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Apr 17, 2021
11:49:15am
stirmac Contributor
Music streaming services
I've been a Google Play Music/YouTube Music user for years and recently decided to change streaming services. We were doing the family plan and it's been a decent value, but my son started to notice some of his preferred music going away (he likes Vocal Point, which is definitely not my thing even if I can recognize they are very talented). Their albums up and disappeared ... I have no idea why, but I thought it was a good opportunity to evaluate what else is out there. I'm an android user, so I'll have a bias as I didn't even try iTunes/Apple music. I've categorized this under technology because most of the services have massive catalogs, so music selection doesn't seem to as big a driver as it once was in spite of my son's experience. It turns out that user experience has become the driver for me.

YouTube Music - it took awhile, but they finally got the app working pretty well. Some of the features and controls were not always intuitive, but I could usually get it to do what I wanted. It's a nice plus that YouTube "premium" is included with the service, allowing me to watch videos without ads. The stations were "ok", but seemed kind of loosely curated. I could pick a song I really liked and play it's station, and have a really mixed bag of tunes presented.

Amazon Music HD/Premium - so I next tried Amazon ... I'm already a prime member, and it seems that their catalog gotten much better in the last few years. I also liked the idea that I could get high fidelity, lossless audio. Turns out that the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between the typical compression of most services and the FLAC being offered by some others. Even if you have $1000's invested in systems and headphones, chances are you can't pick out the difference. Anyway, aside from that, the app for Amazon music is simply awful. The UI isn't bad, but it just functionally doesn't work that well. It was typical for me to search for an artist, look at one of their albums and have only 2 or 3 tracks listed. I could then go to their song list and find all the missing songs from the album. And this isn't obscure stuff ... it was happening with Van Halen. When I did look for some more obscure stuff, the catalog organization really suffered. I had different artists with the same or similar names have their music mixed together. Kind of funny to "shuffle" an artist to get some tasty progressive metal followed by rap. Periodically, when listening, the app would just quit. I could search the webs for the issues I was having and get "solutions" like force stop the app, clear the cache and storage, uninstall and reinstall and try again. Ummm ... I want a service so I can listen to tunes and not troubleshoot app issues. My son had better luck finding his music, but was also having app issues. So, halfway into my 30 day free trial, it was time to try something different.

Spotify - I'm only 2 days in and my general impression is that I've been seriously missing out for a lot of years. The UI is simple and robust; the catalog is organized well and massive; it just simply works. It has even shown me things that I didn't know I was missing with YouTube music. One example of this is the interface with android auto in my car. With YouTube, the ability to get to the specific musician, album, and song didn't seem possible. I could select an artist and then it would just play songs from that artist. Amazon was even worse in the android auto interface. With Spotify, the feel in AA was much closer to what I have in the app ... simple and robust. I realize there is some variation in the implementation of android auto depending on the vehicle, but in my case, Spotify is clearly superior. The kid also gets the music he likes. I've always consumed my music by selecting an Artist and album, starting from track 1. Spotify's catalog has been perfect in their organization so far. Occasionally I get a little wild and crazy and hit "shuffle". It is rare that I listen to stations and curated music ... who know's better what I like to listen to then me? However, I have on occasion listened to music this way as a means to find other artists I would otherwise miss. Time will tell how Spotify compares to what I heard in YT music, but most of the reviews I see seem to think they do a pretty good job.

I think I've found a new home for years to come.
stirmac
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stirmac
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Oct 19, 2007
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Mar 28, 2024
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