I have started a quest to find the right streaming music service. First a bit about what criteria I am using for this search. I am looking for a service for me and my three kids (and occasionally my wife) to be able to all use. I know that we won't be able to stream at the same time without multiple/family accounts but I am probably the only one that would use the streaming part. The others will just download songs to their ipod/phone for offline playing. What I am hoping to do is relate my thoughts as I try different services and get others to comment on what they like and dislike. My 15 yr old daughter and I will be using it the most and we will be testing the different services. She is using her iphone and I have an ipod and Android phone. My comments will be based mostly on the mobile apps.

I had a trial account with Napster that became Rhapsody about half way through. I didn’t have the kids using it at the time. Not sure why not but they didn’t seem interested. Also I read that Rhapsody wouldn't work using multiple devices, but I'm not sure it that is true. I liked having access to many albums that I wanted to hear but not necessarily want to buy.

I started with MOG because I have a built in app for that on my tv. I like the artist radio feature that can be related or just the selected artist. It creates a list of songs in the queue (showing artist, song and album) and you can also delete songs from the queue list that is created from the radio button. I also like how I can add unrelated songs on the fly to the queue without messing up the overall artist station. The biggest problem I have with MOG is the lack of playlist creation from the mobile devices. This is a deal breaker for my kid. She was ready to quit as soon as she realized she couldn’t make a playlist without using the computer. Another problem I have is using shuffle when playing songs. I added 10 songs to the queue and hit shuffle. It played some songs multiple times before others played at all. Getting shuffle and playlist creation right should be pretty basic but apparently not for MOG. We do like that any downloads seem separated by device so she isn't stuck with my songs showing up on her phone and vice versa. I also like how they have a similar artists section when searching. One other convenient thing is that MOG has a widget for Android phones.

We moved on to the one week trial of RDIO a couple of days ago. We like that you can make a playlist on mobile but so far that is the only thing I like. The artist "radio" feature just puts 25 related songs into a playlist and I can't figure out a way to delete a song from the list if it is one I don’t want to hear. Also the list is just song titles with no artist name. I like have a more Pandora-like radio station option and I have not been able to figure out how to do that. We don’t like how our music seems to show up on each other's device but I figured out how to turn off the auto sync and only see what is on the individual player and this seems to have helped.

I'll update this after we try Spotify.

Spotify doesn't have "stations". Just search and add your music to your queue.

Slacker is what I use most of the time. The android app bugs out a lot, that's the only bad part I think. It has preset stations. It allows you to make a station of the artist and with pro at 10 bucks a month you can do basically what spotify does with the same library for the same price as spotify.

Spotify also won't go into landscape mode, slacker will.

You can use one of the various Spotify Apps to create stations or "radio." Filtr is great for that. That's only on the desktop, though. I think the iPhone app has Radio now... but not Android (yet).

Such a pain in the ass. When I had my Kindle Fire and side-loaded Spotify, it was so frustrating, because the only allowable orientation caused the power button to be on the bottom, which would cause it to get pressed. I really hope they address this...

So I just signed up for a full account with MOG. I just didn't like Rdio and the two kids who tried it didn't like it either. It is really made for a single user (obviously) but that is now what I was looking for. That said, I don't think I would like Rdio even if I was just looking for something just for me.

I was set to try Spotify but I was reading that you can only have three devices set up on one account. Since we have at least 5 devices, that wouldn't work. I looked into Rhapsody but they have a three device limit as well.

Just to clarify, their limit is for 3 devices that have offline playlists. So, for example...
If your five devices are:
Home PC
Laptop
Android Phone
iPhone
iPod Touch

then three of those are allowed to have offline playlists stored on the device. All five can stream music with a working internet connection. In my case, up until about a month ago, I had 3 PCs, 3 phones, and a tablet that all shared one account. I only put offline playlists on 2 of the phones; everything else just streams the music via WiFi or 3G.

Good idea for a thread.

I'm a Spotify user and have been for a few months. The streaming is great but what sold me is the offline playlists. I use Spotify a lot on my commute and since I take the subway, I get no service down there. So as long as I have a downloaded playlist, I'm fine.

The library is great too.

Downside is that it's way too integrated to facebook. I don't want my friends knowing that I listened to "Call Me Maybe" three times that day. You can turn it off, of course, but it's still annoying. And unless I'm missing something, I can't have a combined playlist with Spotify music and music that is on my device.

And I do like how seamless it is. I add a song to a playlist on my cell phone and it's there on my tablet and PC. That's really important to me.

Ah, I remember Rhapsody. It was cool but the selection was terrible. Not sure if it's better now.

Spotify has a good selection but involves caching so I'm not sure I can call it true streaming. Obviously caching is a big benefit for mobile users, esp. with an expansion card.

If you want to completely disconnect Spotify from Facebook, you have to create a new account, using a workaround that I figured out. Details here. I created my account WAY before the FB integration was required, but the workaround works.

I think you're missing something. I just created a playlist with a local file and a Spotify track, and it works. You can only play the local file on the device that has the file (ie: your PC), unless you download the playlist to another device (and only when it's on the same wifi network).

Also, for those using Android devices, there's an app called Ultimate Rotation Control that allows you to force apps into landscape mode. I've only tried it with Spotify. It works great for the most part, but sometimes you can't pull up the "larger" album art... and the controls aren't spaced out nicely.

I use Zune Pass. I know I know. But I also have a Windows phone so its perfect. Also, its getting re-launched with Windows 8 so I'm gonna stick with it.