Spotify vs. Google Play Music vs Apple vs Tidal and the rest....

[Sunray]

If you have the files, run plex on your home PC, job done.

My only complaint with Spotify is their intransigence on HD streams. Amazon music nearly got me to move its very noticable on my desktop PC as I have a hi-fi attached.

 

[cybershot]

I recently switched from Spotify to Apple Music (mainly because Spotify wouldn't let me keep my student sub anymore for some reason)

The interface is not as polished however the AI algorithms seem loads better and the self radio (aka shuffle) is much better at actually playing music you've added to lyour library rather than any old random shite it thinks you might like or wants to shove down your throat like Spotify does.

Also obviously works much better with other Apple devices (watch, HomePod, Apple TV) so I'll probably keep it.

And as Sunray pointed out, try Plex if you have something you can use at home if you have your own files, which I basically used to replace Google Plays self service a while back, because, well, yeah, Google, they will re-brand or cut tit off eventually. It's what they do.

 

[souljacker]

I've added all my music to Plex but it means I need to keep my PC on all the time which I really don't want to do.

You Tube music is fucking shit too.

 

[skyscraper101]

Handy little site Songshift, which enabled people to transfer their Spotify library to Apple Music gets short shrift from Spotify in the latest twist in Apple Music v Spotify.

A Note about Spotify Transfers

Find out more about how Spotify transfers are changing in SongShift.

songshift.com

It's a shitty move. After all this is the same Spotify who criticized Apple for "anti-competitive behavior" and joined the "Coalition for App Fairness" and sided with Epic Games over its ongoing dispute with Apple about stifling competition.

 

[hiccup]

I've added all my music to Plex but it means I need to keep my PC on all the time which I really don't want to do.

You Tube music is fucking shit too.

Yeah I don't have a desktop, and don't really want to have to leave my laptop switched on 24/7. I guess I could get some kind of NAS with Plex on it, but it's all more £ and hassle innit.

 

[cybershot]

Yeah I don't have a desktop, and don't really want to have to leave my laptop switched on 24/7. I guess I could get some kind of NAS with Plex on it, but it's all more £ and hassle innit.

Yeah but once you get a NAS you wonder how you survived without one. Replace hassle with investment.

 

[Sunray]

I've added all my music to Plex but it means I need to keep my PC on all the time which I really don't want to do.

You Tube music is fucking shit too.

Here is a little project for you. You can configure your machine to Wake on Lan (WoL) which I discover are possible to send via the internet. There are websites that can do it for you.
Then you can send one of these magic packets and your machine turns on. Wait a mo till plex starts up, play music.

WhatSoftware Blog

WhatSoftware, a daily updated Tech Blog with basic and advanced, unbiased software reviews, computer tips news and more!

www.raymond.cc

 

[souljacker]

Here is a little project for you. You can configure your machine to Wake on Lan (WoL) which I discover are possible to send via the internet. There are websites that can do it for you.
Then you can send one of these magic packets and your machine turns on. Wait a mo till plex starts up, play music.

WhatSoftware Blog

WhatSoftware, a daily updated Tech Blog with basic and advanced, unbiased software reviews, computer tips news and more!

www.raymond.cc

There is no 'switch off on lan' though so I'd need to RDP to it and then shut down when I'd stopped using it. Also, I use a wireless adaptor that doesn't seem to have WoWL.

 

[cybershot]

Get a 2-bay NAS, the power consumption is so low you won't notice the difference in your bill. Problem solved and then you discover all the other cool shit you can do.

 

[hiccup]

You can't stream to a Sonos without paying for it either. Which you could do for free with Google Music.

I need to find somewhere else to stream all my uploaded music from now I guess.

This seems to have been addressed. I can now stream my uploads from Youtube music to my Sonos without needing a paid subscription. So that's good.

 

[skyscraper101]

Get a 2-bay NAS, the power consumption is so low you won't notice the difference in your bill. Problem solved and then you discover all the other cool shit you can do.

At some point I need to rebuild my plex library with a proper 2 bay NAS after my previous Seagate PersonalCloud failed me and died with all my films on it

It's quite an investment though and there seems to be quite a range of prices. I always get confused what to go for.

 

[cybershot]

At some point I need to rebuild my plex library with a proper 2 bay NAS after my previous Seagate PersonalCloud failed me and died with all my films on it

It's quite an investment though and there seems to be quite a range of prices. I always get confused what to go for.

Depends what you want to do, but if Plex is one of them then it needs a bit of oompf and a decent amount of RAM, yes it's a pricey outlay initially, but get it right and it should keep you steady for a good while. As you've already discovered. Avoid Seagate drives. I've had them die on me too. I'll never buy another Seagate drive for my NAS

One thing I would say is if you go down the QNAP/Synology route just make sure it's a current model on their 'products' page, so you know you'll be getting firmware updates for a good while. As Plex does mean you need to open ports and make it avaialble to the outside world, so you want to ensure you're getting security updates for as long as possible.

QNAP/Synology sites generally have them laid out in such a way so you know what's suitable for your needs. (Home media/Small business geared ones will be the ones you want, personally the small business ones were better specced when I bought mine)

 

[Throbbing Angel]

BUMP

6 months free Tidal trial with code for New Customers | hotukdeals

www.hotukdeals.com

6 month free trial of Tidal available via Lidl for some reason. Just signed up and paused my Spotify sub. Podcast offering is poor but Spotify free will still do for that.

You can cancel the Tidal subscription the day after signing up and the free trial remains live for the 6 months. Cancelled mine earlier and it is still working.
Listening to the Longpigs

It seems to have sucked playlists over from Spotify on my laptop ?!?

 

[hitmouse]

Bit of creepy spotify news:

New Spotify Patent Involves Monitoring Users’ Speech to Recommend Music

The streaming platform is interested in extracting data points like emotional state, gender, age, and accent to hone its recommendations

pitchfork.com

Spotify Faces Calls to Abandon Voice-Based Recommendation Patent

Some activists and musicians are calling on Spotify to abandon its voice-based recommendation patent, citing security and privacy concerns.

www.digitalmusicnews.com

This musician and activist wants to stop Spotify spying on its users

The single drops today along with a “Fight for the Future” campaign against Spotify's audio surveillance technology.

www.inputmag.com

The patent outlines potential uses of technology that involves the extraction of “intonation, stress, rhythm, and the likes of units of speech” from the user’s voice. The tech could also use speech recognition to identify metadata points such as emotional state, gender, age, accent, and even environment—i.e., whether someone is alone, or with other people—based on audio recording.
The patent filing outlines how Spotify currently uses a decision tree—showing users different artists, genres, and more—to help refine its recommendation algorithm for the user. “What is needed is an entirely different approach to collecting taste attributes of a user, particularly one that is rooted in technology so that the above-described human activity (e.g., requiring a user to provide input) is at least partially eliminated and performed more efficiently,” reads the filing.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

Bit of creepy spotify news:

New Spotify Patent Involves Monitoring Users’ Speech to Recommend Music

The streaming platform is interested in extracting data points like emotional state, gender, age, and accent to hone its recommendations

pitchfork.com

Spotify Faces Calls to Abandon Voice-Based Recommendation Patent

Some activists and musicians are calling on Spotify to abandon its voice-based recommendation patent, citing security and privacy concerns.

www.digitalmusicnews.com

This musician and activist wants to stop Spotify spying on its users

The single drops today along with a “Fight for the Future” campaign against Spotify's audio surveillance technology.

www.inputmag.com

" The tech could also use speech recognition to identify metadata points such as emotional state, gender, age, accent, and even environment "

yer, that's a bit odd innit

 

[spudulike]

Just an alternative for anyone not wanting their PC/laptop powered up all the time to serve their music collection and not wanting to fork out for a NAS - my budget tablet running Android 10 supports quite large microSD cards. I have a couple of thousand tracks on a128GB £12 card. I either listen on the tablet through a Cyrus SoundKey and headphones or I can run Kodi on the tablet as a DLNA server to wirelessly connect to my audio system. Most of my tracks are FLAC including some HiRes and they play just fine.

I have a Yamaha receiver controlled by the MusicCast app (but can also use Kodi on both my Sony TV or laptop, I haven't tried Plex).

 

[cybershot]

Apple Music to introduce lossless audio. At no extra cost.

Apple Music officially announced that it is bringing lossless music quality options to its entire catalog at no extra cost, starting in June. Apple says lossless quality will be available for more than 75 million tracks in the Apple Music library.

It is also launching support for Spatial Audio music with songs authored in Dolby Atmos. Users will be able to listen to select albums with an immersive 3D sound-space on AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Maxand Beats headphones with a H1 or W1 chip. Apple says thousands of Dolby Atmos songs will go live in June.

Apple Music adding lossless streaming to entire catalog at no extra cost, Spatial Audio support with Dolby Atmos - 9to5Mac

 

[Sunray]

BUMP

6 months free Tidal trial with code for New Customers | hotukdeals

www.hotukdeals.com

6 month free trial of Tidal available via Lidl for some reason. Just signed up and paused my Spotify sub. Podcast offering is poor but Spotify free will still do for that.

You can cancel the Tidal subscription the day after signing up and the free trial remains live for the 6 months. Cancelled mine earlier and it is still working.
Listening to the Longpigs

It seems to have sucked playlists over from Spotify on my laptop ?!?

How is this going for you? I still don't think the quality upgrade is worth the 10 quid.

 

[Sunray]

Apple Music to introduce lossless audio. At no extra cost.



Apple Music adding lossless streaming to entire catalog at no extra cost, Spatial Audio support with Dolby Atmos - 9to5Mac

Going to give that a go, I really enjoy some of the Spotify playlists, but I recently started listening to rain to sleep, it's quite zen I like the sound of rain. Doing this turned my algorithmic playlists into one gigantic bad Brian Eno track.

So worth a listen and see how Apple's playlist offering compares. Three months is a good amount of time.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

How is this going for you? I still don't think the quality upgrade is worth the 10 quid.

Fine. I'm not an audiophile so am more interested in the availability of content over whether it is lossless or in FLAC or whatever.
I wouldn't and haven't paid for that.
I probably listen to podcasts on Spotify and books via Audible more than I use the music on Tidal (or the music on Spotify when I paid for it).

 

[cybershot]

Apple Music to introduce lossless audio. At no extra cost.



Apple Music adding lossless streaming to entire catalog at no extra cost, Spatial Audio support with Dolby Atmos - 9to5Mac

epic fail.

although. It’s a general limitation of Bluetooth anyway. Maybe we’ll get our headphone jacks back?

Apple Music Lossless requires wired headphones - 9to5Mac

Apple confirmed that Apple Music Lossless requires wired headphones. However, AirPods will get support for Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos.

9to5mac.com

 

[Sunray]

epic fail.

although. It’s a general limitation of Bluetooth anyway. Maybe we’ll get our headphone jacks back?

Apple Music Lossless requires wired headphones - 9to5Mac

Apple confirmed that Apple Music Lossless requires wired headphones. However, AirPods will get support for Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos.

9to5mac.com

To be fair, how many people own headphones of sufficient quality to notice lossless? The only place I notice (I do notice) is where I am now, sitting at a PC with a hi-fi attached to it?

I don't think I'd spend out the money needed. My boss has some £500 bud earphones that are fairly amazing. But the ambient noise out and about is going to degrade anything you listen to, not worth bothering.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

When you're out and about lossless is utterly pointless. And if you're at home and want the highest quality you'd be using wired cans anyway.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

When you're out and about lossless is utterly pointless. And if you're at home and want the highest quality you'd be using wired cans anyway.

And honestly who sits at home listening for every inch of quality using wired headphones unless your on drugs?

Back when I used to smoke weed I did tests at various bit rates to see when I could stop hearing the difference. I realised when i wasn't stoned that unless I was really listening for it that provided it was over 128 it was probably fine.

 

[Sunray]

And honestly who sits at home listening for every inch of quality using wired headphones unless your on drugs?

Back when I used to smoke weed I did tests at various bit rates to see when I could stop hearing the difference. I realised when i wasn't stoned that unless I was really listening for it that provided it was over 128 it was probably fine.

I sit listening to it through nice speakers. I have some old Mission floor standing speakers that really deliver on a top-quality source a little louder. These are overkill most of the time, but the default is some modest Eltax bookshelf speakers, even then lossless is noticeable. What you hear is as much about the master recording they took it from as it is about the bit rate of the data stream, milage is going to vary a lot.

 

[platinumsage]

And honestly who sits at home listening for every inch of quality using wired headphones unless your on drugs?

Back when I used to smoke weed I did tests at various bit rates to see when I could stop hearing the difference. I realised when i wasn't stoned that unless I was really listening for it that provided it was over 128 it was probably fine.

I do, as playing an endless succession of random tunes as background music when I’m doing something else doesn’t really do it for me. I prefer to actually pay attention to the music I’m listening to, like watching a movie.

256 upwards and I can’t tell the difference, but the cost of using FLAC files instead is zero for me, so that’s what I do. Then I don’t even have the thought entering my head that maybe there is a difference for this particular track.

 

[sim667]

Old thread but I have Spotify as I pay for a family account which me, mum and my other half use, but I also use tidal because it works on my DJ kit and it integrates with plex.
Tidal is good, but it gets mixed up with artists with the same names and it doesn’t have the variety of Spotify. But it is good for me trying tunes out in mixes before buying them to mix out. I think for the £8-9 I pay a month (as a plex premium user) it’s worth it

 

[editor]

Old thread but I have Spotify as I pay for a family account which me, mum and my other half use, but I also use tidal because it works on my DJ kit and it integrates with plex.

Ooh which kit is that? I've got a small controller that works with Spotify but only with streamed songs and not downloaded ones, which makes it too risky for live work.

 

[wtfftw]

Google music becoming YouTube music is completely fucking woeful. So I'm moving to Spotify (joining a family membership) anyone have any migration experience?

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Ooh which kit is that? I've got a small controller that works with Spotify but only with streamed songs and not downloaded ones, which makes it too risky for live work.

Which app is that? I thought Spotify had blocked all 3rd party DJ apps from accessing streamed content last year..