Apple Music isn’t the best streaming music service — it’s just the least annoying::Competitors like Spotify and YouTube Music may be your first choice for music on Android, but you might want to reconsider
I buy DRM free music to own it
Good for you. I buy/torrent music sometimes too. Streaming is popular because it’s convenient and the convenience is more valuable to many people than the benefits of “owning DRM free music”.
Your comment is entirely pointless and pretty fucking pretentious.
I’ll admit it sounded a little showy to me too, but a lot of the nicher things with their own benefits sound pretentious when just being said in plain wording. I like fountain pens because they’re pleasant to write with but are more expensive and less convenient. Always sounds pretentious just saying I like them and why if I don’t throw in the caveats like I did here.
There’s the chance he is trying to, of course. I try to assume the best these days for my own sake though
I don’t think his post is meant to be hostile. It’s not pointless, but it would add more of a discussion to elaborate on the topic.
On the topic of choosing to own (download (without DRM)) your music, one of the benefits is that it allows you to have all your music available in whichever music player (app/program/streaming service) you like. You can access the music while offline, without being required to pay some subscription fee. If downloading, it’s generally also very easy to switch between different players if you so desire to in the future. You can control the metadata (swap album art, edit track info, etc.) You can sometimes even use owned media in tandem with streaming services to put all your media in one place within a streaming service’s app/program. Usually, doing this requires less purchases/downloads to get all your media in one place, but still requires a sub.
On the topic of using Apple Music as a player… I’m not sure if it’s still this way, but you needed to use iTunes (on a PC!) to import local MP3 files to Apple Music, which, iTunes, love it or hate it, requires you to not only own a PC, but it has its limitations such as FLAC files being unsupported… That being said, Apple Music does provide a great convenience for many people and it’s often cheaper than legally purchasing all of your songs. You can even add your downloaded songs from a PC (but not locally from an android device for some reason??)
I prefer to own my music. For anyone who likes the idea but doesn’t know where to start, I can give some recommendations for convenience.
For music acquisition, use a legal website like Bandcamp to purchase your music, most of the money goes to Artists, compared to some other platforms. Alternatively you could pirate… (illegal! I don’t care if you pirate, but I’m not gonna write a tutorial.)
If you want to sync owned/downloaded files, use: SyncThing - free software that lets you automatically mirror file directories between your devices, syncing your libraries with no fees required. Available on Android/Win/Linux/Mac
For players, I recommend:
Android:
PowerAmp - trial & one time purchase, has theming support, massive customization options
Oto Music - lite version or one time purchase, supports downloading & embedding lyrics
PC:
MusicBee - free, has theming support, allows loading network files (local or remote)
Plenty of players available for different functional needs and/or aesthetics, but these are what I currently use.
Well put. I typically use 7digital and sometimes HDTracks. Bandcamp confused me but I need to give it another go.
Purchasing music also gives a much higher percentage of money to the artist compared to streaming platforms.
Retro Music is my favorite player for Android and Elisa for Linux (maybe Windows too).
On a thread discussing the various streaming options all of this information is entirely irrelevant. Managing a digital library is not appealing to 99% of people.
You may as well tell people to cook their own food in a thread discussing the various food delivery options.
Managing a digital library is not appealing to 99% of people.
I wouldn’t say that’s true. Probably 99% of people who use a streaming service still manage their library on that platform in some capacity (playlists, etc.)
Now if you’re talking about “owning and managing your entire library” then yeah, I’d say most people probably don’t care or are too lazy to bother with it. (and I don’t mean that as an insult)
Still, for people who like or listen to music that isn’t included in their primary music streaming service’s library, owning portions of their library will often give them the capacity to mix in the rest of their music to their platform of choice. I wouldn’t say that’s irrelevant when talking about streaming services. Sadly, Apple makes this process more difficult than it needs to be.
I looked into that as I listened to my playlist most of the time. And then I realize nano.RIPE after 10 years still unable to be purchased outside iTunes Japan or Japanese speaking websites.
You realized what? I don’t understand
Uhmm it’s pretty clear to me.
He says that after 10 years “nano.RIPE” music still cannot be purchased outside Japan.
I guess his point is that sadly that is not always a solution (outside piracy) as sometimes you cannot actually buy certain music, but I am guessing is actually available to be played on the streaming subscription service.
Oh, “nano.RIPE” is a name. I thought it was a spelling mistake.
Same
I didn’t know what nano.RIPE was and still don’t really (maybe a musician or store), but I understand enough to know what he’s saying now. I know not all music is available but quite a bit is (this was surprising to me). Maybe the outlying songs are left to pirating. That’s a personal predicament.
Does it have a Linux app? no
Does it have a duo plan? no
Does it have a good rating on Google Play? no
Does it have a decent Windows app? last time i checked, itunes looked like an app from 2005
Try Cider, it’s a FOSS and it works on any platform including Linux. There are others, but they are mostly just wrappers around the web app, and Cider is not.
Everyone picks a streaming service for their needs. YT music has a large library bundled with ad free YT, Apple Music is a natural choice if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and Spotify exists too.
I recently switched to Tidal from Spotify and haven’t looked back. The UI is familiar enough, having lossless is really nice, and not having my phone lag whenever I open my library is great.
Then there’s the other factor of how much each streaming service pays it’s artists. To make 1000$ in revenue, this is how many streams an artist needs:
YT Music : 500,000 ($0.002 per stream)
Spotify : 314,465 ($0.00318 per stream)
Apple : 125,000 ($0.008 per stream)
Tidal : 77,882 ($0.01284 per stream)
Granted, musicians almost never make their money from streaming services. However, if an artist were to have that 314k streams on Tidal instead of Spotify, they’d make 4 times as much money.
The number you pulled for YouTube Music is based on free users watching YouTube videos. YouTube Music streams from paying subscribers are 4x that at $0.08 per stream.
The Spotify number is also averaged across free and premium users - I’m not sure the number for premium users only but it is likely closer to what Apple and Tidal pay since those are premium-only.
The other problem though is that none of the services have implemented user-centric payments. So your money on any of the services is going to Taylor Swift, Drake and Bad Bunny no matter who you listen to because everyone gets paid based on their percentage of the total streams.
The artist rates continually decline for every platform. In the not-to-distant future Tidal will be as shit as Spotify is now.
The best streaming service is my selfhosted Jellyfin. I serve me no ads and I’m 100% sure I don’t do any shady business with my data.
Didn’t apple overwrite people’s music with different versions of their songs or something?
Regardless, fuck Apple. I’m happy with Jellyfin.
Yepp - all my bootleg and vinyl rips was suddenly replaced with other versions. Even some of my ripped albums ended up as songs from different albums.
Only reason I still have the Apple Music app is because when I connect my phone in my car with usb, the stereo will give errors if it’s not there. Also starts auto playing when connected even if tidal is playing while connection is made.
Yep. It has screwed up album art and as a very visual person it has really fucked my ability to browse through my library. Also the older the album/song was added, the more broken tracks there are.
As a result I am now working to switch away from Apple Music and streaming in general. I was perfectly happy paying the student price for Apple Music. However with it increasingly breaking my library and needing me to conduct “library maintenance” to keep up with their licensing issues. Well fuck that.
Apple Music is the best music platform by far due to clean and simple focus and UI, performance, and also lyrics. Unfortunately, it still sucks in all the ways that streaming inherently sucks though, combined with its intention to suck you into the Apple world.
Google Play Music died and was resurrected as Plexamp.
Everyone I know uses Spotify
I much prefer Spotify, interface is definitely more intuitive than Apple Music.
My Apple Music vs Spotify argument is Spotify is a shitty excuse electron app that hogs compute and battery on my mac laptop. Compare that to even iTunes and it was an easy choice.
I switched to Android a few months ago and expected to want to switch away from Apple Music, but their Android app is excellent. Plus they have lossless quality. Oh, and you can upload your own music to their cloud for streaming anywhere.
Spotify and YT Music both support uploading your own files.
I don’t think Spotify supports uploading your own music files. It can indeed show local files, but i’m not aware of a upload mechanism such as YouTube Music has.
I Jean, FOSS YouTube music clients + FOSS downloaders and maybe a system wide adblocker can never get wrong
Nah, InnerTune is the best. Has the library of YouTube music, no ads, free, can download songs as actual files (at least in a previous version, which is still available on F-Droid archive)
Also worth noting some other nice free music apps also available on F-Droid:
- SimpTube (uses YouTube Music)
- Musify (uses Spotify)
- Spotube (uses Spotify, streams the actual tracks from YouTube Music or via a Piped instance)
Those are the discussions I’m interested in. YT music is making me cringe with ads between nearly every song.
Simptube seems to not exist
Apple Music? Least Annoying? Ok bud.
