[Jim]

few threads on this but most quite old now.
Anyhow, considering subscribing to one of these streaming service type things, have used spotify breifly when it was free, heard some people talking about deezer, never used in. What do people use and recomend for this sort of thing (the chromecast speakers thread got me thinking again about this)
can't believe I am so out of touch with modern technology

[tomtom]

Spotify is still free - you just get ads every now and then.. Though for playlists on my PC it seems to have none (who knows!).

[Duma]

I pay for Spotify - no experience of others
the paid for one lets you download stuff for offline play - useful for the car, also no ads, also can stream at 320kbs - obvs cant tell in car or through laptop, but noticeable through the hifi at home. connect is nice too.

[mini]

Another one for Spotify.

I did trial iMusic for a few weeks, but found it very clunky, it doubled up tracks if you saved & made available offline using your iPhone and failed to recognise the existance of some genres like folk / americana.

Went straight back to Spotify, which was like a breath of fresh air in comparison.

[SamT]

+1 for paid spotify. I figure a tenner a month = 1 album purchase a month, yet I get to listen to shit loads more than that, with all the bonuses of being able to sample stuff, create playlists really easily, have stuff offline to listen in the car/on holiday when you have no wifi/data connection.

I had a brief dalliance with Deezer (free with my samsung phone for a year or something) but went straight back to Spotify.

Yes you cast straight to things like Chromecast Audio/Sonos etc.

[tomtom]

Our neighbours are streaming people - and rave about Tidal - having used Spotify and Apple Music as well... They say it's important to check what services have the most of what you listen to on.... There's a lot of overlap but some important (to them) artists were missing from some services...

[SA Chris]

My ears are too knackered to appreciate the better quality Tidal provides, so can't justify the extra expense.

[tomtom]

My ears are too knackered to appreciate the better quality Tidal provides, so can't justify the extra expense.

sorry?

[SA Chris]

Ex Artillery "Play anything but play it loud!"

[Jim]

thread reserection!
haven't bothered actually getting round to this yet but am about to dip my toes.
Having breifly used spotify on other peoples I didn't really get on with it.
I've done a bit of reading online and I recon I'm going to give google play music a go as you can have a free trial period and I've already got a google account.
I like how you can add loads of your own music for the rare stuff that is hard to come by, the offline, the family thing and I think the UI is more to my liking than spotify.
Anyone one here use it and recomend it or have tried it and moved on to something else?

[Falling Down]

Can't comment on Google but I still have a Spotify premium that I've been using for a few years and really like for listening to music on the road on headphones or with a Bluetooth.

After getting a decent Rega hifi at home a year ago I have Tidal now too and run that from a Sonos player into a DAC then into the amp - the quality is really remarkable.  Better than many CD's and even vinyl depending on the pressing.  It's 20 squids a month mind so quite pricey...

[tomtom]

Our neighbours rave about Tidal. I use the ad supported Spotify

[Johnny Brown]

Having breifly used spotify on other peoples I didn't really get on with it.

Bear in mind at New Year we were using it on an ipad which is the least user friendly interface. The desktop app is really good for finding new music and curating playlists etc, the mobile apps less so.

[tommytwotone]

Strangely prescient - I signed up (again - had an old account linked to an ancient Yahoo email I don't have any more) for Spotify over the weekend, as we're trying to sort out the music playing situation in our house.


We're going to go with combo of Spotify and Chromecast, which I think will work (anyone know if the iTunes Spotify app supports Chromecast? A quick Google suggests it should).


We've only got two rooms, so it shouldn't be too complicated - we'll just have:


Kitchen: decent DAB radio with Chromecast audio plugged into an aux in (suggestions welcome)
Living Room: TV with Chromecast plugged in, potentially supplemented with a budget soundbar to improve quality of TV sound (again, suggestions welcome)


I think the only thing we won't be able to do over and above the more expensive (basically SONOS) options is have the same music on both speakers, but I don't think that's a use case we actually experience very often.

[Teaboy]

I used the paid for Spotify as I have some multiroom speakers and they don't support the free service so that's something to bear in mind if thinking of the free service.

[andy moles]

I wonder if anyone can answer something for me.

When I listen to music on Spotify and an album or playlist ends, the algorithm then feeds me other music that it thinks I will like based on what I've been listening to. Great, I hear some good new things this way.

In the last couple of years I've been noticing that this often includes loads of really short tracks, like a little over a minute, which end really abruptly or fade out unexpectedly. I thought this was because they were part of a continuous mix or something, but no, when you open the album they're from all the tracks are like that. It's like you're getting the middle but no beginning or end.

What the fuck is with this? Is it a Tiktok thing, where producers are just tossing out snippets instead of properly structured pieces of music because it fits how people are listening to music now? It's very irritating.

[Fultonius]

I've not noticed that ever happening Andy. Maybe you have a borked algorithm 

[andy moles]

Ha maybe, or a borked taste in music. These things are out there though!

[highrepute]

Ha maybe, or a borked taste in music. These things are out there though!

Do you have an example you can share?

[andy moles]

Ha maybe, or a borked taste in music. These things are out there though!

Do you have an example you can share?

I don't know if this is the best example as the tracks don't seem to end totally abruptly like some, but I found it pretty quickly just by skipping forward from the end of something else:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5CTc8I0GYcNYEPJiDnCK4G?si=n4aZKx6NSQOf8HQuJNwzHA

[highrepute]

Weird. They're good but just very short songs. Could it be that short songs have the potential to generate more income?

Some of there other stuff is normal length.

Are you listening to computer game sounds tracks?

[andy moles]

Could it be that short songs have the potential to generate more income?

Maybe? Maybe it's a way of gaming the streaming service contract?

Are you listening to computer game sounds tracks?

Haha no, for what it's worth the starting point in this case was an EP by Atrice on Ilian Tape (middle three tracks of which I think are class, incidentally):
https://open.spotify.com/album/4nIQLMbb7usCLzuSmPL2m0?si=Qw4Djm5cRre_Z5LCCH6NPg

[jwi]

Weird. They're good but just very short songs. Could it be that short songs have the potential to generate more income?

I think they are gaming the algo. If people listen to a song for less then 30s the artists get nothing, and if they skip the outro the song gets downregulated on playlists etc. (less likely to be recommended.)

This is just from memory, so could well be wrong.

[tomtom]

Slightly off topic - but I fully recommend “The Playlist” on Netflix which is a very clever dramadoc (it’s better than that really) about how Spotify came to be - told from 7 peoples perspectives.

[andy moles]

I think they are gaming the algo. If people listen to a song for less then 30s the artists get nothing, and if they skip the outro the song gets downregulated on playlists etc. (less likely to be recommended.)

This is just from memory, so could well be wrong.

It sounds credible, though these are pretty obscure artists so you'd think they must still be making peanuts from it.