Im not really interested in the Rogan/Young spat. I never listen to Rogan so I feel I’m not in a position to have a valid opinion. However it did get me thinking about moving off Spotify to another service if only to try to break the grip Spotify seem to have on the streaming industry – and you know, change is as good as a rest and all that. So I have taken the free trial for Tidal (finally swayed by the fact that they have the wonderful Cardiacs Sing to God and spotify dont. )
I have lots of playlists on Spotify but SongShift is a tool for migrating – and checking through my playlists I realised I never play nearly all of them.
I have checked on the most obscure artists I can and it seems pretty much equal with a few exceptions (like Cardiacs). Most of my favourite spotify missing artists are also missing on Tidal – I suspect for similar reasons – (no Apple Venus, no “From Gardens where we feel secure” ).
Oh and the “family plan” for both services is the same price. Tidal pay artists (or rights holders) slightly better but its still a pittance.
So what do you folks think? Are there essential missing artists that would mean I would have to stick with Spotify. Are they much of a muchness?
My son bought me 3 months of Qobuz for Christmas, and so far I’m impressed. Sounds great through the Sonoi, and the suggestions I was greeted with when I first logged on were abs lately on point. It was as if someone was saying, Ah Mike, we’ve been expecting you.
Another shout out for Qobuz here.
I agree. The sound through my Sonos speakers is very impressive.
I also use a Bluesound streamer in my main listening room which sounds even better.
I always look forward to new music Fridays when the new releases come out.
Not much to choose between Qobuz and Tidal though, apart from the price.
Sound quality. If you have decent kit the uptick in sound is undeniable. Spotify is perfectly acceptable but lacking in comparison to Tidal or Qobuz. When I first bought into lossless streaming I already had Spotify on tap so I run some comparisons and the difference was obvious. As Tidal now offer a CD quality tier for the same cost as Spotify it seems a no-brainer to me. Why pay for an inferior service?
I use streaming as well as not instead of buying physical product. It sounds fantastic, it’s as convenient as hell and is a tremendous way to hear music you wouldn’t hear otherwise. If I like something enough I buy it. Win win.
Hi Chilli, have you tried shifting over a playlist yet? What was your experience?
I’m no expert, but Amazon Music Unlimited streams in ultra HD and meets all my needs. Plus it’s dirt cheap if you already use Amazon Prime. And it contains Cardiacs.
Another transfer to Amazon here.
And playlists came too?
What’s a playlist? (Don’t use them.)
I’ve just moved from Spotify to Amazon. I had to use a 3rd party piece of software to move the playlist . I used Free your music- which cost me £10.99 but allows me to move lists to other sites in the future.
Interesting. I’m also thinking about moving from Spotify. Twang Jr would kill me though.
Will do it if my daughter allows it. I don’t care about playlists but she has literally dozens that mean a lot to her
@dai. Exactly the same here. Two daughters both had meltdowns when told. The treat playlists literally as life-defining.
Unfortunately my experience with SongShift has so far not been great. I have switched over a couple of playlists Id quite like to keep – (Jude Roger’s Sound of lost summers, and one called “If I was a tarantino stripper” which is great) – but the “matching” fails often for what seems like no good reason. I think it needs work.
Exactly. The fallout simply isn’t worth it. But for sure I’m overpayihg at the moment – family membership for two of us, which is dumb. I leave work in a couple of weeks and will look into it then.
@chilli-ray-virus My daughter was with her mother this weekend, just picked her up and breached the subject, similar response to your daughters and I was also informed she has 1700 songs in playlists. Hmmm, what to do?
On the subject of Tidal and importing playlists onto it’s platform I can now offer up the experience a good friend of mine had yesterday when he decided to ditch Spotify in favour of Tidal. He is a maker of extensive playlists so getting them into Tidal would be arduous. Tidal offer a service called Tune My Music which will import playlists from other services. He messaged me last night with a query about MQA and mentioned that the service Tidal offers will import the first five hundred songs for free after that they charge a small fee for anything over and above that figure. Hope this helps.
Thanks. How much? My daughter probably has about 1500 songs or so on playlists
There’s a free app called free your music that will move playlists from all the major streaming services. Only took a couple of minutes to do.
I’ve ditched Spotify for Apple. Zero issues so far and easy to change the smart speakers across.
He didn’t elucidate beyond “a small fee” Dai. It won’t be much because a) He’s a tightwad and b) I know some of his playlists are days worth of music in length which leads me to believe that it must be reasonable in cost.
I’ve just successfully transferred my playlists to Tidal where I’m paying £1 for three months. I had less than 500 songs, though.
I barely use Amazon either.
*signals virtue*
😀
That’s the offer I took them up on some time ago. I’m perfectly content with their service. The uptick in sound quality is the most important factor for me. I want to hear the music I’m interested in / love as well as I can afford.
Life is too short to pennypinch on the things that matter to us.
Enjoy.
Ok thanks
I’ve dipped a toe in the water as I have Prime but had never tried the music streaming that came with it. So far so good. I keep being invited to join Unlimited for £7.99 a month – anyone know if it’s possible to pay the one off £79 fee, as that a big saving over Spotty at £9.99 a month
go to prime –>explore your prime benefits–>explore deals for prime members–>amazon music explore now–>settings (top right corner)–> and there you get the choice.
Ta. V helpful.
Thanks. I had a go and when I clicked on the “settings” link I’m taken to a screen that shows my card details and a message saying 30 day free trial, and £7.99 – “most popular plan”. No mention of a single payment. But thanks for the response.
weird because I’ve just gone back and checked and it is still there for me. Its under your amazon music settings. (I’ve already started the free trial).
Maybe you have to start the trial to get the offer?
I have Spotify and Amazon. Mrs Wells uses Spotify. Amazon has better sound than Spotify but Tidal, to these ears, has discernibly better sound.
As I have discussed with Herr Pencil I often find Tidal difficult to find stuff: look under artist not there, try album , nope try a song on album… oh look it is there after all.
Buffering, at least down here, is a common problem
However, I am moving soon and for the best part of a year streaming will be my sole source so I will go back to Tidal and invest in a bit of kick ass streaming kit to tide me over.
Tidal can be a little pinickerty. If an artist has recorded in various combos you need to search all the variations such as trios, quartets, quintets, septets etc. It will be there…somewhere more often than not. As soon as I find it I store the albums and the artist’s page for easy reference from that point onwards. Consequently I have built up a pretty extensive library of music now. It all works very fluidly you just need to invest the time to learn it’s little foibles.
Technically I’ve experienced very few hassles. The app works well, I use Tidal Connect via my Bluesound Node 2i and from there to two external DACs to two separate amps. Both of the chains do exactly what I want them to do. I was getting very occasional dropouts until recently when I installed a new router and decided to run a good quality ethernet cable to the Bluesound instead of using WiFi and so far that seems to have cured that minor niggle.
Tidal does inteed sound very good.
I’m more than happy to stay with them now I’ve learned the ropes.
I subscribe to both Spotify (from their early days ) and also Quobuz.
I had Tidal on a 6 month free trial with the MQA etc and so had a good period of listening to all three platforms. As the family all have access to Spotty on the family subscription I’m not inclined to stop that and hope their roll out of Hi-Def comes sooner rather than later. We all have loads of playlists there too which I suspect would be a pain to transfer from our individual Spotify sections.
After my trial and testing of Tidal v Quobuz , I kept Quobuz. The high quality sound was pretty much the same to my ears and miles better than Spotify, but I preferred the Quobuz app and the desktop version and found that it had more of the music I listen to , although it doesn’t have everything, so I use Spotty as a backup for that. But I mainly play Quobuz over Spotty in the car and at home.
If the Spotify sound quality were up to the levels that can obviously be provided I would only subscribe to them.
Quobuz only has Status Quo though? (Qobuz)
Ha ha…my bad Dai…..Gave you a chance to show your wit.
I see the influence of Ryan a Ronnie in your work 🙂
…and don’t call Will on your father…
This was informative. I do like Artist radio – Qobuz doesnt use algorithms but otherwise looks pretty good.
Clearly a lot of people looking at their options. Interested to know the motivation – is it largely
objection to Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcasts?
want to be able to stream Neil/Joni/Nils?
better sound quality elsewhere?
otthers pay artists better?
other reasons?
For me the payment to artists would be the strongest of those reasons (and sound quality if there really is an appreciable difference if listening via my phone, and headphones or Sonos). The Rogan issue less so. I haven’t listened to it and don’t intend to, and the views as I have heard them descibed are profoundly antithetical to me, and stupid and irresponsible, but so far as I understand it, they aren’t illegal.
Fair play to Neil Young though for such a principled stand. As he has said, Spotify are fully entitled to stream Rogan, and he is fully entitled to have his music played, or not played, where he wants.
My main problem is CEO Daniel Ek not paying artists very much and investing his billions of Krona in the arms trade.
Just for reference and as a point of comparison, this is the CEO of Amazon.
https://onezero.medium.com/amazons-new-ceo-is-shaping-how-the-military-uses-killer-robots-9a783d05b7f4
You will do well to find a major company in the music industry who don’t have distasteful links of this type.
If I recall correctly, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s fourth album came with a handy map setting out the links between pretty much every major music label and arms manufacturers.
I’m not saying it should just be accepted, but you’ll do well to navigate your media consumption without enriching far more contemptible figures than Daniel Ek.
Thanks.
What about Apple?
Not as familiar with their board, but there’s the Uighur forced labour issue, off the top of my head
It’s hard to find a major company of any size that hasn’t done something someone objects to
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/apple-inc
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/amazoncom-inc
Or rock stars, for that matter!
Like Joni Mitchell and that laugh on Big Yellow Taxi. Solidarity with Spotify! 💪
“Solidarity” is not enough. It has to be “I stand in solidarity with…”.
Seated solidarity is no solidarity at all.
Quite right. I’ll do better next time.
Shoulder-to-shoulder.
This expression mystifies me, it sounds like you’re on the tube.
And not everyone is the same height. Will just look silly.
You wouldn’t notice the improvement in SQ if you’re streaming it from your phone into a pair of cheapish IEMs or headphones via the phones headphone jack. The DAC in your phone will be pretty much garbage. Add a dongle DAC and some decent IEMs however and the improvement would be immediately apparent.
I can’t comment on Sonos having never heard any Sonos kit but I would imagine an improvement in SQ would be a given assuming that a Sonos based audio chain does the Digital to Analogue conversation and not your phone.
I didn’t understand any of that.
I’ll continue with Spotify via my MacBook Air and AirPods.
It doesn’t matter so long as you enjoy the music. Blue Boy asked a question. I answered it as best as I could.
To cover off the payment issue again – streaming platforms pay rights owners which in the majority of cases isn’t the artist. If an artist is getting a poor royalty on streaming it’s far more likely to be down to the rights holder screwing them. There are a small number of very powerful rights holding groups taking a lot of money from platforms like Spotify and passing v little of it on. I can’t see how moving from Spotify to another would help as neither pay the artist direct.
And to be honest, I’m not sure that Young has done much here – it’s cost him nothing as he’s already been paid. Endorsing Amazon is hardly much better.
I think he was speaking without notes when he mentioned Amazon as he also mentioned Apple but didn’t mention either Tidal or Qobuz which considering his often avowed determination to present his music in the best sound quality available was an odd oversight. More so when neither Apple or Amazon as companies are entirely focused upon music unlike the aforementioned.
Young has agreed a tie up with Amazon to offer his fans a four month free use of their streaming service, which he’s now actively promoting.
If this is about sound quality, he should come out and say so, instead of pretending it’s about morality. If it’s about morality, then I’d say he’s seriously misguided to be hopping into bed with Amazon, who are a vastly more rapacious and disgusting company than Spotify are ever likely to be.
I wasn’t aware of this. It’s not something I’ve paid much attention to since his original pronouncement. I don’t pay for Spotify, I’ve never listened to Rogan although I am aware of who he is and what he does and I’m not an avid fan of Neil Young. My interest is therefore admittedly cursory.
I gave up on expecting people to act morally a long time ago because it’s my experience they rarely do so. Unless you pay them. 😉
1. Not paying artists properly
2. Broadcasting rubbish about COVID
3. No Neil Young. The AW Best of Neil playlist is no more
4. They removed the Delete option from recently listened so the album you tried and didn’t like keeps popping up
5. My own albums sound crap on Spotify compared the the masters or other services for some reason
6. They need to stop acting like there is no alternative
7. Defaulting to random when playing an album
8. Investing in arms trade
so need to find an alternative that has less issues even if they all have bad points
7. Whatchutalkinbout dai? I’ve been using the arms manufacturers’ streaming service of choice every day for years and it’s never done that. Unless I tell it to..
No defaulting to Random Play on my Spotify (*). Never has done it.
(*) Likely to be given the heave-Ho once I start having to pay monthly for Tidal. I can’t afford both, now that my energy supplier has gone bust (**) and I’m at British Gas’s mercy.
(**) I had a good fixed-price deal that should have lasted until August. I’m now expecting to pay 45-50% more.
Thanks Gents – fascinating comments even if I am left even more confused than I was before. Tricky stuff navigating the moral high ground, isn’t it? Oh, and thanks to pencil for the audio insights too.
You can now listen to Tidal for free – as long as you don’t care about sound quality and relish the constant interruptions of ads:
https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a38277932/tidal-free-tier-explained/
And at 160kbps, which is a shame.
I started using Tidal when I invested in Roon. Tidal is nicely integrated into Roon so you can effectively merge your own ripped CDs with Tidal and have access to an enormous, tailored library all in one place.
I think Tidal does sound better than Spotify although my aged ears are not the best medium to distinguish the quality differences reliably.
Going in … a 2 month Tidal subscription for $3. Currently using tunemymusic (which cost more) to transfer all playlists., 18000 tracks! It’s taking a while. Unfortunately have already seen that some tracks from my daughter’s favourite artist (Rex Orange County) are missing. Doh!
Can you play Tidal on a FiiO?
Hah! If you have an Android-based Fiio, I assume there’s a Tidal app.
I do Tidal on my Naim streamer. Or I would do if I ever got round to activating the free trial.
{Edith} I’ve checked the Google Play Store and there isn’t an Tidal app. There is a Fiio one, though.
Yes – I have got a Tidal app on my Fiio M6 AND a Qobuz one too (it says here)
Thanks. I looked at the Play Store on my Kindle…