Music Streaming Services

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by rott, Feb 22, 2017.

  1. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    TIDAL and Spotify don't require an app either — they offer both app and web browser interfaces. Their web UI interfaces are essentially identical to their apps. However, I think all of these services are poorly designed and awkward to use.
    I haven't used Google's recommendation engine enough to form an opinion, but I find Spotify's to be very good. I especially like Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, which is a new list generated weekly based on what I've played before. It has exposed me to many interesting artists and recordings I was unfamiliar with.

    You can try these services yourself and see which you like. All of them offer at least a free 30 day trial (including premium tiers such as Tidal HiFi). Sometimes free trial offers range up to 3 months. Google bundles Music with YouTube Red (at no extra charge), a nice benefit that eliminates ads when you watch videos.
     
  2. jnak00

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    I've used TIDAL, Google Play, Amazon music (prime level) and Deezer. Currently using GPM and amazon, but only because amazon is free for prime subscribers and works between Alexa and Sonos. The library on the Amazon Prime is small though. Tidal is awful for music discovery and the app sucks. Deezer was OK, but GPM is better for both discovery and the overall experience. Plus I couldn't get Deezer to work with chromecast audio. Deezer would allow you to share play lists with friends, which I can't seem to do in GPM. I also get 10% off app and movie purchases on google Play as a GPM subscriber.

    Since streaming is about convenience, I also stick with GPM because it works with many different platforms. PC, Android Auto, Sonos, and of course Chromecast. Many services omit one or more of these platforms or offer a subpar experience on them. I just wish I could access GPM through Alexa and play it on Sonos, but that's a pipe dream.
     
  3. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    After two trials, I have given up on Tidal. Can't get it to work without constant drop-outs (2+ per song). My network is not very robust, but I also have no problem streaming video from netflix and amazon, so seems like it should work, but...not. Oh well, surrender.
     
  4. bixby

    bixby Friend

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    I am not a big Tidal fan and at a micro meet Tiday could not keep us with streaming to a few machines wiht a T-1 network. Not to defend Tidal (cuz I think it does not sound as good as a ripped lossless file, flamesuit on), I experienced similar wifi issues with simple redbook streaming from a networked drive both on Linux and Win boxes. I solved the problem by running a networked drive via ethernet in the same room, haha. And it sounds great with superb reliability.

    I did move away from the Apple router to a very much more robust Asus router, but have not re-tried the wifi streaming experiment. I do know the kids say it is fine upstairs for watching movies, etc and that used to be a problem. You may want to use 2.4 g vs 5 g for wifi and get the channel you use away from the neighbors. PM me if you need help in figuring it out.
     
  5. shultzee

    shultzee New

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    I was a Spotify user for years. Moved to Tidal for better sound quality but sure miss the spotify user interface.
     
  6. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    I have been a Tidal subscriber for a few months and experienced the same drop outs everyone else has mentioned. Using Win 7 Pro here. Tidal just updated their Windows app and the drop out problem is greatly reduced. Still there occasionally but much better, nice to see some progress. It is not annoying to the point I would cancel my subscription.
     
  7. bigfatpaulie

    bigfatpaulie Tried to screw other friends while playing victim

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    It is interesting that you people are having issues with Tidal. I use Roon and Tidal (Hifi) and I have never had an issue in well over a year. And I'm in Canada so my ISP sucks, is silly over priced and traffic shapes (oh, sorry, they say they don't, but the absolutely do) like a mofo. Twitch, for example, despite a 200 megabit connection, is totally unusable sometimes. I'm hardwired with an Asus RT-AC68U router.

    Maybe it is just their app that sucks? Does the website directly have the same issue?
     
  8. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    I tried Roon with Tidal HiFi when Roon offered a two week free trial. This was before Tidal upgraded their Windows desktop application. Still had the drop out problem so did not upgrade to a paid subscription and uninstalled Roon. I live in a metro area with cable from Spectrum.
     
  9. digitaldave

    digitaldave Acquaintance

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    I’ve just started to dip my toes in to the pool that is music streaming. My mobile phone network gives customers a six month free trial of Apple Music, and during that period, data used for streaming is free and doesn’t count against your monthly allowance (but that ends once the trial is over). I have also signed up for Spotify as they have an offer for 3 months of premium for £0.99. So far, I’ve mainly used Apple Music, and that has been in the car on my commute to and from work. Some note on what I’ve found so far...

    Apple Music can be controlled using Siri on my iPhone, which is great when driving, as I don’t have to take my eyes off the road to change what I’m listening to - “hey Siri, play Random Access Memories by Daft Punk”. I’m pretty sure I can’t do that with Spotify :(.

    I like the Apple created playlists in Apple Music. So far, I’ve used them to listen to ones specifically for cool jazz, bebop and hard bop. It looks like there are a lot more of them with more variety than Spotify, but this could just be the genres I’ve been looking at (jazz).

    Both services have the option to add music to your library and download it to your device. With Spotify, I believe I can download music without affecting my existing iTunes library (at least I assume it’ll stay separate...). With Apple Music, you need to enable iCloud Music Library, and I’ve read so many nightmare stories about tracks being replaced with the wrong version that I’m not sure I want to go that route. Of course it’s possible that I won’t want to download anything, in which case it won’t be a problem...

    There have been rumours that Spotify might offer a lossless option, which would be good, but I’ve not heard about Apple Music going down that route. Of course there’s always Tidal, but I’ve read more negatives about that than the others, so I’m not really interested in checking them out.

    So that’s where I am at the moment. I’ve only had the services for a couple of weeks, so I’ve still got lots of exploring to do.
     
  10. Deep Funk

    Deep Funk Deep thoughts - Friend

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    Tidal has issues. But if you can deal with the user interface and the library matches your musical taste, well Tidal is worth it.

    Tidal's library really matches my tastes so I use their services.

    Right now I can use Spotify because my phone provider likes me (pay more, more free services) yet I still prefer Tidal. When Spotify offers FLAC and the library suits me, maybe then I switch. For now I am good.
     
  11. DigMe

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    I listen to Tidal when I specifically know an album I want to listen to (if they have it) at home on the PC through RPi running Rune and controlled by Bubble UPnP or through my iPad. Otherwise if I’m in the car or at home and Tidal doesn’t have the album I want I use Apple Music. I previously used Google Play Music and liked it a lot for interface and discovery. At the time I became a subscriber it was far superior to Spotify’s discovery ON THE MOBILE APP (this was several years back and Spotify is better at that now). They always seemed to nail just the right new releases to show me on my home screen and I rarely missed anything from my favorite artists.

    Apple is pretty good too and has gotten a lot better at showing me the right new release albums in my For You screen. They also do the new music mix every week like Spotify that is based on your previous likes and listens. I switched to Apple Music also for the integration but I’ve been pretty happy.

    It’s hard to believe that Tidal’s interface and discovery has remained so bad for so long.
     
  12. Erikdayo

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    I've tried Amazon Music Unlimited, Spotify, Google Play Music, and Apple Music. The only one I'm somewhat satisfied with is Apple music. Tidal I haven't looked much into.

    Google Play Music always ran horribly slow when I had an Android phone. Perhaps things have changed? The last time I used an Android phone was just over 1 year ago (Nexus 6P). In addition Google converts things like AAC to MP3 when uploaded which will reduce the sound quality a bit. Given how poorly it seemed to run on Android I'm not very hopeful about it running well on iOS. The web browser music app on PC worked pretty well.

    Spotify is missing tons of albums I listen to without an option to upload to the cloud. Wrote it off within minutes. If they add a cloud upload option I will definitely consider Spotify again.

    Amazon seems to be shutting down their upload feature as far as I can tell. That puts it in the same boat as Spotify. Unfortunate.

    Apple Music allows uploads with iTunes Match and also allows you to download anything from Apple Music to your PC. Most other services I've looked at only seem to allow downloads to mobile devices, but I think it's nice being able to download to my PC as well even if it's DRM'd.

    The major downside to iTunes is that it runs like crap on Windows. It works quite nicely on Macs and the music app is nice on iOS devices. That's nice considering I use an iPhone 7, but my laptop and desktop are both Windows machines. Still I find it worth dealing with iTunes being sluggish rather than using the other services I've tried.

    I'll have to look over some of the other services mentioned in this thread and see if they meet my needs any better than Apple Music.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2017
  13. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    Tidal has improved greatly over the past month pushing out several updates for Windows. I hardly ever have playback issues now. I have found it does help to use a good quality Cat 7 Ethernet cable.
     
  14. Metro

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    I've been using Tidal for the past year on both Windows and Mac. On occasion I may get a connectivity glitch with Tidal, but I am fairly certain the problems are with their server. The data rate of streaming audio is really much too low for an ethernet cable to be a factor.
     
  15. gaspasser

    gaspasser Flatulence Maestro

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    Please do not start a thread about the audiophile Ethernet cables you’ve tried; you can go do that at Computer Audiophile. Tidal’s UI blows and that is a big reason they are having troubles, not playback issues.
     
  16. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    1 day ban for low signal to noise ratio.

    Read more, understand the forum more, then post more.
     
  17. blargman

    blargman New

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    I've tried several services, GPM, Spotify, TIdal and to a lesser degree Apple Music

    DIscovery: I feel like is basically a tie between Spotify and GPM.

    Spotify) The discover weekly feature on Spotify is quite amazing as most people have already noted. Outside of that, the radio features when wanting to listen to something similar to an artist or song is fairly spot on, and not full of B tracks,(pandora? ugh), or repetition. I should note, unlike another service (Tidal), the discovery and radio station almost feel curated for you and are done quite well.

    GPM) Another discovery type method is mood based/genre listening. This is where I think GPM excels. Each time you log in, you are greeted with activities you may be doing and offers radio stations based on the activity. These radio stations are usually very good and offer a wide variety of both indie and mainstream artists.

    Tidal) From the few weeks I've used it so far, the discovery features have been abysmal. Often when trying to listen to a genre or create a radio station from a particular artist or song, it will offer the most bizarre choices and often repeat them over and over. Many times offering up songs from the same artist repeatedly and many times not good choices. They do offer a very large offering of pre-curated radio stations but I haven't found them to be all that interesting and seem to offer mostly just top-40.

    Music Quality: This is of course as most would agree where Tidal excels and I'd agree. It does seem to offer a bit better quality over spotify and GPM but I've been doing a lot of A/B testing and I'm not sure where this comes from, as some argue that it may just be masters that are put up a few db higher. I'm no expert in this regard so I won't try to say I have a winner on this front and as far as streaming goes, I've never had a problem with GPM or Spotify's quality for daily stream listening. If I want a high quality version of an album, I'll buy it. Though obviously lossless on spotify and GPM would be huge for myself and many other people.

    UI: This is always going to be a subjective answer but this is the reason I broke up with Spotify. I once ran into a Spotify engineer at a party in San Francisco and being a bit of a fanboy I had to say I loved their app. Mentioning how much I liked it over other desktop services. He smiled at me and said "oh you're one of our remaining desktop users?". Frankly it shows and I just got sick of the lack of any meaningful change to their UI in the past 5 years. For me GPM is the winner here, while other services offer web apps, GPM's is by far the most refined and easy to use. It should be made by Apple because "it just works". Tidal, I'm not too sure on yet but I can't really say I love it or hate it. It's a bit kludgey right now but it's fairly usable and responsive and it doesn't force you to put everything into a playlist like Spotify does to it's users.

    The only thing I will have to give to Spotify that it does really well and what I miss in my GPM usage is the ability to easily switch between desktop app and phone. If you open your phone app it will bring up what you are playing on the desktop application and you can quickly just switch to start playing on spotify. No other service offers this functionality as far as I know.

    Currently I run GPM for the most part and I am still testing Roon/Tidal but I really think I'll probably end up ditching Tidal and continue buying music that I really want a high quality copy of. My only gripe with GPM is the lack of any output options that Roon offers. I'd love to be able to offer up GPM to HQPlayer or the like.
     
  18. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    In regards to the Spotify desktop UI, isn’t that a moot point now that Spotify Connect can let you control other Spotify apps from your phone?
     
  19. jnak00

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    I agree with this 100%. It's actually a fantastic feature. I also use the desktop app, since I prefer to stream from my computer and have everything at hand, rather than having to pick up my phone to change tracks or whatever. But when I log on to my work server from home, I can't use the desktop app and use my phone to stream to Chromecast Audio. When I log off my work server, I can start up the desktop app and see what's playing and resume control, seamlessly. It's frickin' awesome.

    Spotify's desktop app also allows you to download playlists for offline playback. Tidal and GPM don't allow this on PC, just mobile.

    I also like how Spotify seems to work with the widest variety of services and apps. For example, controlling Sonos via Amazon Alexa works reasonably well with Spotify, but not at all with GPM and Tidal.
     
  20. TheBarnard

    TheBarnard Friend

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    I just realized Tidal doesn't have this and it's seriously a deal breaker now that I'm using my speakers again
     

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