Which Streaming App?

[Nowarezman]

I've been using Google Play for some years now, and it's announced that it's going away. There's a segue offered to YouTube Music for Google Play subscribers - same price, but...fewer features that matter to me with a streaming service.

 

All I want from a streaming service:

 

1. at least 320Kbps.

2. the ability to create my own custom playlists. Song by song, or album by album, and the ability to add playlists to playlists.

3. truly deep selection that doesn't skimp on jazz or classical or African or folk or anything. Since I listen to Everything.

4. no ads

5. reasonably decent search engine

6. screen casting ability from iPhone

 

I've already read a few "best of" articles. So far not one talks about the depth of the music selection. And they all go on about how great the automated playlists are and such. You have to really read a lot of articles in detail to find out the real deal - and I don't totally trust the accuracy of the articles at all points.

 

Any help or advice or experiences to pass on greatly appreciated.

 

I could live without the TV, but not without the music. I could go back to CDs...but....

 

nat

[nursers]

Although I think Spotify's business model is evil, I do love their app.

[Nathanael_I]

The selection is not hugely different at this point. The major services that have licensed the big publishers catalogs have 31M+ tracks. This is basically the recorded history of record labels. You'll eventually find gaps. But its "mostly there". Certainly better than any record collection I could make. I use Spotify. I use it most as a music discovery service and a study tool. Because it has "most everything" there is a very good chance that any recording someone recommends, I can check out. No service has everything.

[Nowarezman]

I would also lean toward signing up with a service that has a better reputation for paying artists better than most services. And not just the top .001% but all the artists.

 

Am I the only person who finds it really important to make playists? I've made few hundred custom playlists on Google Play - I use them not just to find pleasing background music or to cull out the bad, but to sort stuff into lists that comprise something of a learning tool.

 

For example, I might feel like I need to know more about a particular jazz drummer - so I'll search out tracks from maybe dozens of bands or sessions the drummer appears on and I'll make a list out of those. Then I listen close to the list over some months and even make notes on his/her style and technique, and which tracks show him/her at peak form, etc.

 

And then I'll take what I've learned from using the playlist this way, and I'll try to work in some of what I've learned into my own drum tracks in my own material.

 

nat

[Nowarezman]

I've been poking around the web trying to get any kind of bead on how much the various streaming services pay the artists.

 

It's not an easy topic to research. There are a lot of factors involved, and of course, not all artists are paid equally by a long, long, stretch. But from what I've skimmed and scanned and perused, it does seem somewhat consistent that:

 

mentioned frequently as the worst seem to be Pandora and YouTube. Spotify and Amazon come in a bit better than the absolute bottom feeders, but are still very, very low.

 

the best seem to be Tidal, Qobuz, Napster. There may be others that pay as much as these outfits - I haven't discovered them all by any means.

 

Apple, Google Play, and Deezer are usually mentioned as somewhat in the middle.

 

Of course, the other huge factor is the number of plays the same artist would get across platforms. Spotify pays peanuts, but you might get a lot bigger heap of peanuts than you'd get from another service that pays more per stream, but has fewer subscribers and presents the material differently. How to get yourself on the auto-playlists is also a total mystery to me.

 

I'm starting to kind of lean towards Qobuz. It's a bit more than I'm used to paying at $14.99 per month - but it's very Hi Def, lets you create all the custom playlists you want, and NO auto-playlists of any sort. No bot curating little boxes of tracks it thinks youj'll like, or someone paid to get included on everyone's auto-lists. I like that!

 

But I'm still looking, checking around.

 

nat

[Anderton]

But from what I've skimmed and scanned and perused, it does seem somewhat consistent that...

 

Your list jibes with everything I've seen on the subject. I do like the idea of Qobuz being uncurated!

[Nowarezman]

Downloaded the Qobuz app for the free month try-out.

 

After a couple of days use - I like it a lot.

 

I still have Google Play going, so I a/b'd various tracks famous for good production, and I can confirm that Qobuz has much, much higher sound quality than Google Play. Very impressed so far.

 

nat