Supermallet

Simple question: If you stream music, what service do you use and why do you prefer it?

I was a Spotify user for a long time. It wasn't perfect but IMO it was the best of the bunch. I'm now trying Apple Music via the free trial and I'm thinking I'll likely switch to it. I like the integration with my phone and my existing music library, and the curated playlists have been excellent so far.

In the past I've tried Rdio, but I didn't like their interface, and Tidal, which was actually quite good but had some technical issues that bothered me and the price is double every other service, albeit for lossless sound.

And of course I've used Pandora but to me that's a completely archaic system.

Alan Smithee

I use the free version of Pandora when I want to hear something specific- if I'm going to spend money on music, I'll spend it on an actual CD or whatever I can get it on. I use Pandora more for background music since most radio sucks. I put it on shuffle and have it play a ridiculous variety of stuff- not uncommon for it to play elevator music followed by punk followed by classical followed by metal. My Roku has Rdio but it seems similar to Pandora and kind of awkward as it narrows your choices down to albums, but then only something similar to that album.

I thought the free Spotify would only let you play a song one time per month, but I've never had it tell me I've played something too many times.

Supermallet

I think Spotify's free tier dropped all playback limits in favor of more ads, but I might be wrong about that.

Personally, I've bought most of the stuff I like many times over. At this point, convenience trumps the idea of "owning" the thing, because I do own most of it in one form or another, but having it all at my fingertips is incredibly useful.

I also like it for discovering new music, and if I like that enough I'll buy it as well.

Meathead

The poll is missing SiriusXM (Internet) and Amazon Prime, the two I use the most. Plus Pandora. Waiting for them to sort out the initial bugs before I try Apple Music.

auto

I pay for Spotify and love it. Use it every day. From what I hear, Apple Music sounds pretty great but I'm probably too lazy to switch. Too many mixes created on Spotify. Tidal's lossless is intriguing but the price point is too high for me.

Matthew Chmiel

Apple Music's catalog is the strongest of the platforms. If you're already invested into Apple's ecosystem, it makes sense to choose Apple Music over the others. There are some great ideas in the service such as Beats 1 and the curated, but there are problems. The UI is a trainwreck (and even more so on desktop) and there's a slew of features missing that make Spotify great. I also don't like the fact that I can't control the sound quality on an iPhone. I have unlimited data, let me rip at 256kbps AAC; don't give me a lesser quality stream because I am using cellular data.

Spotify's desktop and mobile apps have always been buggy, glitchy, and sometimes broken; but the user experience is currently better than Apple Music. The UI makes sense unlike Apple's which is all over the place. I love how I can search for playlists or even create and add onto collaborated playlists with friends. I also love the Running feature that changes tempo based upon how fast I'm going. However, some of the "basics" of how a music application and service should work have always sucked on Spotify. Shuffling songs barely works and the radio functionality is atrocious. At least I can listen to music on my iPhone at 320 kbps MP3.

Amazon Prime Music, during the brief period of time I played with it while setting up my Echo, is a fucking joke.

Supermallet

Satellite radio isn't what I consider streaming. I did forget about Amazon Prime though.

I don't understand the UI complaints about Apple Music. I've had no trouble navigating it or doing what I want to do in the app.

Matthew Chmiel

There's too much going on and its far from simplistic.

Lets say I want to listen to a curated playlist on my iPhone. I have to:

1. Open the Music app.
2. Tap on New.
3. Flick down to either Apple Music Editors, Activities, or Curators and tap on which one I'm looking for. In this case, I'll do Curators.
4. Flick down to what curator I'm looking for and then tap on said curator.
5. Flick down to what playlist I'm looking for and then tap on said playlist.
6. Tap on the first song to start said playlist.

Its slightly easier on iTunes as you're working with a far larger screen, but the amount of steps is the same. Either way, its too many steps. Apple Music has pretty much thrown all of its content into the "New" tab and its awful. The way the Music and iTunes app currently operate don't work seamlessly. Apple Music looks beautiful, but Spotify's app actually makes sense especially if you're new to the service and you have no idea what you're doing.

Supermallet

Okay, I see what you're saying. To test it, I pulled up Spotify. There were playlists rights on the front screen, but they all seemed rather generic, like "Hot Country" or "TGIF" (whatever that means, maybe it's all Rebecca Black). Apple's playlists feel far more curated and interesting, and I find their matching of musical tastes based on my preferences to be the best I've seen of any streaming service. To me that's worth a few extra clicks.

I do agree though about the lower bit rate on cellular. I have unlimited data and I want to use it!

Matthew Chmiel

I really wish Apple Music took Beats' best feature, The Sentence, over to the new service. The Activity playlists are far better than the garbage in Spotify Now, but The Sentence helped me discover a lot of great music in the 30 days I used Beats Music.

The only other problem I see with Apple Music is future updates to the service. We'll have to wait for iOS and iTunes updates for new features to be added/current problems to be solved whereas Spotify can update their apps at any time.

Supermallet

Yes, I do wish they had made Music a separate app. But then you'd likely run into problems integrating your on device music and Apple Music, plus Apple wants the advantage of being installed (and permanent) on every iPhone, so there we have it.

That being said, I found AM so far to be much less buggy than any version of Spotify I've tried on any device I've used.

Dan

I've been using Spotify since early 2009 thanks to a hole in the way they confirmed credit cards from specific countries, and back when the desktop application was like 2MB. I've seen it evolve in both good and bad ways. Good = playlist folders. Bad = bugs have gotten worse, not better.
I still use and prefer Spotify, but I've used Rdio, Grooveshark (now gone), Beats, Pandora, Rhapsody, etc.
I use Spotify for the vast majority of my music needs, but I use Xbox Music solely music that's not in Spotify (ie: Tool, Steven Wilson, rarities, etc.), by uploading those tracks to my OneDrive account. I hate that Spotify doesn't offer a "locker" for such things. I don't pay for the Xbox Music pass. I might have considered making the switch at one point, but now that I use Spotify on my PS4, I'd rather hold out for a Spotify app on Xbox One as well.

My main reason for sticking with Spotify is simple: they're format-agnostic. I have too many active devices in my household (WP8 phone, iPhone 5S, Moto G, Nexus 7 tablet, Surface Pro, desktop PC, work laptop, Roku, PS3, PS4...) that all have Spotify apps. Now, some of the apps are kind of terrible (or 'basic'), but at least they exist and function as expected, if not maybe as desired. I think they need to get to a point where they're feature-complete in as many places as possible. I won't tell you how long it took them to get Last.fm scrobbling to the WP8 app, except that it was long enough that I just gave up on Last.fm scrobbling by the time it was added. It only matters to me because I've been using WP8 devices as my main drivers for over two years now.

Anyway, since this has turned mainly into an Apple Music vs. Spotify discussion, I'll say that I'm definitely interested in the service, if for no other reason than the fact that the family plan is a fantastic deal(and Spotify's family deal is oddly absent from Canada), but it's going to take them a long time to get on as many platforms, if they ever even bother (they're Apple, so they really don' have to). For me, that's Apple's weakness, but I respect that it's a big strength for those who are at least partially invested in their ecosystem or whatever you want to call it.

On the desktop side... Spotify's desktop app may not be perfect, but IMO, iTunes is an abomination, and this would have been the perfect time to introduce a lean and speedy music-only program to manage your library and playlists. I get that other people don't see a problem with it, and I used to absolutely LOVE it (circa 2004), but now anytime I have to deal with it (thanks to my wife's iPhone), I find it cumbersome and counter-intuitive. Seems like others are having some issues with the new Apple Music part of it, too. I only looked at it for about 5 minutes on my PC, but I wasn't able to find what I was looking for immediately.

On the topic of playlists... well, playlists.net has been doing "curated" playlists for years now, and it's tightly integrated with Spotify. Plus, if you really want, you can copy AM's curated playlists to other services with a few clicks, to be sure. Other than exclusive tracks, I just don't see curated playlists as a big deal. When I used Beats Music, I thought the curated playlists were shit, so... I'm more of an album guy anyway.

Apple brought over the genre "bubbles" from Beats. That's... too bad. I didn't like it there, but maybe it's better now? I just had a hard time selecting bubbles I "liked" more than others. I'd rather have the option to say, "Y'know, just never play 90's rap-rock or Baroque. Ever." I know Chmiel was a big fan of The Sentence feature, but most users obviously were not or it would have stuck.

You keep saying this, but is this documented somewhere? Like an article or something? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I'd like to see more info about what they specifically have that Spotify or the others are missing. I mean... neither one has Prince, so...

Meathead

The traditional SiriusXM via the receivers yeah not streaming but the Internet version of it is... Some of the channels you can even tweak to your liking.

Supermallet

I didn't know about Playlists.net, interesting. However, I don't love the idea of having to go to an external website just to get playlists into Spotify, one of the strengths of AM to me is having all those playlists on hand in the app.

Also how can you copy the playlists with just a few clicks?


There have been several articles that mention that AM has more music than Spotify, but I don't think there have been any articles stating what iTunes has that Spotify doesn't and vice versa (other than Taylor Swift).

And Tidal still has Prince!

Matthew Chmiel

Apple states they have 37M songs on their catalog compared to Spotify's 30M. From what I've dicked around with, I've seen a few albums on Apple Music that are not on Spotify such as The Polyphonic Spree's entire catalog is on Apple Music, but not on Spotify. Apple Music also tends to have some deluxe editions of albums that are only available on Spotify in their "normal" edition, so I wonder if that goes towards that 37M number?

And I have the Purple Rain soundtrack in iTunes Match, so that's honestly the only Prince album I need.

Groucho

Nothing made me appreciate Spotify more than trying Apple Music over the last few days.

auto

Care to elaborate?

Dan

Fair complaint, but the process is incredibly simple (search, choose list, launch), that it's hardly any more complicated than it is in AM. But to each his own. I recommend checking it out, at least.

So, I honestly meant to expand that bit before submitting my post, then forgot about it. That's why I specifically said, "to be sure" as, well... I hadn't tried it yet. That said, I gave it a shot and it does NOT currently work. Not easily anyway. What I did manage to do was:
1. Highlight all songs in an Apple Music playlist (The Roots of Industrial Music)
2. Copy & Paste to any spreadsheet app.
3. Keep Song & Artist columns
4. Copy & Paste those two columns to mixbla.st
5. End result: YouTube playlist that's identical to the AM playlist.

The entire process was about 2 minutes.

So that process is not ideal (in other words, it sucks), but... YouTube is still where the vast majority of people are streaming their music (Not Spotify, not Rdio, not Apple Music). My point here is that, while the curated playlists may be good or even great, they can be easily mirrored anywhere else, and the advantage is gone. All it takes is one user to create the playlist on any given service, and it's available for all users.

A few years back Ministry of Sound tried to sue (or maybe just complained really loudly at) Spotify because users were creating playlists that were identical to the playlists on the MoS compilations. They claimed that a playlist itself is intellectual property or something along those lines (my memory is foggy). MoS dropped it, obviously. Apple Music can and will pay folks for their curated playlists, but unless they contain a healthy amount of exclusive tracks, you'll see those same playlists on every other service in due time.




Right, I guess that's where I really want to see how the catalogs compare.



Weird. Polyphonic Spree used to have everything on Spotify. I distinctly remember playing one of their "new" albums at the time of release. I just searched, and there's only 3 "albums" remaining, at least in the Spotify Canada catalog.
Again, very strange. I've personally seen, and listened to, quite a large number of "deluxe" albums on Spotify. Honestly, I'd be fine with "deluxe" editions being off streaming services, if artists consider it incentive to buy the albums, but from my experience, there's a ton of them on there (and that's just using "deluxe edition" as my search. Surely, there's more that don't use that naming convention.

There's also "commentary" albums, where the artists introduce each track. I'm not sure how many of those carried over to Apple Music as well.

Arguably, it's the only one ANYONE needs.

Having used the desktop app for Apple Music a bit more, I have one specific complaint: The Connect tab is fucking atrocious. It's in no discernible order, and it can't be searched. Further, Nine Inch Nails wasn't even listed (personal gripe, obviously) considering Reznor's an Apple employee. Actually, it took me a little too long to find the Connect-exclusive content that NIN posted.

mndtrp

I rarely stream music since I'm still an ipod holdout. I don't have a mobile device at all, let alone one that can stream music. Therefore, I haven't tried many services, primarily just Pandora and Spotify. Of the two, Spotify is the winner, since it does what Pandora does and much more. I've only tried free services, so the new Apple Music and Tidal haven't been touched.

Groucho

Everything is just unintuitive and clunky. For example, I decide I want to add a song to a playlist. Simple, right? Wrong! I choose "Add Song to Playlist" and am presented with a blank screen. No error message or other indicators, just a blank screen. So I go to my playlists...hmm...I have playlists here. Try to add a song again, since a blank screen. So I go back to the playlist screen again and create a new one. Turns out it has to be an "Apple Music" playlist.

After all that, I learn that adding a song to a playlist also adds it to your library. No, I wanted it in my playlist. I didn't want it in my library!

I could go on and on, but here's a good article on the usability problems with Apple Music: http://cezarywojcik.com/2015/06/30/a...lity-nightmare

RichC2

I'm not a fan of the Apple Music interface, but the integration with Siri is quite good, and something you can't do with Spotify on the iPhone right now.


The music selections haven't been an issue on either, though I haven't run into a situation where something I want on Spotify isn't available, but is available on Apple.

Groucho

Yeah, being able to use Siri is probably Apple Music's biggest advantage for me on the iPhone.

auto

If Apple or Spotify were to truly integrate with my Echo it would be a huge plus for me.

RichC2

I hope they take a note out of the Google Now playbook and allow Siri to control all apps, I'm quite fond of the "We'll check your music / google play, whatever music apps you have open, then if all else fails, YouTube." methodology on Android.

EdTheRipper

I've been using Spotify for quite some time now and don't really have any reason to switch.