Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.
Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn’t raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify’s continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.
Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.
I’m all for pirating, but tbh music streaming apps are a service that is still in the “worth it” range. Not where Spotify is going, but, maintaining a library of high quality music with all the assets, and serving it to all your devices over the Internet is not a small feat to do securely.
I’ll probably switch to tidal for now while I start building up my library to include stuff beyond what I like…
You should check out Plexamp while you bridge the gap. It has tidal support built in, and you can self-host your own collection as you build it up. Then when you’re done with tidal, you don’t have to learn or download a new app.
There is no point to self hosting music streaming in my opinion.
Just have syncthing sync your music folder on your SD card to your server. Everything local and available when you want it.
Plex is slowly being enshittified too it seems, just slower.
Use Jellyfin as an alternative, it’s awesome!
I do, but the music streaming on jellyfin is nowhere near as nice as plexamp.
Just syncing all of your files locally is far superior to either unless your library is like >250GB.
Streaming is a different use case than playing your own music which is essentially what plexamp and jellyamp are doing with extra steps. There are much better local music players than either option.
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Plex is also on the route of enshittitfication. Jellyfin is the better recommendation imo. A variety of apps that can connect to it too, for either streaming or music.
For music libraries:
I run both side-by-side, but for me Plex is still the clear winner right now for features and polish.
Plexamp, Lidarr, Lidarr extended, Tailscale. Done.
Done. Until it can’t find a decent quality option for an album you’re searching for.
A guy I know decided to move away from Spotify and pirate music. The amount of effort he went through means it’s something I’ll probably never try.
This is the biggest problem for me. I have thousands of movies and 10s of thousands of TV episodes, but my audio library is still all the same stuff I downloaded from Napster, Limewire, Kazaa 20+ years ago. It’s too hard to find a good selection these days outside of a few private trackers. I’m in several private trackers but I’m not going to sit in a queue for 2 days waiting for an interview time and jump through hoops to join something like RED or PTP tier tracker.
Not to mention I mostly listen to podcasts these days and when I do listen to music, I try to find new stuff that I’ve never heard of rather than searching for a known artist. This would be way too convoluted to do on my own with some self-hosted solution.
I’ve been using deemix, and for the most part it’s been pretty seamless. Stuff direct downloads instantly, but it’s all in 128kbps now unfortunately. Then I have lidarr monitor everything for a lossless version.
Are you saying Deemix only downloads at 128kbps? If so, I’ve been using it as well and download in FLAC. Also, I pay for the family plan which is $15.99/month.
Edit: Ah, I’m guessing you’re not on a paid Deezer plan.
Yeah I’m on the free plan which used to include FLAC and 320kpbs, but they stopped doing that for free plans about a year ago I think.
USENET. Thank me later
Got one or two you might recommend?
Just some perspective: I’ve been self-hosting stuff for 7y now, started with plex on a nas. I have tried a couple times to get the *arr stack working, one at a time and fuck me it’s complex and the risk of fucking up the config and data crossing the clearnet without a VPN, noooope fuck right off with that. That risk/reward just is too skewed for me.
it’s not that complex, really. Yet, the variant I described doesn’t do anything torrenty. It scrapes the songs from tidal.
But how do you handle music discovery?
Since all music services I’ve tried so far are laughably shit at that anyway, Last.fm is your friend. Besides, Plexamp tries to get you into a Tidal subscription and suggests things from there, so you’ll get stuff here nad there.
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As someone else said: it doesn’t replace streaming even a little. Pirating is replacing buying music directly. Streaming facilitates finding new music and trying it out. Being able to listen to anything at any time. You simply can’t do that with downloads; no one can download everything. Piracy in this case really just works for people still listening to their highschool favs and not people looking for new stuff all the time.
I used to download exclusively when I was younger, but as I get older I’m trying out new genres from different cultures than my own and I’d miss out on it all without a streaming service.
In my opinion it’s worth it.
Yes and no. It’s more cumbersome for sure but I used to find music on YouTube and all that back in the day then download it.
I never had trouble finding new music without those recommandation algorithms.
This dude hasn’t heard of pirate streaming services.
Do they have the libraries of Spotify or Apple music?
yeah actually
Yes, in fact there are modded versions of the Spotify app (idk about apple) to access their library for free.
Do they work like ReVanced Youtube and just remove ads/restrictions while keeping account properties? Or do they work like NewPipe and block all the algorithm stuff, use their own accounts/playlists?
Some do the first, some do the other
It replaces paying for Spotify because its possible to download Spotify premium. Best of both worlds. Use Spotify or YouTube to find stuff, send it to a seedbox, load it later at home.
Biggest downside is most phones don’t have SD card slots anymore.
Sent from my (slightly salty) hacked pixel 7
Dear lord no. You can still use Spotify, YTM, and a host of other services to discover new music. The argument was valid back in the days of the excellent Google Play Music, but the algorithm has gone to shit since. There are also tons of sources of user curated playlists you can use to fund new music.
I am 51 and if I let algorithms pick my music I would never discover most of what I find and constantly be fed thirty year old music. Just this past month I discovered mehro, King Woman, Sugar High and Parra for Cuva.
InnerTune. Its on F-Droid
Just installed this. I love you!
Or put some effort into finding new music? The algorithms have never suggested me anything good anyway.
I use a cracked Spotify client but if I do legitimately pay, it will be for Tidal. I want that sweet sweet lossless audio people have been talking about.
I’m just here to appreciate the Buccee’s icon, carry on!
I don’t mind paying $10/mo for access to millions of songs on demand, even if the caveat is that I don’t own anything at the end of my subscription.
I understand costs have gone up, so I can accept a $1 increase in subscription. The problem is that Spotify wants to do a bunch of side projects at my expense. I have no interest in podcasts or audiobooks yet I must fork up the extra money to fund it. I have no say in what my money is being used for and I hate that.
It’s why I moved from it to Tidal and then to Apple Music (even though I’m on Android). Both have their own issues but at least they’re focused on music.
The problem is that Spotify is losing money each year. They aren’t profitable. And if they are keep focusing on music, they never will. Their deal with the music labels says that they need to give 70 % of each subscription to the music labels. So by getting more people to signup, they only marginally increase their revenue. Same goes for raising their prices.
Thats why they tried focusing on Podcasts and Audiobooks. Those are a lot more profitable, either by adding ads (Podcasts) or by charging a premium (audiobooks).
It’s amazing to think how incompetent their management must be that they’re charging more, delivering lower audio quality, and paying less to artists than competitors like Tidal, yet still aren’t profitable.
They pay less than Tidal claims it pays. So far Tidal has a really bad history of publishing correct numbers.
There is an episode of Tech Won’t Save Us (2024-01-25) discussing how weird the podcasting play was for Spotify. There is essentially no way to monetize podcasts at scale, primarily because podcasts do not have the same degree of platform look-in as other media types.
Spotify spent the $100 million (or whatever the number was) to get Rogan exclusive, but for essentially every other podcast you can find a free RSS feed with skippable ads. Also their podcast player just outright sucks :/
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Hang on. 70% of the subscription before any royalty / streaming costs?
So in a $10 payment, $7 is immediately removed, then another say $1 for streaming costs leaving only $2 for profits which Spotify takes 30%?
From each $10 only $1.40 goes to artists?
From the 10 Dollar, taxes will be deducted. Afterwards Apple or Google take their share (if you subscribe using the App). Of the remaining money the Music labels take 70 %, and Spotify keeps 30 %. The music labels pay a fraction of the 70 % to the artists, depending on the contract and the artist’s share of streams reported by Spotify.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware that they weren’t profitable.
Funny enough, right after your comment I got recommended this video on YouTube talking about the points you mentioned: https://youtu.be/yDWgOwb8kj4
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/yDWgOwb8kj4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hope you like Joe Rogan and the crap he peddles because he is getting a nice chunk of Spotify money… I left because of that particular deal
Any particular reason you went from Tidal to Apple Music? I see a lot of people here recommending it, so I’d be interested to hear any negatives it has.
The simple reason is because I got a lengthy free trial for it (saving me money on the Tidal sub) and then stuck around.
Apple Music was hot garbage when I started using it but over the months of my trial it improved tremendously - to a point where there isn’t much difference between it and Tidal. App performance is good now, it provides song recommendations for your playlists, many bugs I was facing have been fixed.
The Android Auto experience is better for me compared to Tidal, it has Shazam integration (Spotify does too, Tidal doesn’t) and it has many of the Japanese city pop songs I like that Tidal was missing.
I can always jump ship if needed. Services like Soundiiz and TuneMyMusic make it pretty easy.
I don’t mind paying $0/mo for access to millions of songs with limited skipping and occasional adverts. ,
Spotify locks music is new to me? And for the few Podcasts I personally couldnt care less
Platform agnostic = you own the mp3/FLACC/ect file, and can play it through whatever client you want
Platform Locked = you do not own the files, and they are DRM locked to their proprietary media player (see: spotify, kindle, ect)
Of course there are ways around those locks, but it’s illegal to remove DRM protections (in the us)
Gotcha.
Thought of it in a more of a Exclusive-To-Platform kind of way.Yea I figured, no worries
You can switch to another service any time you want though.
You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it
It’s way cheaper though.
Idk if I owned as many cds as I’ve spent on music subscriptions I’d own more high fidelity music than I’d know what to do with
BS. One new CD is at least 10$. A good band collection is then a year worth of subscription fees. So, do you only listen to a few bands?
Before Spotify I pirated everything. In lossless, ofc. I had 200GB of music, it wouldn’t fit on my ipod classic, and I still was limited.
I pirated at least a lifetime worth of Spotify premium and yet when I switched to Spotify I discovered so many more artists like the ones I already liked. If I now tried to buy all the songs I’ve listened to more than once in the last 5 years, I’d go bankrupt.
Spotify is way cheaper.
(now add ease of discovering new music, listening to whatever your friends want to listen to in a car, collaborative playlists, etc etc)
About 10 years ago I got rid of most of my cd’s because I thought I would just use spotify. Now I’m slowly gathering a cd collection again from thriftstores (or buy albums in store if it’s newer music and I want to support the artist). I rip them all to flac and add them to my Plex.
I’ve noticed I listen to music more now. I find new cool songs by artists by listening through whole albums again. Because of the time commitment of ripping and physically flipping through cd’s, I actually care again about the music that I gather and listen.
There should be a app that worked with most music players and with the data suggest new things to try. Something that worked with local players, streaming players, etc. Something like the concept of last.fm but with good suggestions.
I can’t believe that these days we don’t get one app like that. Even streaming apps with all the data they got from listing hours and still fail around 40 to 60% with my suggestions, and rarely suggest something that I haven’t heard before.
Nowadays with the state of efficient AI in learning from patterns, and still nothing mind-blowing like a kind of MiniMe that has almost the same tastes but have heard more stuff than you and can recommend as a more educated version of you. That is something that I would want to, hell if it worked so well and to have it, I would have to pay , then I would pay up to a price.
Although not tied to your collection, you might find Everynoise cool and interesting.
Holy crap, yes. This is amazing. Thank you.
Eh, I just switched to audiobooks. I get them from my library and listen while I drive, work in the yard, ride my bike, etc.
I’d really like a self-hosted smart speaker though that I could call out a song and it would play. So like Alexa, but all the AI is local. I’m willing to pay for the music service, but I need to own the platform and be able to change music services easily. The only time I really listen to music is when entertaining friends/family, and using my phone is getting old.
More money More crap nobody wants like audio books Still haven’t seen cd quality streaming yet
I used to happy with Spotify before the enshitificatuon happened…
What annoys me is you still have to pay for audio books.
I have used Spotify’s 15 free hours a month for shorter light novels, but beyond that, buying the rights to listen to a book, or buying more listening hours is very much not worth it through them.
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I got Tidal for a month to try it out because I had gotten some XM4s and wanted to check out the 360 Reality Audio tracks, and I was disappointed to find just how few of them there actually are. 😕
Edit: I see not that they did away with that ultra premium tier and folded those 360 Reality Audio tracks into the regular plans…they really did make it cheaper. Looks like I’m switching back to Tidal.
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How does this compare to other music streaming services these days?
Tidal is $11/mo for an individual and $17 for a 6 person family plan. I recently switched because they supposedly give a better cut to artists and serve flac files.
Yeah. Never thought I’d see the day when Tidal was cheaper than crappy Spotify.
If i wasn’t paying for a family play on Spotify, I would have resorted to music piracy at this point. The quality is still garbage, the service is getting worse, but the prices are only going up every half a year
I tried sourcing my own music but man it’s a lot harder than movies and shows. Especially when you like to hear random recommended music how do you get enough
Yeah - credit where it’s due, Spotify did a really good job with their music recommendation engine. It’s just that recently, they’ve started to get into the sad part of the enshittification cycle. I kinda saw the writing on the wall when they started forcing Joe Rogan podcast promos fucking everywhere, without having a config anywhere to disable podcast suggestions (which I don’t use through Spotify)
I’m surprised you’re only getting these now. My recommendations have been mostly garbage for the better part of a decade so all this praise for finding new music confuses me a little. Spotify has many feats, but the algorithm never was one for me, quite the opposite. I find it more annoying than helpful, actually.
My beginning (about 6 years ago) was fine. Still miss the radio feature though.
They kinda brought it back but in a reverse form (former: 4 new 1 old, now: 5 old 1 new).
Playlist shuffle is atrocious but I am not picking them better any better.Oh I started getting them years ago. That’s when the first inkling of “this thing might be going downhill now” entered my mind.
Feel you there. A lot of what i listen to are brand new bands, and finding sources for those is rough
£2 a month for a HiFi subscription if you use a Nigerian VPN.
So if you use a VPN to sign up, then disconnect the VPN, does it block you? Or do you always need to be on VPN?
You don’t need to be connected on the VPN to use it, I find it identical to my previous UK subscription.
Only difference is that your initial recommendations are for Nigerian music 😆 Those disappear quite quickly after you start listening to music you like tho.
Do you need to stay connected to that, or just for payment setup? I’ve already got an account…
Tidal is great but IIRC it either doesn’t support Amazon Echo or the integration is poorly implemented.
Oh no.
Apple Music only raised the price by $1 since the launch in 2015 (9 years ago). But they added cool features like lossless audio quality and Dolby Atmos. They also had lyrics like 6 years before Spotify added them. I think you can even get it for $6 dollars if you’re a student.
They also payout about 2.5X what Spotify does to artists.
How does this work? Spotify has a deal with the music publishers, where they give 70 % of all subscription income to the music companies. The music companies (Sony, Warner, etc) then split the money based on the share of streams.
How can Apple pay out 2.5x70 %, so 175 %? Are thes losing with every subscription?
Think of it not in terms of revenue percentages, but by payouts per song stream:
Service Payout/song Plays to make $1 Tidal Music $0.01284 78 Apple Music $0.008 125 Amazon Music $0.00402 249 Spotify $0.00318 314 YouTube Music $0.002 500 Pandora $0.00133 752 Deezer $0.0011 909 So song for song, Apple is paying 2.5x what Spotify is (.008/.00318), and Tidal is paying out a whopping 4x what Spotify pays.
Sauce: https://producerhive.com/music-marketing-tips/streaming-royalties-breakdown/
That whole article is BS, they even say it themselves:
Rates are rarely paid at a flat rate per stream
There is no payout per stream. Instead a fixed percentage of the subscription price is shared among each streamed song. So why does Tidal pay more then? Either their subscriber numbers are still incorrect (they have a history of publishing way higher numbers than in reality), their subscriber listen to less music (which is the main reason Apple Music pays more per stream on paper, since its often bundled) or their audience focuses more on a single artist (or a genre).
Sure. Obviously it’s more complex than that, but it helps illustrate where the math came from in the parent comment. I don’t know why Tidal pays more, but I’m hypothesizing its because most of their “co-owners” of Tidal are themselves, artists/musicians, which IMO is significantly better than the out of touch folks running Spotify.
Some lyrics are now disappearing from Spotify :-(
lmao
The $6 student plan also includes Apple TV+
I feel they’re all fairly similar. I won’t do apple music because I don’t do iOS, and I moved from Google play music when forced to the inferior YouTube music. I wonder if tidal or any other service has comparable pricing.
I’ve been using Apple Music on Android for years, I definitely recommend it. The app is totally fine, I think it’s still better than Spotify’s crappy app. On desktop you can use the Cider app, which is much better than iTunes. It’s even available on Linux.
There is an official Apple Music desktop app for windows now, no need to use Cider.
I switched to AM a couple years ago due to the (better) privacy policy vs YTM. The app is ‘fine’ but it’s painfully obvious that they didn’t want to bother with the android UI guidelines. But it’s a small annoyance, and the price is… palatable, I guess? I think I’d jump ship at $14, but at $12, fine. I don’t use it that much.
Actually, it’d be nice if they would charge based on usage, not flat-rate. I doubt I’m using $3 of that $12 cost.
Hell no…Please not based on usage :o
But I’d be fine with the option to do either
I use YT Music because I get it cheap (VPN shenanigans), you can upload your own music (hello Nintendo soundtracks), and I mod the Android app to stop it being a mess (ReVanced Extended is the GOAT).
Do you always have to have the VPN connected to get the cheaper rate?
Nah just when I bought it. I did this a while ago so I’m not sure if it still works.
I’m gonna cling onto the quid a month rate for dear life.
I use Apple Music, primarily because I need to pay for the higher tiers iCloud storage for my wife’s photo addiction and it’s basically “free” for the family plan.
If I didn’t already have the higher tier iCloud, I would probably prefer tidal for higher quality, or Spotify for the more diverse library.
I use YouTube Music and it’s pretty good, but the best feature is no more youtube ads.
I use Deezer’s family plan that includes FLAC/HiFi for $15.99/month.
Well considering the last price hike got us gems like the music 8-ball/magic crystal thing, I can barely wait to see what banger they’ll come up with to bloat my music player with next.
And removal of much of Spotify curated playlists…
So mad about that part >:(Every “Zusammengestellt für” playlist is a autogenerated playlist and probably not a single human touched that shit. So much less discoverability.
I HATE these ‘made for you’ playlists, just repeats of my liked songs and songs it’s always trying to shove down my throat. Some of them barely fit the genre/vibe of the playlist too.
Part of the original appeal of Spotify for me years ago was the curated playlists.
It should be audiobooks this time, if I heard correctly.
Their CEO just boasted about how making content for their platform comes with zero cost for the creators. So, why are they raising rates? Is the whole “you pay to support the creators” trope a lie? I am confused.
/s
Well it’s probably the music labels. They basically only exist to steal money from the actual creators.
Just a reminder that the Tidal family account at the maximum subscription “grade” costs €16.
So you and 4x buddies can get very high quality audio for €3.20/mth.
I tried tidal for a bit, but ran into a number of issues with the various privacy methods I used and the lack of a Linux native client made it difficult to justify staying.
I am currently running a navidrome server and supporting artists directly for their music where possible.
I switched to Tidal recently from AppleMusic and I like it.
It should be noted if you’re listening through Bluetooth like most people then you can’t get high quality.
Also, they allow you to copy your music from other services, using a third party service which was great. It does have a charge and annoyingly it is a recurring charge. So I signed up, transferred my music and then cancelled.
I then sent them a message to say it sucks that they don’t have a one of few for doing this. If you use it and agree I would send them a similar message so they get the idea that most people don’t need continuous syncing.
The bluetooth remark is a bit misleading, there are codecs that provide better audio, which is even noticeable on Spotify.
If you have earphones that support LDAC for example (sony XMs are popular where I live), you can even use that with Windows via 3rd party software (search Win A2DP - not free, but can recommend).FiiO BTR5 + LDAC + IEMs have been working super well for me. I don’t really use wireless with Windows, but I’m considering payiny for A2DP regardless, as it worked very well and may come in handy eventually.
Codecs for iOS and Android?
As I imagine that’s where the most people are streaming from.
They’re all proprietary, so it’s less than ideal.
LDAC is owned by Sony and supported by some Androids.
Samsung has their own codec, Apple does too - each vendor locked.
Then there’s Qualcomm’s aptX/HD, which should now be fully supported by Android.I don’t use apple, so can’t comment on other options there.
Thanks. That helps enough for me to search it not on Google
I fucking hate what apple music has become. Their clients are a complete disaster. Im gradually switching to tidal and the only thing that pisses me off is an ad for waze that comes up while you’re driving which cannot be disabled.
Im torn as I listen to many genres and one of them being Classical Music. Apple having a dedicated app for that is a major plus, so I imagine I’ll be going back at some point. Although I do agree the regular music app is not great.
In fact I love using iPhone as I geek out with my job but I want my phone to be stress free, just I don’t use many Apple stock apps.
What the fuck kind of service is that? Aren’t there free ones—there were the last time I checked.
Tune My Music.
To be honest I didn’t search for any, and just used where Tidal sent me. It was £3 to transfer it all.
Him. There’s another one I don’t remember its name.
Soundiiz. I used it to transfer my playlists one by one, for free.
I listen to a lot of smaller black metal bands. Can Tidal keep up?
Best way to find out is to search for all of them inside Tidal. I don’t know if you need to make a free account or what to do it.
They usually have great black Friday deals though. I think I paid like €2/mth for my first year.
Ahoy!
No, that’s a youtube channel /s
I’m all for going sailing but if there are features you want that that can’t quite replicate, it’s also a great time to look at a VPN service with a server in Turkey… Sign up on a Turkish IP and the exchange rate puts you under $2/month USD. This works for a lot of other things too.
I love you.
I know.
I believe a dude on YouTube for a very popular streamer used an IP from Argentina to get 50 subs for YouTube premium to giveaway for only a couple bucks.
Still happily buying music on Bandcamp. Their discovery stuff is pretty good, too.
I’ll add the old school method of scrobbling to last.fm for discovery still works pretty well too, and you can play music directly there now using Youtube (probably been there for years I assume). Just found some pretty obscure stuff that isn’t even available on the mainstream streaming services, so that’s a win.
I forgot last.fm existed. I sort of used them years ago.
They did not handle separate artists with the same name gracefully at all. The page for a riot-grrl adjacent band and an Australian rapper (?) got merged and the fans were going at it on the page.
Looks like it’s still kind of a problem
I was a Google Play Music person and loved it, and then they changed to YouTube. I got mad and tried Apple Music, but as a classical music lover it’s vastly less than ideal for several reasons, so I went to Spotify and realized they liked to shuffle Britney Spears into me listening to lieder, so I went back to YouTube because at least they didn’t do that. But it’s just so basic compared to the absolute perfection that was GPM, and difficult to navigate. I don’t know where to go next. I’ve been buying records on Bandcamp but I also like the streaming service to discover music with.
Just to let you know, Tidal is not that great either.
Frequently having issues with downloaded albums, where I go into offline mode, pull up an album, and it says “can’t connect” despite being in offline mode and the album taking up storage space on my phone.
Also, the discovery and new releases sections aren’t very well made.
It doesn’t sound great. Maybe I’ll just use Bandcamp only. It’s just some classical albums are only on certain platforms.
High chance they’re all on Slsk as lossless files. That and foobar2000 and you’ll be back in control of your music listening habits. Then buy physical from the artists if you want to support them and they offer a way to obtain it.
Please speak to me like I’m dumb and explain all of this.
You could check out deezer. It’s European and they have a classical music section. Not sure how good it is. It’s like $110 for a yearly subscription and they offer hi-fi streaming. Just another option for you to check out. 🤷
Sounds good actually. I wonder if I can look at their content and see if they have what I want before subscribing? Any idea?
I was also a Google music enjoyer and also find the other streaming options pretty crappy. I’ve actually moved over to more curated options like internet radio for when I’m not in the mood for anything specific. Shout-out to NTS, I love you.
You should get back to apple music, they launched an app dedicated to classical music, and it’s by far the best for this type of music. Also it’s lossless 24 bits
Qobuz is the best for classical music, for sure - either that or piracy. I’d probably go with piracy
Maybe try Napster: https://www.napster.com/ Sounds a bit like a joke, but it’s not. It used to be Rhapsody, but was re-branded.
If you like classical music, give qobuz a try… High quality audio, large selection of classical music.
If you like to upload your own music (like Google music), iBroadcast is the tippy tops. You can still use bandcamp (with or without yt-dlp) for discovery, and then upload what you like to iBroadcast.
Bookmarking this page so I can learn modern sailing techniques. Audiophiles who sail the seven seas, please teach me your ways! My most hasn’t hit the surf in a hot minute.
Deemix-gui + Deezer subscription or SoulSeek/Nicotine+
In theory you can go Deezer method without owning subscription. Plenty of publicly available ARL cookies.
I use the former. How does it compare to the other two?
Soulseek can have extremely high res audio files such as .dsd, .ape, 384khz .flac, etc.
just PUT some magnets IntO a service
As an audiophile it’s like, way less exhausting to just go with Tidal, over pirating good quality music. Especially if you’re like me and listen to nearly anything and everything.
Yeah, but enshittification will happen there too. It’s just a matter of time.
Fingers crossed for Tidal, since its made by a bunch of musicians, I think Jay Z is the big one. They actually pay the artists a decent amount, and lowered MOST everyone’s price and upgraded the their quality, so taking a big hit of hopium they’re good enough to not go to shit.
Xmanager if on Android.
For anyone who hasn’t checked their Spotify subscription for a while, I recently discovered a new basic tier created underneath the premium one that is a little cheaper simply by not including the ‘free’ 15 hours of audiobooks. I’ve never used it and don’t intend to. YMMV.
Is the audio quality the same?
Yeah! It’s ‘premium’ in all ways except that audiobook offer. Prettttyyyy shitty behaviour from them.
