can’t comment on that. As for paying the musicians directly vs paying the label; that’s good to know. I hadn’t thought about the fact that labels like to take massive cuts; so even if the cut is larger, the fact that it’s being filtered through the label means the artist themselves gets a smaller cut.
As far as MQA, I’ve heard that’s kinda half-true? Iirc, if a song had an MQA version, then Tidal played the MQA version when you asked for lossless. However, if it didn’t have an MQA version, then you got true lossless. I’ve heard they’ve fixed it now, but when I was looking at streaming services a few years ago it was just after the MQA controversy erupted, and the MQA thing took Tidal off my list of services I was interested in so I never actually tried it out. I might check it out again at some point and see what the library is like.
I like Deezer. I’ve been using it and telling people about it since Spotify was insistent about being focused on chasing a politically charged content (over) investment instead of delivering quality, behavior driven content based on their algo.
Deezer nuts
ikr. Deezer can’t be that unknown. Right?
The redesign is terrible…
But Deezer is great! I have been using it for years now, it’s missing a couple of songs here and there but the ability to import MP3s makes up for it.
Deezer is the best platform. Superior audio quality comparing trash services like Spotify and ytmusic
Another Deezer user in the wild! Been a subscriber to it for years now.
I liked and used Deezer until they rebranded. I can’t get over the new look. Switched over to Tidal
I don’t use deezer but I rip flacs from there
A criminal! Lock him up 🚓.
I’m a huge fan of Tidal. Musicians actually get paid more, probably because they’re not wasting money on exclusive podcasts.
I liked tidal, until they doubled my subscription cost.
Did that happen when they rolled out HiFi for everyone? They actually lowered my HiFi family plan cost at that time, which was unexpected.
Yup. It’s also when they discontinued their Military and First Responder plans.
Interestingly, my family subscription more or less halved a few months ago, which I was NOT expecting, but which was very welcome
Made the switch to Tidal, and I only have a couple nitpicks: no console app and it does this weird thing on desktop where it plays a split second of paused music when other apps or windows are opened. They’re small things though, and I’m happy to be supporting artists more.
Sometimes I miss the Spotify “Radio” playlists. Also, having the desktop sync with mobile so I could just switch players and keep the same playlist was also nice. It’s been over two years though and I don’t miss it enough to go back, Tidal is mostly a comparable experience.
You can get a radio playlist of most songs I believe, it’s a context option, unless you mean a different type of radio playlist, but the feature I mentioned has satisfied that need for me
Yes, I use the Tidal playlists, artist radio and mixes as a replacement. I swear Spotify used to have genre based radio, but it’s been a while since I have used it.
3 months ago I cancelled Spotify, following yet another price increase. I went to Tidal for the 2 month trial, and another month full price.
This month I cancelled Tidal, following their deprecation of Plex integration, my finding a couple tracks with bad meta data, and some other here-and-there’s where the service was lackluster.
I’m current on Apple Music.
I like that Apple Music has lossless, like Tidal did. The Apple Music algo seems a bit better so far, even comparing to Spotify or the last time I tried Apple Music (~3-4 years ago). And, one of the things I didn’t know I wanted, music videos for my morning jam time, are better with Apple Music.
I imagine I’ll be staying here for a while.
What percentage of us love pirating music and putting it on Plex?
too much fucking hassle.
Honestly, I think this is the biggest reason that music subscriptions are popular.
Nobody cares enough to curate their own music collection anymore, even if it’s entirely legal, it’s just too much damn work for most people.
Unless you have a special interest in music, eg, audiophiles, then it doesn’t matter enough to spend any time on it. As long as you can listen to what you want, when you want, who cares?
Yep, I have a plex server, ihave radarr, sonarr setup, there is probably a same software for music or something similar that would let me get music easily, but I just don’t care, spotify discover weekly has been serving me well, we are 4 people paying into a family plan so it’s less than 3 euros a month.
This is me too. I completely have the know-how to obtain any media but I still pay for Spotify. I have a shared plan with my parents. It’s literally my only subscription. I listen to music constantly. Even with the price hikes it’s been a huge value.
Yt music for me because I needed more Google drive storage. I just couldn’t get around it anymore and had to get more (long story explained elsewhere). Anyways… The recommendations are generally trash but it’s free and ad-free with my Google one thing, which I share with my family, so there’s like four or five of us getting it for the cost of one subscription. It’s one of the lowest tier subscriptions too.
I also know the Plex/radarr gambit, and it’s been wild to say the least.
I swear that if there was a unified online video platform, the same way that music is distributed, where it doesn’t matter if you’re on Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, Paramount+, whatever, you just get all the content regardless of platform and the platforms are affordable, then I’d turn all that shit off. It’s not worth the headache.
Music companies are fighting with very little piracy as a result of their openness with people like YouTube music, Amazon music, Spotify, Apple music, etc… Specifically because no matter which one you get, you have pretty much all the music ever. It’s packaged slightly differently per service, but it’s all there. Sure, it still happens, but it’s pretty rare IMO. I hear more and more stories like yours so over, and very few where anyone feels the need to start warehousing music data.
There will always be a market for high fidelity/physical music, and there will always be a few that want their own copies of the music to have, and some of those may get that through piracy, but the fact is, it’s way down from the days of Napster, when just about everyone was doing it.
I’ve long thought that the video media companies should take a page from the music industry and just open up the licensing, but they’ve gone the other way on it. IDK. Seems dumb.
They’re still fighting with piracy and shit, so…
Some consider it a hassle, others of us obsessively enjoy manually downloading and sorting our files into our folder structure.
I’ve got a collection going back to a 128k MP3 from a Napster download in 2000. Hundreds of gigabytes of lossless music.
Bandcamp is great, but I use Redacted for those I can’t easily find.
I’ll check out Redacted
If you want to ditch piracy and go to a subscription format then you can go back to Napster
It’s nice when it works, but Plex has so thoroughly enshitified themselves now it needs internet access to stream on the home network! (Yes, I have read the KB/wiki pages and done the setup but it loses user management when connecting that way by IP).
Meanwhile me with a 1500 YouTube music video playlist of liked music and a pile of CDs that I bought used, featuring the artists in that playlist
I do have a jellyfin server but I just store my FLACs on my phone. They weigh a total of 15 GBs anyways which is pretty much nothing
They weigh a total of 15 GBs anyways which is pretty much nothing
That is something, for my 128 gb Android phone without SD card slot.
Yeah that sucks. Mine has 128 GB internal and I added a 128 GB SD to store my music and (temporarily) store my movies which are normally stored in a HDD
I like the freedom of streaming anywhere without buffering while not worrying about mobile data quotas
Which phone do you have?
Redmi note 9 pro with lineage OS
Been happy buying music from Bandcamp and not having a subscription. Didn’t even make it onto the chart :(
Where’s “directory full of FLACs bought from Bandcamp and ripped from CDs”?
From the 5 services shown in the graphs, that would be YouTube Music which lets you upload your library (yes, even FLAC).
Important to note that they don’t stay in FLAC after being uploaded.
Also, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this anymore.
Also, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this anymore.
Menu option is still there for me
It opens a file chooser, so I’m guessing it’s just one file at a time now, which is lame.
I was informed by Google music, when they shut that down and forced everyone on Yt music, that all my uploaded data would be erased.
I downloaded it all and sorted it into my personal music on my PC.
May I ask what app you’re using there? I don’t see that on Yt music on Android… At least, I can’t find it if it’s there. Maybe I’m blind.
I’ll have to look into this. I appreciate the heads up. There’s a few things I’d like to put on my library if I can.
that was on desktop web browser, https://music.youtube.com
Also worth noting is that it’s only available to your primary YouTube account. For me that somehow became a different one created when they foisted Google Circle on everyone. So my actual YT account, that I use every day and matches my email address, can’t access my saved YT music. I have to change YouTube profiles to listen to it, which I do on occasion.
That’s weird, maybe you live in a country where that service isn’t available anymore? When they switched from GPM to YTM all my uploaded music was migrated, and I still can upload music, like the person you’re replying to. But I think you have to do it from desktop, it’s not in the mobile app.
Yes, but in my experience it is pretty trash. Unlike Google Play Music which matched the music to known tracks and shuffled it in with recommended playlists and other features on YouTube Music the uploaded songs are basically completely isolated. At that point why use a streaming service?
Yeah it was a hundred times better in GPM.
Google Play Music was the last streaming service I actually enjoyed.
I paid for GPM for quite a while. I then started working at Google and beta tested YouTube Music from very early on and gave lots of feedback about how it sucked. When they shut down GPM I cancelled my YouTube Premium membership and installed an ad blocker. Not just YTM but so many things about YouTube were getting worse and worse and I couldn’t find it in myself to keep paying for a service that kept removing features.
Apple and
Spotifylet you do that too.Edit: Spotify doesn’t let you do it but Apple does
I see that Apple does now, but no indicator of Spotify that I can see. Are you talking about how you can run the desktop app to stream the files on your computer? Because that’s not a digital locker.
It’s been a while since I used Spotify since I use Apple now.
I remember being able to add my own music, but maybe it was just local to the computer.
Apple definitely lets you upload stuff to their servers though.
On Spotify it is local to your PC
Spotify fucks over artists, stop using it.
The entire music industry fucks over artists lmfao
Honest question: what alternative doesn’t screw over artists?
I’ve been canceling streaming services for TV might as well cancel Spotify but what I have no idea what to use for music in its place.
No steaming service is great but Tidal and Apple Music give artists the best cuts.
My understanding from the other comments here is that qobuz is a good option, and Tidal also. Might want to check those out.
Thanks stranger I will!
Bandcamp seems decent but it’s got a small and niche catalog.
“Confused Jellyfin / Subsonic noises”
You know why I choose Amazon Music.? Because it allows me to purchase songs I like and then I can download them to my computer separate from their player. You can’t do that with Spotify. Of course recently I found songs on Amazon that are not available forsale which pisses me off, so if anyone knows a place I get those songs I would appreciate it.
Not that I want to pirate but if you don’t allow me ownership of the digital content then it’s what I am going do.
Just pirate, it’s better than paying these companies to rip off artists. Support your favourite artists directly, streams are basically worthless compared to other forms of income like merch.
Why I only use it to purchase songs. Also why I use Bandcamp.
Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a wikipedia article for that. I personally have used 7digital and bandcamp, but qobuz has been mentioned several times in other comments and hdtracks seems like it might work after you create an account.
Thanks will check it out tonight.
People love Amazon music? It fucking sucks.
Dumbest music organizer I know of.
Where ever you listen to your music, in most cases you can hook it up with ListenBrainz, to save your listening data on a FOSS alternative for Last.fm. And to get all sorts of beneficial features, like for instance recommendations that are truly independent, and getting updates on new releases.
I got YouTube music and YouTube premium because I needed more Google drive storage.
Loved isn’t the word I would use.
It’s adequate for day to day background noise that isn’t ad-filled garbage and music I hate.
+1, I only have a yt music sub because it’s grandfathered in with my yt premium subscription and extra drive storage. YT music recommendations are mildly terrible compared to Spotify, but I’m not throwing $15/mo at Spotify when I only use it a few times a year.
Nobody needs more google drive storage my friend. Nobody does.
I did/do. I share gdrive stuff with friends and family for all sorts of reasons, bluntly, I don’t trust most cloud storage providers, and I certainly don’t trust them any more than I trust the big G… Not saying that the big G is without flaws, but I haven’t seen any major data breaches from them that were handled poorly, unlike a lot of other providers. Meanwhile, they’re one of the biggest online entities, making them prone to getting attacked.
As far as security of my data from bad actors on the internet, the big G seems to have it where it counts for security…
There’s obvious problems with them willingly sharing data to other organizations, but that’s a risk regardless of who you give your data to.
And please don’t start with the self hosted stuff. I can’t even begin to describe how tired I am with trying to get people to use anything that’s didn’t ship pre-installed on their phone. I have a handful of friends that could navigate a FOSS file sharing system, and a large number more that would need to have their hands held through the whole process every time they accessed it, which bluntly, I don’t have time for.
Plus, everyone in my circles already has a Google account for one reason or another, so they already have some idea how to use it, and access controls are made easy by that fact. I really don’t want to have to set each of them up with an account and guide them through the process of accessing it and everything. They are used to Google drive at this point and I’m not going to change that, since it took so much damned effort to get to a point where it’s actually functional for everyone.
I get stuff like spreadsheets shared with family where they can input stuff like their bills and stuff (for tracking payments and trends), and sharing pictures and video, to keeping backups of important files. I can build a FOSS file depot for that, but once I move everyone over to it, I need to spend even more making it redundant with offsite backups and shit…
I’d rather pay the $5/mo and just not worry about it. I’m on one of the lowest “Google one” plans and I don’t see a reason to upgrade or change what I’m doing. I work in IT, I manage enough already, both for my work, myself and for my family. I don’t want to add to that burden because “big G bad”.
Most of the people around me have long ago given all their data to Google, Meta, Twitter, tiktok, etc (or some combination of those). I don’t think they care about having more data in the “cloud”.
Plus, I can share my Google one benefits like YouTube premium, and YouTube music, with my family, so individually it works out to maybe a bit more than a dollar each per month. It’s truly not a bad deal.
I’m pretty sure if you’re paying for it, that’s not love.
Some people love to dry hump strangers on a crowded bus or train, is that more like it?
Some people love to dry hump strangers on a crowded bus or train, is that more like it?
I have to admit I don’t understand what connection this has with paying for music apps.
I am surprised that people know what amazon music is.
I didn’t until this moment. lol
You can say, “alexa, play classic punk” and suddenly you are using Amazon Music.
They are the worst out of all the ones listed. Lower quality and smaller selection.
genuinely had no idea they had music
Would’ve liked to see what percentage have none.
I’m still buying CDs to rip and having my music library as MP3s on my phone. No internet connection required, I have total control of the files, and a physical backup if needed.
