2025 Music Streaming Service Reviews

Music
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There’s a lot of chat online about quitting Spotify again, and I was curious which of the services you’ve tried, what you liked about them, what you didn’t.

What I will say is that all of these apps are just an interface to access almost the same database of music. It’s absolutely crackers that we’re still in like an AOL era of the internet, where you can’t just pay for a subscription to music and use all of these systems. Bring on decentralised music subscriptions where as fans we can choose which homepage and algorithms we opt to use.

None of these services were that different to Spotify and there are so many tools to export your libraries now.

One thing I will say is that I didn’t find any of them had the contextual browsing and opportunities for exploration that I loved about RDIO. None of them feel like they have much in the way of human curation, it all still feels quite cold compared to a hand-written recommended rack note in a record shop or a DJ

My quick fire reviews

QoBuz
The sound quality was a cut above in headphones. Felt like my Sonos Soundbar came into its own a little more with a high quality trial but it was a bit expensive to keep it up. The library didn’t have any gaps of stuff I wanted to listen to but it didn’t feel as if it nudged me into browsing new releases as much (partly as I was mostly using it through the Sonos app, so not a fair reflection of their UI/UX)

Tidal
Was really noticeable how much better the audio quality was to Spotify - like A/B-ing between the two, Spotify seemed a little muffled. The curation was ok but made me feel quite out of touch as it was a lot less mainstream, so was rarely a moment of “oh they have a new album, I’ll whack that on whilst bashing off some emails…”. I think what I love is seeing 10 albums I know and 2 I don’t, to give me both context and trust in recommendations to spend a few hours with a record / artist I don’t know. Wasn’t a fan of the Sony360 when I gave that a demo but that’s maybe just me.

Apple
Probably the most Spotify like, and benefitted from having 15 years of my iTunes library synced with it. I thought the Atmos was better than expected when wearing my Nuraphone and listening to pop records mixed especially for it. I found browsing a bit of a slog and often felt like it was one click too many to do basic things.

YouTube Music
The platform I’m currently using as I’ve been watching a lot more coverage on YouTube and wanted to turn the ads off. The music app is not great for something built with Google’s bajillions. Very similar to the other music services but when you search it often doesn’t bring you into the catalogue if you click play on a song, and it’ll go straight into autoplay (and I couldn’t find a way for instance to stop it autoplaying Marilyn Manson when I was listening to Nine Inch Nails last week, which was really grim to hear that abuser). It has the benefit of nearly two decades of watching music videos on YouTube to get to know my taste but something about the process of making playlists seems overly complicated or maybe it’s just not intuitive.

Pandora
I made some playlists for them and used the service with a VPN. It felt odd being quite hands off and letting it shuffle away. Not really a service for active listening but can imagine it’s good throwing it on in the car or leaving it on whilst you do other stuff.

2 Likes
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Two things I really like about youtube music:
Its search includes YouTube content, so I can still listen to stuff that’s not on the platform without leaving it.

It does have an upload feature, though fairly roundabout, so I can get some of my favorite unstreamable albums on the app (and scrobbled).

2 Likes
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Yeah I quite liked this too - would be amazing if it also had more interviews and bits with the artist to give albums liner-note like context.

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Been using Apple Music for about 4 years now I think.

I was never an iTunes user really so existing library wasn’t an advantage for me although I think one or two things I’d downloaded through iTunes years ago popped up again when I started using it.

Used to get the odd glitch when I first got it but it’s been mostly glitch free for me in recent years. Only annoying thing is that it goes through spells of turning Autoplay on automatically when you haven’t requested it. It’s been doing that for me again this week relentlessly.

I don’t make many playlists but have sometimes found it a bit of a chore when I’ve tried to, I think that might be more of a mobile thing generally than Apple specific - I only ever used free Spotify on my laptop before so don’t know how the mobile Spotify app compares. Only recently had the brainwave that I can make Apple playlists on my laptop instead much easier.

For Last.fm purposes I like that most of the tags are much cleaner than Spotify, there’s a lot less ‘(2005 Remastered Version)’ tacked onto the end of album/song titles I’ve found, albeit still a few. On the other hand it does tag EPs with ‘- EP’ which I always have to correct in Last.fm.

I also like that for upcoming albums they do the same as Bandcamp where they have the album visible but greyed out and make the singles available to listen to from the album one by one, rather than cluttering up the artist profile with loads of individual singles. They also have separate categories on an artist profile for compilations and live albums which I can’t remember if Spotify does.

Have occasionally spotted issues where one of a band’s studio albums will be wrongly in the compilations section, and smaller artists where one album will be on a completely separate artist profile from the others, which is slightly annoying. I seem to remember you could report this on Spotify but on Apple it looks like it can only be reported by the artist/label which is slightly irritating.

Also really like Apple Replay, which is their equivalent of Spotify Wrapped but much better, more cold hard stats and less of the nonsense ‘vibes’.

5 Likes
5

On Tidal at the moment, no plans to change. Audio quality is great on phone and computers, and never had any issues with the Library.
Good for new record release reminders too.

That being said, getting the app on a telly / firestick barely works, it’s basically a much less responsive youtube and for some reason forgets all the stuff you do or don’t like.

1 Like
6

If I didn’t already have Apple I’d probably go for Youtube Music now. I never paid for streaming until 2021 when I got offered 3 months free Apple Music with a new phone purchase and once the 3 months were up I couldn’t bring myself to go back to faffing around with putting mp3s on constantly malfunctioning SD cards, but if it hadn’t been for that, Youtube probably would have been what pushed me to streaming.

Youtube ads are getting so deliberately annoying and the idea of paying to get rid of them and having the bonus of a whole music streaming service would have been really appealing, but I like Apple too much to want to completely switch to Youtube Music as I just can’t imagine it being as good. Plus I think they pay artists less so I’d feel bad switching over.

Also when Youtube tries to give me their equivalent of Wrapped at the end of the year my top 5 is always a mixture of actual songs, random live videos and then something like George Dawes singing Peanuts on Shooting Stars which doesn’t seem ideal stats wise (I imagine this might work better if you’re using it as a daily music streaming service though)

2 Likes
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Probably going to switch to Youtube music because I already pay for Premium so we can download youtube kids videos for my kiddo (and avoid the ads). Google aren’t exactly the most ethical option but it’s all shit really isn’t it.

1 Like
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I’ve now tried several services. For context I usually cast from the service’s Android app to my Chromecast Audio puck which then streams via my HiFi setup. I’m a simple user, I just tend to listen to albums from start to finish.

Spotify - best interface, worst sound quality with no lossless high res available until the much touted Spotify HiFi tier is released (supposed to have launched in 2021). I still use Spotify for podcasts though.

Amazon Unlimited - you’d think with Bezo’s billions they’d be able to come up with a functioning app. Absolutely terrible interface with Chromecast streams capped at 16 bit/48kHz. Literally can’t play an entire album without cutting out, absolute dogshit.

Tidal - I found it incredibly buggy with my Chromecast Audio although it was capable of streaming in full 24 bit/96kHz so the sound quality was fantastic. It would have been my service of choice until I discovered…

Apple Music - by far the most stable service I’ve encountered with a great interface and lossless high res catalogue (capped on the Chromecast at 24 bit/48kHz not that my ears can tell). I find the recommendations and suggestions spot on too.

Like with all my streaming subscriptions I’m not loyal and follow the offers but I think Apple Music will be my default.

3 Likes
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I’ve been using Spotify since you needed invites. Have over 400 playlists for different years, genres, moods, music leagues, etc.

Have done a trial of Tidal, found the interface a bit dull and wasn’t motivated to switch.

Had a trial of Apple Music, found the UX a little wonky but more importantly, couldn’t get the playlists I transferred to show up so that was a non-starter.

10

Most of my listening is on physical media, but I use Apple Music for streaming.

I don’t have any complaints about it. The library is extensive, the interface is simple and intuitive and it’s easy to use. Sound quality is not as good as physical media but it’s fine for in the car or on the move.

1 Like
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Do any of the other services allow playlist folders within folders?

2 Likes
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Purely digitally, if you’ve enabled high res lossless in your settings Apple Music sound quality should be equal to digital physical media (e.g. 16bit is CD quality) or superior (24bit).

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I listen mainly to vinyl on a decent quality system that is very much set up for that

1 Like
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Only really use Apple Music. Get it half price and been using it for years, in addition all my gear is Apple. I’d say probably 95% my listening is on my iPhone with either Airpods Pro or Airpods Pro Max.
I do occasionally glance at the Spotify app, which I have installed on my phone ans iPad, as I’m interested in monthly play totals for favourite artists. Wish AM did that.

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I mainly use apple music because of years of using itunes and having my mp3s in there. It doesn’t make sense to have more apps, especially when you read about what the likes of Spotify are up to

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Need to get off Spotify, fucking hate it.

This Post Paid For By PROF$.

4 Likes
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Been using Tidal for about 2, maybe 3 years now. Can’t remember if it was Spotify hosting Joe Rogan or investing in weapons that came first, but whichever story came first, that’s when I switched. I’m now starting to find that the bad is outweighing the good and there don’t seem to be any rolling changes so I can’t see them improving features anytime soon.

Good:

  • As mentioned, sound quality is fantastic.
  • All their features to recommend something to you are great, whether that’s custom mixes, forgotten favourites or ‘because you liked…’
  • It’s good knowing that a bit more money is going to the artist compared to Spotify and so far they are not investing profits in AI weapons tech.

Bad:

  • Their search function is dogshit. Slightest tempo and it just goes ‘nope!’ As if you don’t know who ‘Deafgeaven’ really are ffs.
  • This is a minor niggle but the desktop app will scrobble streams to last.fm, the app does not. At least not on Android.
  • There’s some content missing, although this is probably down to the label or publisher rather than the streaming service.
  • Casting is problematic as others have mentioned.
  • It has occasionally shat itself when trying to do offline mode. I flip my phone to airplane mode on a flight and don’t have any access to any of my downloaded content. The only way to rectify this is uninstall the app and start from scratch… which you can’t do at 30,000ft.
  • It used to be the case that on the home screen my recently played showed at the top but now it’s ‘because you listened to’ and there’s no way to change that. Minor, but it annoys me.
2 Likes
18

Do any streaming apps other than Spotify offer samples/clips of albums? Loving that feature for checking things out without interrupting playback. Supposed to be rolling out on the desktop app too but I haven’t gotten the update.

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Apple Music

Long-time user. I was always so-so about its features. It did very little to direct me to music I might like based on their algorithm. Then I started to rate albums, favourite artists and like songs. This vastly improved the suggestions. Apparently, listening data alone isn’t enough.

I quite like some of the radio shows too (rip Echo Chamber with Mike D. I wanna run to u).

1 Like
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I’ve heard that they plan to remove these vanity metrics and it seems like they’re testing the audience reaction