I like Qobuz. I find it really good quality through my home hifi and I can purchase from their site too. There is a bundle where you get discounts on the purchase with the sub. Music is really important to me so this is the only thing I sub too.
One of the big benefits for me is that it offers gapless playback. Also I find it the “best” quality and for context I am streaming through a Cambridge CXN V2 into a Musical Fidelity M6si and into a pair of Kef ls50’s with a couple of REL subs.
I strongly recommend Apple Music. It has one of the largest libraries and pays better than YouTube, Amazon, or Spotify.
Apple Music is also platform agnostic; there’s even a browser version now. Also, you can download music and choose the quality. It’s far less “algorithm-y,” which I prefer.
Tidal and Qobuz do pay out more, but have much smaller libraries. I don’t personally like them much. The apps feel subpar.
YouTube and Amazon are straight up bad experiences for me. If this was back in 2013, I’d actually have recommended Google Play Music. RIP.
Most artists put their stuff up on YouTube anyways so you can give it a listen before you decide to buy. And I think buying each track makes you appreciate the music more but also makes you more critical because you want to get your money’s worth.
Regarding it being expensive, considering that with the money you spend on Spotify you can buy an album each month, I don’t think it’s too bad
I listen to way more than an album a month. and I only pay ~$3 a month for spotify, I don't think that buys an album. I'm all for buying music, that's why I'll occasionally buy a vinyl of an album I absolutely love
I also, and I can’t speak for everyone, like to listen to a wide variety of music. If I bought these magic $10 albums, once a month since 2006 (spotify’s founding) I would still only have 216 albums, which is nowhere near enough.
Bandcamp, qobuz, bleep, Beatport, theres a number of options out there to pick up cheap digital music. And then you also have the aforementioned eBay and discogs etc. Which, true, is second hand. But even splitting the amount the artist makes from that physical release between you and the person who previously bought it, they are still making way more from you than they would from just your streams.
And sure, 216 albums doesn’t seem like much. But they’d be all yours. Nobody could take them from you (well, besides if you got physically robbed I guess). There’s a bunch of stuff that has disappeared off of there. Big Black, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom, off the top of my head. You also have artists that have never been on there, Tatsuro Yamashita comes to mind. It also used to be a real problem with artists like Tool, The Beatles, AC/DC just not being there at all too. Then there’s other times where I’ve been playing albums, and tracks are just straight up missing (I presume due to licensing issues). I remember being royally annoyed with A Cross The Universe missing a bunch of tracks ages ago, and it used to happen frequently enough with other releases that it made an impression. Plus all the classic hip-hop that is missing cos of sample clearance issues. And heaven forbid if you wanna listen to classical music, or traditional music from around the world, it’s as if Spotify has never heard of the genre (both genres are represented, but it’s such a poor showing that they would’ve done better if there was just none at all). And I understand that this isn’t all on Spotify, but I’ve never had any of those issues with my personal collection.
Is it perfect? No. Does it reward the artist fairly? Undoubtedly. Would I take it over Spotify? Every day of the year for the rest of my life.
Do both. Spotify to gain access, buying it to maintain access in perpetuity. I have about 60 or so vinyl albums that I would like my kids to hear in 10 years or so, and I’m hopeful they’ll say hey vinyl, cool (it won’t happen). But at the end of the day, I’ve picked out a number of albums that I want to carry into the future with me, and some of those I discovered through my Spotify subscription.
I do have a few friends who love collecting vinyl. They’re reasonably established in their careers, really seem to love rooting around record shops whenever we travel and have amazing collections that take up a chunk of their living space…
But basically, I agree with you. Those collector friends are definitely the very rare exceptions.
I buy all my mysic on iTunes, and have done so for a long time, it makes my music library more focused and I have no worry if loosing access if I can’t pay rent.
In what way? There’s no DRM. It’s not tied to an apple account. Music I’ve downloaded from iTunes now resides on non-apple kit same as that from Bandcamp, 7digital, etc. Hell some of its even on CDs for when I still had a player in the car, now the car has a USB stick.
To be pedantic, there was DRM on music purchased on iTunes prior to 2009. Was a bit of a ballache converting that back in the day. Could’ve been worse though, I do like to buy most of my music physically so I didn’t have to convert too much of my collection (still a ballache though cos it was still way more files than I wanted to convert).
Not going to downvote you since I use iTunes for streaming, but when they changed their policy a few years ago about DRM, they fucking deleted about 20 songs I wrote and recorded solo or with my bands. My friends had backups, but man that sucked. So beware, I suppose.
Wait, what? That seems odd. They’ve deleted music videos from my account (which I had the files for, and the videos in question were also pulled from YouTube etc by the band, so I don’t think it’s apple’s fault they were pulled), but I still have all the music I’ve made myself. I do back it up every 2 or 3 months (I would cry for the rest of my life if I lost it, I have nearly 2yrs of continuous music), but I’ve never had to restore it (and this has reinforced why I do back up).
Edit: looked it up, I see the issue now. I don’t use Apple music, and every instance I can find of this happening is associated with ceasing that subscription. But I just use iTunes and the iTunes store. Dunno how this would work for you since it’s your own music (and I dunno if it’d work for music not in the iTunes catalogue, ie stuff from Bandcamp, qobuz, cough cough less than legal methods, etc), but it would appear all you have to do is log in to your account again and re-download the deleted files.
Second edit: just realised I have lost some actual music from my account. The series of live albums that iTunes directly released from the iTunes festivals they ran like 15yrs ago just came to mind. They’re gone from my account. And probably a bunch of others. They were never deleted from my hard drive though.
Unless the artist self published it, even buying physical media doesn’t give the actual artist much. If you want to support the actual artist, you go to live shows (with tickets bought at the door and not through Ticketmaster) as well as buying the merch they sell at those events. More of those sales go to the bands. Sometimes even 100% of it.
lol, ‘recommendations’. They give notifications for whatever random new pop thing has dropped. Like why? Almost nothing to do with what I listen to. Ah well. I was going to give YouTube music a try but I’ll read up on this thread and do some research and see what really happens.
I love Tidal + Plex. I already had a Plex server set up, but the integration with tidal is great. Good music quality, pays the artists well, and no gaps in the library that aren’t also there in the other services. When you add Plex you can then fill in those gaps with your own music files.
I’ve recently started hosting my music on Jellyfin and using the symfonium app for android. Symfonium is pretty nice and handles offline files well, plus it has a ton of hosting options including Plex, even some experimental options like dropbox
Anecdotal, I’ve not actually had a lot of instances (if any) of Spotify having something but Tidal not, usually find albums that I’m interested in from band camp no problem and if it’s missing its missing on both. Sound quality is noticeably higher which is the reason I tend to prefer, the app has gotten better in my experience
I have all my digital copies on my NAS with jellyfin to stream them as well, sometimes it’s just easier to stream off tidal or Spotify though
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