Recently I have been really enjoying the artist bios and album reviews integrated with the Qobuz streaming app, which I think are written by the staff. Although I don’t always agree with how they evaluate all the albums I listen to they are a good source of information for me.
4 Likes
Yeah I’m doing a trial of Qobuz at the moment and really like them — their editorial stuff in general seems really good, and has already gotten me to listen to a couple of albums I wouldn’t have otherwise heard
The sound quality really is leagues above Spotify too
3 Likes
Switched to Apple back when Neil Young jumped shipped for a bit. Very happy with it. Sounds much better than Spotify nice uncluttered interface and I never have to see Joe Roger’s face when I go to the home page.
I have it in a bundled family plan along with Apple TV and arcade.
There’s loads of new features coming soon including being able to pin favourite bands and playlists.
1 Like
We need a feature chart comparing all the different services.
1 Like
I was thinking of making something like this as I’ve tried most of them
Which criteria should we use?
2 Likes
I think it could be an evolving chart with features big and small. Just to name a few:
- Playlist folders
- Folders within folders
- Folder of albums (not just all tracks from albums)
- Album snippets/previews
- Friends listening feed
- Scrobbling capabilities
- Private mode
- Exclude playlist from taste profile/recommendations
- Hide/don’t play specific artist
- Hide certain content types (e.g. audiobooks & podcasts)
- Hide songs within playlist or album
- playlist sorting options
- Filtering options in playlists or library
- Collaborative playlists
- Curated playlists
- Artist payment structure
- AI artists & content
- Frequency of updates/releases
- Support forums
1 Like
Also, playlist limit (some services limit you to 2000 or whatever I think).
1 Like
My fellow hifi nerds would be interested in bitrates, availability of high res, spatial audio etc.
2 Likes
I guess these for instance fall under “organising your music collection” and I’m not sure any of them do a great job of it - or maybe I’m too chaotic when I’ve trialled these platforms but I’ll dig in again
got myself on Tidal earlier this year when I upgraded my sound system and I have at least convinced myself that I can hear the superior sound quality
when it’s bad it’s dogshit tho, like the issues with downloads which as noted as infuriating if you’re on a plane
still have spotify because I’m only paying £3 to join a family plan through my mate
I have set up my own. I use the finamp app which connects to my home raspberry pi 5 jellyfin media server (just needed to add wireguard vpn to my phone so it thinks it’s on the same network, there are other ways to do it but this works well enough).
files can be lossless flac files but it can transcode to more compressed files to save data (and/or space if downloaded to phone) like proper streaming services. finally all those bandcamp purchases make sense as most have flac, slowly re-ripping old CD’s to replace the MP3 collection I have been lugging around for decades (which itunes ‘match’ seems to have decimated).
navidrome is another music focused server option (jellyfin is more geared towards video but works well enough for me, navidrome has more music specific features) and apps like Symfonium can be used to connect to it.
obviously these are no good for music discovery so I just use youtube and bandcamp for that, but I dont get into that much new music nowadays so tend to just buy the albums im interested in and probably works out about the same price I paid spotify
1 Like
Been meaning to leave Spotify since I joined this forum and started reading all the stories about them. Before that I was blissfully unaware (I live in Sweden and having Spotify seems about as standard as having water in your taps).
I feel like I might not have made the best choice but I saw Deezer were mentioned in a few articles about AI generated music, where it seems like they are taking a fairly strong stance on it:
“According to the music streaming app Deezer, which uses its own tool to identify AI-generated content, 100% of The Velvet Sundown’s tracks were created using AI. Deezer labels that content on its site, ensuring that AI-generated music does not appear on its recommended playlists and that royalties are maximized for human artists.”
So yeah, I’m a Deezer user now. Bit early to review yet, but it definitely seems like a less advanced platform than Spotify, and in a way I kind of like that. I’ve never liked the curated stuff Spotify spews out, so the fact that Deezer’s “Flow” function has so far given me absolutely irrelevant and terrible recommendations suits me fine. I prefer my algorithms to be shit tbh, now that Spotify basically is skynet.
4 Likes
Late to respond to this, but Apple definitely does have folders of folders (otherwise all my playlists would be a complete mess to try and navigate)
3 Likes
I’ve just clocked that there’s currently a 3 month free trial of Qobuz on offer (until 15 July) so I’ll be giving that a go.
2 Likes
Might be time for another +1 on the old Gmail account
2 Likes