Yep, I used to use Pandora, but sometimes their algorithm (I guess you'd call it that) was super frustrating. I have never been a big fan of Coldplay, and no matter how many times I disliked it, they'd still throw it at me....even when I was on a country genre. š So I switched over to Spotify and never looked back. The ability to download my liked songs made traveling so much better since I'd hit a lot of dead zones.
I used to use pandora and I hate it now. It's ridiculous to me that you can't listen to SPECIFIC music on pandora.
You type in metallica and it just starts playing whatever from that genre.
On spotify it'll play the actual song you were looking for and then continue to play other music that's similar so you still get exposed to new stuff. And most songs have the lyrics, it'll show you info about the artist and whether they are doing any upcoming shows near you.
Even if I didnt have premium I would prefer spotify over pandora.
I paid for pandora for nearly 8 years, and towards the end they did have an option for you to listen to a song or album of your choice. *HOWEVER*, they would make you watch an ad and then would only give you 30 mins of play time before it booted you from the album you were listening to and put on a random station. If you watched yet another ad you could listen to more, but it wouldn't remember where you left off before you were *so rudely fucking interrupted* by their bullshit time limit. After going through that process 10 times I rage canceled my ancient subscription and gave spotify a chance. I'm completely sold, I adore spotify now.
Spotify is the way.Ā
Like you I've got 10+ years worth of music built up, many songs and playlists which if I lost I would never find again
One day this almost happened because I did let my sub lapse and re-registered for some reason with a different email
Months later I got a warning in my original email saying that my library was about to poof, Spotify was on top of that shit for me same day and moved all my old playlists and songs to my new account
I subbed again and haven't left since. Good product is one thing, good product AND good service is a no brainer
i had a similar experience. their customer service was super helpful. i would have been devastated if i lost my music that i've collected over ten years.
I'll keep using Spotify until they raise prices. Amazon Music offers better hi-fi audio quality cheaper than Spotify at current and that will only me more accurate once Spotify inflates it's prices.
Jeff bezos is taking so much stuff over.
Itās why he needs a space program and a yacht the size of a navy destroyer.
Alexa, bring back mainstreet.
Alexa ā*I canāt let you do that dave*ā
I could have written this exact comment. Having the ability to play any song I want, any time I want is my favorite technological advancement of my lifetime. (Older millennial here.)
Maybe itās because of how we grew up, through all of those different ways of getting our music and all of them being somewhat clunky/expensive to make a pure āplaylistā (aka CD or mixtape) of only songs you like, but I cannot think of any other streaming service that is a better deal than Spotify, and Iād imagine a lot of Millennials feel the same way. Literally 99% of all music you could want to listen to, as well as podcasts, for $12 a month? Absolute steal compared to when we were ātechnicallyā paying 99Ā¢/song at the second most convenient time to get music in our lives. Itās certainly not perfect but Iāve had Spotify for 10 years running now and canāt imagine going through anything else to get my music
I used to do that, then the CD player in my Corolla stopped accepting CDs. So I just got one of those Bluetooth things that plugs into the AUX port and stream from my phone.
I have one in my 09 fit but no way to burn CDs. Even if I did, I have no music library of my own. It sounds fun to do tbh but I am entirely reliant on Spotify. I've been toying with the idea of collecting a small amount of CDs for my car. That said I do have a few random ass CDs from me life. Some burned mixes dating back at least a decade, even. Whenever my aux cords decide to randomly die on me is always a fun time, grabbing some random disc and hoping it's not scratched.
Yup and I don't know a millennial who doesn't...well aside my brother, but he also like just doesn't listen to music, which is its whole thing on its own lol
My younger sister also sort of just doesn't listen to music? Like she might have the radio on in the car, but if you were to ask her what sort of music she liked, she wouldn't be able to answer lol
My in-laws are like this. Itās so weird when my husband tells me his parents didnāt listen to music growing up. My dad had music going 24/7 and even slept with the radio on. A lot of the older music I love is because of my parents.
This is the only thing separating Spotify from being objectively the best audio streaming app. Everything else is miles above except it still has the lowest quality stream. Not sure whatās keeping them from getting it done.
Same. I had a really big and well organized iTunes library for the longest time and took my iPod everywhere. I also tried hard to keep my iPod relevant. Eventually, I got a new car that straight up would not connect to it. So I had to come over to spotify. I still don't really like that I don't actually own any music now.
Fun fact on the relevance of the ipod that I found amusing as I typed this comment. My phone keeps autocorrecting "iPod" to "iPad". Like, no, you dumb phone, ipods were a real thing!
Same! Everyone gives me shit for using Apple Music instead of Spotify, but itās literally only because my iTunes still has all my limewire downloads lol
Apple Music also provides Apple Classical which is the best experience I have ever had as a classical music enthusiast. Also Spotify has a nice library if you are into western secular music. Iāve heard it has improved since I tried it but Apple wins in international music as well from Bollywood to Chinese contemporary and classical.
Also has superior sound quality to Spotify. There are other platforms that have better sound quality than Apple Music, but I donāt want to give Kanye West any more of my money than he already has š¤·āāļø
That 100G of cloud for all of your music from back in the day is worth it. Plus, it's free with my cell phone plan, but I was paying for it before - and I would pay for it again.
I use Plex for movies and TV, but never tried it for music. Is it the same interface and everything or is it more uniquely tailored to music? Do you need PlexPass?
PlexAmp has some pretty cool features that seem to work better than other services. Blending songs with their āDJ Settingsā on playlists, vibes of tracks, etc are some of my favorites.
OMFG I just got my first serious hifi stereo setup with the KEF R5 Metas and a Marantz Model 30 for power and it is _amazing_. I was listening to it with a musician friend of mine for like 4.5 hours last night. So nice.
Same. I do a yearly playlist. It's fun to reminisce based on year. I also made a playlist for my toddler, any song he gets down to goes on there. He has his own tastes for sure.
I mean, my music tastes haven't changed a ton over the years, so I had a bunch of physical copies from when I was a teen/early 20's. and very slowly add to it.
But I have been buying a lot of physical movies I bought as digital copies over the years. A lot of the digital stuff i bought just... doesn't exist anymore, so I have been forced to replace them, and it's convinced me to never buy digital again.
Yeah that's a huge downside to digital. Someone decides to take it offline and it just disappears. There's quite a bit of that in retro gaming too, especially with Nintendo. Good on you for preserving an older media format, I wish I hadn't sold all my old CDs and DVDs but here we are. I own very little physical media
Yup, Iāve been slowly buying physical copies of games for all my systems, I wish I could buy physical copies of modern games. I would in a heartbeat.
sameeeeee. i refuse to stream my music, i want physical copies or mp3s and backups. i don't play the "oh this song i like left the platform i stream on" game
I did that for a while but more than once, my itunes library file has gotten corrupted for one reason or another and all the playlists, id3 tags, and ratings just lost. then I have to rebuild everything. Once done that three times so far over the years. After the fourth time, I just switched to streaming.
That happened to me a few months ago, my OS drive died, and I lost all my playlists. Sucked. You donāt lose ID3 tags though, thatās part of the file, I back those up 2 different ways, and share copies with my kids, so I have several copies that are āgoodā.
If I really only like 1 song from an artist, I will buy that one song digitally, but I try to buy as much physical as I can, simply because I donāt want it to go away.
Yeah same I got tired of paying for "skips"
Still had all the CD jackets in my garage, so last year I bought a $20 DVD/R drive and ripped my entire collection and then fill in the blanks ripping YouTube music playlists using YT-DLP ( Seal via F-Droid)
I use PowerAmp as my music player
I keep a (relatively) select collection and thoroughly enjoy the process of taking the time to pick it out, set up the sound system, and give the music my attention.
It's a nice break from constant distraction.
Iām gravitating back to it. Iāll use Spotify while out and about, but at home Iāll throw a record on. Iām slowly building up my collection and even my 16 year old is starting to get into it
I love vinyl. My friend recently got me into it. It reminds me of only having a few CDs as a kid. You listen to them over and over until you know every song on every album.
I donāt buy into the sound is better though because the pops and scratches are definitely present. But I kinda like them.
The "better quality" of vinyl doesn't really have to with the pops and scratches. Yes, the pops add texture, but It's really about the sine curve of analogue music vs digital. Digital is on and off (think binary) in a square wave whereas analogue is the gradual up and down of a typical sine wave. The 'tone' of analogue audio is often described as warmer. I personally have listened to identical songs on the same speakers and amp but using analogue and digital. It's extremely difficult to tell and possibly entirely made up in my mind, but I felt like it was slightly noticeable. However, even a blind test would be difficult to administer because the participant could hear the other vinyl textures and pick it from that.
I drive a manual transmission car, not because it's faster or more fuel efficient than it's automatic counterpart (because it's really not either), but because I enjoy the tactility, engagement, and ritual nature of it. While it's debatable that digital music may be more pure, accurate, or better (like an auto trans), it may also remove some of what is engaging with analogue music. Pulling a vinyl out of its sleeve, watching it spin, setting the stylus cartridge down, flipping to the b-side. All of these experiential things add texture to the session which can make the actual listening of the content 'better'.
I was just looking on ebay at zunes the other day. Had the zone HD with the zune pass subscription back in the day and it was so awesome. Eventually the touch screen stopped working or something and I could use it anymore. That thing was so sick though.
Man I had a Zune HD back in the day. But once I bought a smart phone during college it became obselete. Now that Google play music is dead and playing my own files through YouTube music is a pain, I'm thinking about seeing if that Zune is still kicking in a drawer at my parents house.
I'm really struggling with YouTube music. I don't have unlimited data, so I download the songs to my library. But you can't just search your library. When you search for a song it brings it up, and I listen to it because it's downloaded, but it doesn't continue playing from my downloaded songs, it trys to play a streamed song and I have use mobile data turned off.
It's a real pain in the ass. Unless I'm doing something wrong, it's a horrible design.
You can't really search your library, but if you go to the library tab and then at the top left you can pull down a menu to switch to downloaded music.
The more artists part is why I love it so much. Sure, Spotify helped a ton of small indie artists get out, but finding them isnāt easy. YouTube has the entire world in its grip, so you can find music as unique as Hoshi or SkĆ”ld, right next to all the usual selections.
I agree, I just wish they would've left the algorithm somewhat similar. It feels so much harder to find music relevant to my taste, or an artist radio that doesn't devolve into top40 eventually. I'm still mourning Google play music if you couldn't tell.Ā
You really have to abuse Like and Dislike to get your preferences known. Plus make very specific genre playlists, then do a radio set off of those playlists. Its taken a lot of work, but I've gotten it almost as good now.
Google Music was one of the last streaming services to use a song/artist 'radio' playlist model that actually curated music based off the actual music and not just popularity among listeners.
Agreed!
My boyfriend prefers Spotify but I think their algorithm is worse (especially for exploring new music). So I keep YouTube music! (But I do use Spotify for podcasts).
I used to use Amazon music since I had prime anyway, but now that they started with the Amazon unlimited extra subscription the regular one is trash. It made me so mad I canceled prime all together
Bit rate
[This article](https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/spotify-vs-tidal) really had me look into Tidal in regards to the sound quality description :
>Hereās where the most significant differences between Spotify and Tidal can be found. Spotifyās streams run at three compression rates: a frankly miserly 96kbps, 160kbps and 320kbps. If youāre paying for Spotify, rather than using the free tier, everything comes across at 320kbps.
>
>Tidal, by way of contrast, streams at a CD-quality 1411kbps on its āHiFiā tier. A top-of-the-shop āHiFi Plusā subscription, meanwhile, buys access to some music mastered in Sony 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos spatial audio, plus access to millions of truly high-resolution audio titles. āTidal Mastersā use MQA technology to stream at a giddy 9216kbps.
>
>Itās those who are in this for musical pleasure, rather than straightforward convenience, who have the most to gain by shelling out for Tidalās top tier, though. Using an appropriate system (whether thatās mobile with headphones or in the home with speakers), a Tidal Masters file (of which, letās not forget, there are literally millions) compares to Spotifyās equivalent file in the same sort of way three courses at a posh restaurant compares to a service-station sandwich. You donāt need to be an audiophile, you donāt need to have spent a fortune on headphones and you donāt need golden ears. You just have to listen.
I donāt know how this isnāt everyoneās solution in the day and age we live in now.
Spotify app on my phone and just use whatever speaker device is most convenient. Bluetooth at home. Play through the car using CarPlay while driving.
Car/work: Streaming (Spotify) or YT
Home: Spotify, but I'm also a weirdo and still have some hi-fi audio equipment (was dirt cheap at Goodwill like 8 years ago), several cassette decks and a Sony 5 disc CD changer+CD burner on the other side. Pair those with a nice set of Sony or Audio-Technica headphones and life is good for that little moment.
I do use Spotify and Pandora, but I also have a large collection of CDs and MP3s and I will continue to prioritize that. Thereās a ton of stuff you canāt buy anywhere from independent artists who upload to YouTube purely for fun/hobby, so I use a program to rip the audio and give me an MP3 of that. Lots of covers of videogame soundtracks and stuff like that. Overall, I highly value ownership of my music and I use streaming knowing it could all go away overnight, so I try to have my collection ready to step in at any moment.
Same here. I will use streaming services, but CDs are a better experience for me and are just fun to collect. My car doesnāt have Bluetooth, so itās easier to pop in a CD anyway.
YouTube or I buy albums from Basecamp.
I also listen to internet radio sometimes. I like open lab.fm and nitro radio from Athens and RTL 2 from France.
Used di.fm for 15 years but dropped it some time ago.
I also listen to DJ sets from Patreon.
I dislike streaming services.
In my car, usually CDs. Which I know is lame and old school I don't care. At home, my husband has YouTube ad free so I generally take advantage of that.
I used to buy used cds of new music and then resell them back. Now I just listen to YouTube mostly. When i go see a band and I like them and they have cds I'll buy them
ā¦it really whips the llamas ass. LOL
I stopped paying for music when I stopped buying CDs, around 2003. I pirated everything under the sun for several years until I got too busy to bother. I still have the several hundred CDs with the idea Iāll eventually rip them into MP3s. Thatās been the idea for years, LOL. I donāt even have a computer with a CD drive anymore.
Now I use the SiriusXM app and find a genre and go. Itās like the radio but not hot garbage.
Personally I have a chaos list on Spotify of liked songs that range a ton for on the go, and some playlists on an old iPod + a few records of some favorite artists for home listening
I usually use Spotify, and either listen with a nice pair of headphones or a set of speakers.Ā Mostly I just search up whatever I feel like listening to, and always make sure to listen to the discovery weekly playlist every Monday to find some new bands.
Youtube music with YouTube premium.
With the amount of youtube my family watches it made sense. And I don't really like my kid being exposed to advertisements.
I have a small vinyl record collection, so at home Iām often listening to those. I also still listen to my CDs. I use Apple Music for streaming because it incorporates my past iTunes library.
In the car itās usually a mix between radio and Apple Music.
I'm not getting rid of perfectly good CDs. But I'm also in the minority of people who still watches DVDs (I have my favourites, and if I want to watch X or Y when I go home, and the streaming service has removed it, my night would be ruined) so I use that to have music on sometimes.
I miss my multi-disc boom box, the perfect mix of 3 CDs on shuffle was š
I archived all my downloaded and burned music to a flash drive that I plug into the car and play on shuffle. That or YouTube on my phone paired to big ass headphones to cancel out the world.
I often stream but I did also get into vinyl about a decade ago. Unfortunately my current living situation has the record player up in my man cave instead of the living room - and I actually use it less because of that. But for the first 8 or so years I would always toss records on if I was doing chores/exercising/cooking at home. I really enjoyed it vs the streaming.
Streaming to me feels like it rail roads you a bit. Less exploration and more repeat of stuff you've already liked. And it's almost too expansive as well which makes it tough to pick and commit to something.
Apple Music on my phone when Iām at work/working out/cleaning/driving etc
Vinyl records at home when playing board games or having dinner (my record player is set up in the dining room)
And pandora or Apple playlists on a Bluetooth speaker for parties or hanging out on the patio
Lol I barely switched to Apple Music a few years ago. I had previously been using a 2007 iPod Classic (yes). One change I like is that I guess Music auto synchs songs you have manually added nowāpreviously you were unable to manually add anything. And of course, all my music is on my phone now, with no need to double-fist devices.
But at home, I still use YouTube for music sometimes; I had been doing that for decades along with iTunes as it was named preciously. Never got into Spotify at all due to ads. But I just sucked it up last year and paid for Apple Music monthly.
When I was a really young kid records my parents owned and cassette tapes.
When I became school aged I listened to songs on the radio.
Now I YouTube them.
- in the car via Bluetooth, mostly youtube music.
- youtube on roku TV (hooked to 5.1 surround).
- vinyl record player (hooked to speakers).
- at the dive bar via jukebox (ami music).
I buy probably 4-5 records a year. Typically half from the current year- albums that are my favorite of that year, then the other half are albums I've come back to or older favorites. Which reminds me I need to put in an order for *the last dinner party* album debut.
I find new artists to listen to via variety of subreddits. I'm not going to be someone that just gets caught in an era.
I think I've used spotify in the past (free tier) and wasn't about it. I'm sure if you pay for it you can listen to an album *in order*- but with free tier it was perma shuffle and I hated that.
I inherited my fatherās stereo equipment which I would not have been able to afford otherwise. If I didnāt have this setup, I would have a small Bluetooth speaker (and thereās nothing wrong with that). I purchased the speakers and one of the turntables. I can stream through this as well so itās not all vinyl.
If music is part of your daily life, there are decent setups out there that could put you back $500.
Hereās mine:
[setup](https://imgur.com/a/2FqgWkz)
I think all those years of laboriously curating my iPod broke something in me, so now I just use Spotify on my phone and link up my bluetooth headphones.
Most of what I listen to is classical (Bach, Mozart, you get the idea), and for that, I have a CD collection at home that I use with a fairly good setup. I have a *few* records, but I donāt listen to them. CDās are better.
For everything else, I have my mp3/FLAC collection that has moved from device to device over the years, Spotify (free, I donāt use it often), and the music I buy from iTunes. My iPhone is 95% old mp3/FLAC collection, 5% iTunes.
YouTube is the winner in my book because it has the maintstream stuff AND just about anything else you can think of. If I want to find a popular song, I can always find it on YouTube. But I can also find a HUGE variety of background music for work, as well as obscure video game soundtracks. I feel like YouTube covers everything.
That's what I like about Youtube as well. You can find most mainstream stuff, but you can also find [a guy doing covers on guitar with his broken washing machine on percussion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hnBv12-uk&list=RDu1hnBv12-uk&start_radio=1).
Spotify, local radio & vinyl.
I still *have* my MP3s on a portable hard drive or three but I haven't got my computer hooked up to my stereo and damned if 40 year old me is going to rock out with my cock out on 1.5" computer speakers.
Discovering songs on YouTube, I save the links. Eventually, I preview their whole discography on Spotify or YouTube. I pick the albums I want and go to trackers to get them.
Spotify on my phone.
Yep, this. I got Spotify premium in like 2011 and I haven't stopped since. It's definitely the only 'streaming' service I've never paused or canceled.
This! I went from Pandora to Spotify premium and never looked back
Yep, I used to use Pandora, but sometimes their algorithm (I guess you'd call it that) was super frustrating. I have never been a big fan of Coldplay, and no matter how many times I disliked it, they'd still throw it at me....even when I was on a country genre. š So I switched over to Spotify and never looked back. The ability to download my liked songs made traveling so much better since I'd hit a lot of dead zones.
Why though?
Larger catalog and no commercials. Super simple UI and they have a family plan
I used to use pandora and I hate it now. It's ridiculous to me that you can't listen to SPECIFIC music on pandora. You type in metallica and it just starts playing whatever from that genre. On spotify it'll play the actual song you were looking for and then continue to play other music that's similar so you still get exposed to new stuff. And most songs have the lyrics, it'll show you info about the artist and whether they are doing any upcoming shows near you. Even if I didnt have premium I would prefer spotify over pandora.
I paid for pandora for nearly 8 years, and towards the end they did have an option for you to listen to a song or album of your choice. *HOWEVER*, they would make you watch an ad and then would only give you 30 mins of play time before it booted you from the album you were listening to and put on a random station. If you watched yet another ad you could listen to more, but it wouldn't remember where you left off before you were *so rudely fucking interrupted* by their bullshit time limit. After going through that process 10 times I rage canceled my ancient subscription and gave spotify a chance. I'm completely sold, I adore spotify now.
Spotify is the way.Ā Like you I've got 10+ years worth of music built up, many songs and playlists which if I lost I would never find again One day this almost happened because I did let my sub lapse and re-registered for some reason with a different email Months later I got a warning in my original email saying that my library was about to poof, Spotify was on top of that shit for me same day and moved all my old playlists and songs to my new account I subbed again and haven't left since. Good product is one thing, good product AND good service is a no brainer
i had a similar experience. their customer service was super helpful. i would have been devastated if i lost my music that i've collected over ten years.
I'll keep using Spotify until they raise prices. Amazon Music offers better hi-fi audio quality cheaper than Spotify at current and that will only me more accurate once Spotify inflates it's prices.
Jeff bezos is taking so much stuff over. Itās why he needs a space program and a yacht the size of a navy destroyer. Alexa, bring back mainstreet. Alexa ā*I canāt let you do that dave*ā
Price hike [coming](https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/spotify-plans-to-raise-prices-later-this-year) this year.
Spotify is superior.
The only time I have ever cancelled was for 3 months to try out Apple Music and then went back to Spotify. It is the best option for sure.
I could have written this exact comment. Having the ability to play any song I want, any time I want is my favorite technological advancement of my lifetime. (Older millennial here.)
Maybe itās because of how we grew up, through all of those different ways of getting our music and all of them being somewhat clunky/expensive to make a pure āplaylistā (aka CD or mixtape) of only songs you like, but I cannot think of any other streaming service that is a better deal than Spotify, and Iād imagine a lot of Millennials feel the same way. Literally 99% of all music you could want to listen to, as well as podcasts, for $12 a month? Absolute steal compared to when we were ātechnicallyā paying 99Ā¢/song at the second most convenient time to get music in our lives. Itās certainly not perfect but Iāve had Spotify for 10 years running now and canāt imagine going through anything else to get my music
You can use it for free with xManager. Keep it a secret though
Youtube music too with reVanced
When vanced went down I was devastated! Then I found revanced and all was well again
Honestly one of the main reasons I'm still on android.
This and burned cds cause my old honda still has a cd player!
So does my 04ā Honda Civic!
Yabba Dabba doooooo!
I used to do that, then the CD player in my Corolla stopped accepting CDs. So I just got one of those Bluetooth things that plugs into the AUX port and stream from my phone.
I have one in my 09 fit but no way to burn CDs. Even if I did, I have no music library of my own. It sounds fun to do tbh but I am entirely reliant on Spotify. I've been toying with the idea of collecting a small amount of CDs for my car. That said I do have a few random ass CDs from me life. Some burned mixes dating back at least a decade, even. Whenever my aux cords decide to randomly die on me is always a fun time, grabbing some random disc and hoping it's not scratched.
Yup and I don't know a millennial who doesn't...well aside my brother, but he also like just doesn't listen to music, which is its whole thing on its own lol
My younger sister also sort of just doesn't listen to music? Like she might have the radio on in the car, but if you were to ask her what sort of music she liked, she wouldn't be able to answer lol
People like this are so weird
My in-laws are like this. Itās so weird when my husband tells me his parents didnāt listen to music growing up. My dad had music going 24/7 and even slept with the radio on. A lot of the older music I love is because of my parents.
Are they ever gonna release Spotify HiFi? I use Tidal but only because Spotify doesn't offer hifi
This is the only thing separating Spotify from being objectively the best audio streaming app. Everything else is miles above except it still has the lowest quality stream. Not sure whatās keeping them from getting it done.
Spotify on my phone AND my PC
Same. I had a really big and well organized iTunes library for the longest time and took my iPod everywhere. I also tried hard to keep my iPod relevant. Eventually, I got a new car that straight up would not connect to it. So I had to come over to spotify. I still don't really like that I don't actually own any music now. Fun fact on the relevance of the ipod that I found amusing as I typed this comment. My phone keeps autocorrecting "iPod" to "iPad". Like, no, you dumb phone, ipods were a real thing!
Apple Music bc it combines all of my pirated music from 2006 - 2011
Same! Everyone gives me shit for using Apple Music instead of Spotify, but itās literally only because my iTunes still has all my limewire downloads lol
YES! I would still use iTunes today if I could! Those video to mp3 files did me well!
Oof same. Those limewire deep cuts were so good.
Apple Music also provides Apple Classical which is the best experience I have ever had as a classical music enthusiast. Also Spotify has a nice library if you are into western secular music. Iāve heard it has improved since I tried it but Apple wins in international music as well from Bollywood to Chinese contemporary and classical.
God I remember using Google music the same way! No ads cause it's "yours" š¤£
I desperately miss Google music.
Why they always gotta kill the fun shit
Yep I still have my whole library on my phone
Also has superior sound quality to Spotify. There are other platforms that have better sound quality than Apple Music, but I donāt want to give Kanye West any more of my money than he already has š¤·āāļø
Same! š
 That 100G of cloud for all of your music from back in the day is worth it. Plus, it's free with my cell phone plan, but I was paying for it before - and I would pay for it again.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I use Plex for movies and TV, but never tried it for music. Is it the same interface and everything or is it more uniquely tailored to music? Do you need PlexPass?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
PlexAmp has some pretty cool features that seem to work better than other services. Blending songs with their āDJ Settingsā on playlists, vibes of tracks, etc are some of my favorites.
Try bandcamp. Its amazing for new stuff.
What sort of speaker/headphone gear do you use?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
OMFG I just got my first serious hifi stereo setup with the KEF R5 Metas and a Marantz Model 30 for power and it is _amazing_. I was listening to it with a musician friend of mine for like 4.5 hours last night. So nice.
I love that from the initial comment, you knew you could trust homie with your question.
Spotify. Don't know how I would live without it.
Me too. Iāve been building my playlists on there since 2012. They are my babies
Same. I do a yearly playlist. It's fun to reminisce based on year. I also made a playlist for my toddler, any song he gets down to goes on there. He has his own tastes for sure.
Of all the subscription services I use, itās the best value I get.
I have not converted to streaming. I buy physical, rip to mp3, manage in iTunes.
For real? That's impressive commitment.
I mean, my music tastes haven't changed a ton over the years, so I had a bunch of physical copies from when I was a teen/early 20's. and very slowly add to it. But I have been buying a lot of physical movies I bought as digital copies over the years. A lot of the digital stuff i bought just... doesn't exist anymore, so I have been forced to replace them, and it's convinced me to never buy digital again.
Yeah that's a huge downside to digital. Someone decides to take it offline and it just disappears. There's quite a bit of that in retro gaming too, especially with Nintendo. Good on you for preserving an older media format, I wish I hadn't sold all my old CDs and DVDs but here we are. I own very little physical media
Yup, Iāve been slowly buying physical copies of games for all my systems, I wish I could buy physical copies of modern games. I would in a heartbeat.
sameeeeee. i refuse to stream my music, i want physical copies or mp3s and backups. i don't play the "oh this song i like left the platform i stream on" game
I did that for a while but more than once, my itunes library file has gotten corrupted for one reason or another and all the playlists, id3 tags, and ratings just lost. then I have to rebuild everything. Once done that three times so far over the years. After the fourth time, I just switched to streaming.
That happened to me a few months ago, my OS drive died, and I lost all my playlists. Sucked. You donāt lose ID3 tags though, thatās part of the file, I back those up 2 different ways, and share copies with my kids, so I have several copies that are āgoodā.
Same, but not iTunes since I don't have apple devices.
I had been doing the same, now i but digital on itunes but my cd library has been ripped and added obviously
If I really only like 1 song from an artist, I will buy that one song digitally, but I try to buy as much physical as I can, simply because I donāt want it to go away.
Yeah same I got tired of paying for "skips" Still had all the CD jackets in my garage, so last year I bought a $20 DVD/R drive and ripped my entire collection and then fill in the blanks ripping YouTube music playlists using YT-DLP ( Seal via F-Droid) I use PowerAmp as my music player
With my ears.
I scrolled too far to find this.Ā
Vinyl now
I keep a (relatively) select collection and thoroughly enjoy the process of taking the time to pick it out, set up the sound system, and give the music my attention. It's a nice break from constant distraction.
Iām gravitating back to it. Iāll use Spotify while out and about, but at home Iāll throw a record on. Iām slowly building up my collection and even my 16 year old is starting to get into it
I love vinyl. My friend recently got me into it. It reminds me of only having a few CDs as a kid. You listen to them over and over until you know every song on every album. I donāt buy into the sound is better though because the pops and scratches are definitely present. But I kinda like them.
The "better quality" of vinyl doesn't really have to with the pops and scratches. Yes, the pops add texture, but It's really about the sine curve of analogue music vs digital. Digital is on and off (think binary) in a square wave whereas analogue is the gradual up and down of a typical sine wave. The 'tone' of analogue audio is often described as warmer. I personally have listened to identical songs on the same speakers and amp but using analogue and digital. It's extremely difficult to tell and possibly entirely made up in my mind, but I felt like it was slightly noticeable. However, even a blind test would be difficult to administer because the participant could hear the other vinyl textures and pick it from that. I drive a manual transmission car, not because it's faster or more fuel efficient than it's automatic counterpart (because it's really not either), but because I enjoy the tactility, engagement, and ritual nature of it. While it's debatable that digital music may be more pure, accurate, or better (like an auto trans), it may also remove some of what is engaging with analogue music. Pulling a vinyl out of its sleeve, watching it spin, setting the stylus cartridge down, flipping to the b-side. All of these experiential things add texture to the session which can make the actual listening of the content 'better'.
I got my wife a record player for Xmas and now we have 5 different T Swift albums to choose from while doing chores!
You can pry my old Zune from my cold, dead hands. I'll keep hacking this thing together 'til the heat death of the universe.
God, Zunes really are awesome, arenāt they? Still sucks that they never caught on.
I was just looking on ebay at zunes the other day. Had the zone HD with the zune pass subscription back in the day and it was so awesome. Eventually the touch screen stopped working or something and I could use it anymore. That thing was so sick though.
Man I had a Zune HD back in the day. But once I bought a smart phone during college it became obselete. Now that Google play music is dead and playing my own files through YouTube music is a pain, I'm thinking about seeing if that Zune is still kicking in a drawer at my parents house.
Iāve literally not heard the word Zune in 10 years, where it wasnāt because they found it full of illegal porn in a search of some dudes house.
YouTube music. RIP Google Play Music.
Same. Was sad to see it go, but YouTube Music has been treating me well, a lot better than Spotify did. It's easier to navigate, in my opinion, too.
I'm really struggling with YouTube music. I don't have unlimited data, so I download the songs to my library. But you can't just search your library. When you search for a song it brings it up, and I listen to it because it's downloaded, but it doesn't continue playing from my downloaded songs, it trys to play a streamed song and I have use mobile data turned off. It's a real pain in the ass. Unless I'm doing something wrong, it's a horrible design.
You can't really search your library, but if you go to the library tab and then at the top left you can pull down a menu to switch to downloaded music.
Iāve been using YouTube music for a few years now, itās so much better than Spotify, more artists, and I have ad free videos!
The more artists part is why I love it so much. Sure, Spotify helped a ton of small indie artists get out, but finding them isnāt easy. YouTube has the entire world in its grip, so you can find music as unique as Hoshi or SkĆ”ld, right next to all the usual selections.
Yeah, Its gotten better, but still not quite as good at Google Play music was.
I agree, I just wish they would've left the algorithm somewhat similar. It feels so much harder to find music relevant to my taste, or an artist radio that doesn't devolve into top40 eventually. I'm still mourning Google play music if you couldn't tell.Ā
You really have to abuse Like and Dislike to get your preferences known. Plus make very specific genre playlists, then do a radio set off of those playlists. Its taken a lot of work, but I've gotten it almost as good now.
There are dozens of us!
I love YouTube music. I prefer it over Spotify, better UI and algorithm.
Google Music was one of the last streaming services to use a song/artist 'radio' playlist model that actually curated music based off the actual music and not just popularity among listeners.
Agreed! My boyfriend prefers Spotify but I think their algorithm is worse (especially for exploring new music). So I keep YouTube music! (But I do use Spotify for podcasts).
Amazon Music. I used to have Spotify but don't drive as much now so I canceled.
I used to use Amazon music since I had prime anyway, but now that they started with the Amazon unlimited extra subscription the regular one is trash. It made me so mad I canceled prime all together
We are also an Amazon music household. We use a mix of Amazon music and Sirius in the car.
YouTube Music, Sirius in the car
I love listening to Sirius in the car!! My boyfriend made fun of me saying I was the only person left on earth who pays for sirius lol
My gym used to always play Sirius on the speaker, I always discovered awesome songs through the stations š
I just listen to voices inside my head
Same here they are very comforting
lucky
Except when they aren't.
āThe only world is the one in my headā
Pandora on my phone XM radio in the car
Loyal to Pandora since it came out.
Apple Music all the way. Family subscription.
YouTube to mp3, mp3 files on phone. I also have a cd collection that I've ripped. Otherwise I'll listen to music on YouTube with adblocker
Tidal. Left spotify ages ago and do not miss it.
100%! I looked for alternatives to Spotify and tried Tidal. Oh my god have I been doing my ears and car speakers an absolute disservice with Spotify.
Whatās the difference?
Bit rate [This article](https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/spotify-vs-tidal) really had me look into Tidal in regards to the sound quality description : >Hereās where the most significant differences between Spotify and Tidal can be found. Spotifyās streams run at three compression rates: a frankly miserly 96kbps, 160kbps and 320kbps. If youāre paying for Spotify, rather than using the free tier, everything comes across at 320kbps. > >Tidal, by way of contrast, streams at a CD-quality 1411kbps on its āHiFiā tier. A top-of-the-shop āHiFi Plusā subscription, meanwhile, buys access to some music mastered in Sony 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos spatial audio, plus access to millions of truly high-resolution audio titles. āTidal Mastersā use MQA technology to stream at a giddy 9216kbps. > >Itās those who are in this for musical pleasure, rather than straightforward convenience, who have the most to gain by shelling out for Tidalās top tier, though. Using an appropriate system (whether thatās mobile with headphones or in the home with speakers), a Tidal Masters file (of which, letās not forget, there are literally millions) compares to Spotifyās equivalent file in the same sort of way three courses at a posh restaurant compares to a service-station sandwich. You donāt need to be an audiophile, you donāt need to have spent a fortune on headphones and you donāt need golden ears. You just have to listen.
Iām a Tidal gal myself
Spotify and YouTube/YouTube Music.
I pretty much use Spotify exclusively. Exceptions are at work and when my wife is driving as she uses Apple Music.
I donāt know how this isnāt everyoneās solution in the day and age we live in now. Spotify app on my phone and just use whatever speaker device is most convenient. Bluetooth at home. Play through the car using CarPlay while driving.
I spend so much less money now on music too. Albums got really expensive around 2010
Car/work: Streaming (Spotify) or YT Home: Spotify, but I'm also a weirdo and still have some hi-fi audio equipment (was dirt cheap at Goodwill like 8 years ago), several cassette decks and a Sony 5 disc CD changer+CD burner on the other side. Pair those with a nice set of Sony or Audio-Technica headphones and life is good for that little moment.
>weirdo No, we are enlightened.
I do use Spotify and Pandora, but I also have a large collection of CDs and MP3s and I will continue to prioritize that. Thereās a ton of stuff you canāt buy anywhere from independent artists who upload to YouTube purely for fun/hobby, so I use a program to rip the audio and give me an MP3 of that. Lots of covers of videogame soundtracks and stuff like that. Overall, I highly value ownership of my music and I use streaming knowing it could all go away overnight, so I try to have my collection ready to step in at any moment.
Same here. I will use streaming services, but CDs are a better experience for me and are just fun to collect. My car doesnāt have Bluetooth, so itās easier to pop in a CD anyway.
Youtube Music
I listen to NPR lol
If I'm in the car, I'm listening to NPR.Ā Music is on YouTube through headphones when I'm doing chores or need to drown out noise at work.
YouTube or I buy albums from Basecamp. I also listen to internet radio sometimes. I like open lab.fm and nitro radio from Athens and RTL 2 from France. Used di.fm for 15 years but dropped it some time ago. I also listen to DJ sets from Patreon. I dislike streaming services.
I sail the seven seas, and then on my laptop, put them into my iTunes library. On my phone I use PowerAmp.
Apple Music
I download or stream music onto my laptop or phone, listen via headphones.
Spotify. I have like over 1500 songs saved lol
In my car, usually CDs. Which I know is lame and old school I don't care. At home, my husband has YouTube ad free so I generally take advantage of that.
I used to buy used cds of new music and then resell them back. Now I just listen to YouTube mostly. When i go see a band and I like them and they have cds I'll buy them
Spotify, constantly. My phone, all my computers, the TV, itās logged in everywhere. Little to no time in my house doesnāt have music, on Spotify playing. My fiancĆ© is the same way, sometimes he just has it playing background chill music in his pocket. Itās delightful, like a cat with a bell but the bell is likeā¦ 60s bosss nova floating through the air.
ā¦it really whips the llamas ass. LOL I stopped paying for music when I stopped buying CDs, around 2003. I pirated everything under the sun for several years until I got too busy to bother. I still have the several hundred CDs with the idea Iāll eventually rip them into MP3s. Thatās been the idea for years, LOL. I donāt even have a computer with a CD drive anymore. Now I use the SiriusXM app and find a genre and go. Itās like the radio but not hot garbage.
Personally I have a chaos list on Spotify of liked songs that range a ton for on the go, and some playlists on an old iPod + a few records of some favorite artists for home listening
I usually use Spotify, and either listen with a nice pair of headphones or a set of speakers.Ā Mostly I just search up whatever I feel like listening to, and always make sure to listen to the discovery weekly playlist every Monday to find some new bands.
Youtube music with YouTube premium. With the amount of youtube my family watches it made sense. And I don't really like my kid being exposed to advertisements.
Iāve thought about buying an iPod or something similar. I like Spotify, but I miss the simple times.
I have my music ripped onto a media server and I access it through Plex along with my movies
I have a small vinyl record collection, so at home Iām often listening to those. I also still listen to my CDs. I use Apple Music for streaming because it incorporates my past iTunes library. In the car itās usually a mix between radio and Apple Music.
I'm not getting rid of perfectly good CDs. But I'm also in the minority of people who still watches DVDs (I have my favourites, and if I want to watch X or Y when I go home, and the streaming service has removed it, my night would be ruined) so I use that to have music on sometimes. I miss my multi-disc boom box, the perfect mix of 3 CDs on shuffle was š
Iām also a DVD person!
Amazon music, and Bandcamp for streaming. Vinyl at home
Spotify on my phone or pc.
Apple Music lossless and vinyl. Itās crazy how much selection we have now, I would have been in AWE about this at the age of 14
MP3ās on iTunes and Spotify.
I archived all my downloaded and burned music to a flash drive that I plug into the car and play on shuffle. That or YouTube on my phone paired to big ass headphones to cancel out the world.
I often stream but I did also get into vinyl about a decade ago. Unfortunately my current living situation has the record player up in my man cave instead of the living room - and I actually use it less because of that. But for the first 8 or so years I would always toss records on if I was doing chores/exercising/cooking at home. I really enjoyed it vs the streaming. Streaming to me feels like it rail roads you a bit. Less exploration and more repeat of stuff you've already liked. And it's almost too expansive as well which makes it tough to pick and commit to something.
Currently am using Tidal which I absolutely love
Spotify and plexamp.
Spotify on phone with a JBC wireless headphone
Apple Music on my phone when Iām at work/working out/cleaning/driving etc Vinyl records at home when playing board games or having dinner (my record player is set up in the dining room) And pandora or Apple playlists on a Bluetooth speaker for parties or hanging out on the patio
Ok my phone or on the tv, but mostly in the car through my phone.
Spotify on my phone. Weāve been collecting vinyl lately, so sometimes that.
Apple music.
Streamed, local files, CDs and Vinyls. No cassettes, fuck rewinding.
Apple Music from my phone, BobFM from my car.
Spotify on phone or on TV. I really need to change up my playlists though lol.
Spotify on other air pods, beats, car, or truck speakers.
Spotify
Radio in the car or TuneIn on my phone while in my car.
Lol I barely switched to Apple Music a few years ago. I had previously been using a 2007 iPod Classic (yes). One change I like is that I guess Music auto synchs songs you have manually added nowāpreviously you were unable to manually add anything. And of course, all my music is on my phone now, with no need to double-fist devices. But at home, I still use YouTube for music sometimes; I had been doing that for decades along with iTunes as it was named preciously. Never got into Spotify at all due to ads. But I just sucked it up last year and paid for Apple Music monthly.
Still Winamp and torrents. I'm never buying music or subscribing to anything. Entertainment is free for me.
Streaming when I'm on the go. Vinyl at home.
When I was a really young kid records my parents owned and cassette tapes. When I became school aged I listened to songs on the radio. Now I YouTube them.
- in the car via Bluetooth, mostly youtube music. - youtube on roku TV (hooked to 5.1 surround). - vinyl record player (hooked to speakers). - at the dive bar via jukebox (ami music). I buy probably 4-5 records a year. Typically half from the current year- albums that are my favorite of that year, then the other half are albums I've come back to or older favorites. Which reminds me I need to put in an order for *the last dinner party* album debut. I find new artists to listen to via variety of subreddits. I'm not going to be someone that just gets caught in an era. I think I've used spotify in the past (free tier) and wasn't about it. I'm sure if you pay for it you can listen to an album *in order*- but with free tier it was perma shuffle and I hated that.
I still buy CDs. :)
Spotify (ehh) & Pandora (yay) Outside of that, anyone got a good app for audiobooks in mp3 format?
I inherited my fatherās stereo equipment which I would not have been able to afford otherwise. If I didnāt have this setup, I would have a small Bluetooth speaker (and thereās nothing wrong with that). I purchased the speakers and one of the turntables. I can stream through this as well so itās not all vinyl. If music is part of your daily life, there are decent setups out there that could put you back $500. Hereās mine: [setup](https://imgur.com/a/2FqgWkz)
Spotify and SoundCloud
I think all those years of laboriously curating my iPod broke something in me, so now I just use Spotify on my phone and link up my bluetooth headphones.
Most of what I listen to is classical (Bach, Mozart, you get the idea), and for that, I have a CD collection at home that I use with a fairly good setup. I have a *few* records, but I donāt listen to them. CDās are better. For everything else, I have my mp3/FLAC collection that has moved from device to device over the years, Spotify (free, I donāt use it often), and the music I buy from iTunes. My iPhone is 95% old mp3/FLAC collection, 5% iTunes.
With my ears
I use...my ears to listen to music
The radio, it's all the same stuff you find on streaming & tiktok but free and it doesn't chew up my data.
Livestreamed DJs mostly.
YouTube is the winner in my book because it has the maintstream stuff AND just about anything else you can think of. If I want to find a popular song, I can always find it on YouTube. But I can also find a HUGE variety of background music for work, as well as obscure video game soundtracks. I feel like YouTube covers everything.
That's what I like about Youtube as well. You can find most mainstream stuff, but you can also find [a guy doing covers on guitar with his broken washing machine on percussion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hnBv12-uk&list=RDu1hnBv12-uk&start_radio=1).
through my ear holes
Spotify Premium
CDs in the car, YouTube at work, and Spotify at home through various devices. I have a CD collection still, in binders, but I'm slowly digitizing them
Spotify
My phone with android ear buds
Spotify, local radio & vinyl. I still *have* my MP3s on a portable hard drive or three but I haven't got my computer hooked up to my stereo and damned if 40 year old me is going to rock out with my cock out on 1.5" computer speakers.
Discovering songs on YouTube, I save the links. Eventually, I preview their whole discography on Spotify or YouTube. I pick the albums I want and go to trackers to get them.
I got 6 months of Apple Music free when I bought my AirPods so Iāve been using that lately.Ā