What music subscription service are you using?

[Sagath]

Yeah. I'm a serious fan of it because too many times I'm listening to tunes in low/no coverage zones. Ski hills are hit and miss spotty at best, and if I go back country for a day or two its definitely a zero coverage zone.

The flexability of 'offline', the large song database and the family pack pricing at $15 is what sold me on Spotify. Prior to that I was using Google Play and Songza prior to that, before they got bought out by Gplay.

 

[lowfat]

Google Play Music. I don't listen to very popular music and they almost always have everything I've ever searched for. Love the simple thumbs/up. If I thumb up something on my computer, it automatically gets downloaded on my phone. Don't do any actual streaming on my phone.

 

[sswilson]

Interesting, thanks Sagath. I've generally avoided the streaming service because of limited utility to me if I am only on cellular data. Maybe I need to have another look.

I will admit I still actually BUY albums and songs... digital versions, but I still like having them. Biggest attraction to me for the steaming would be exposure to music I wouldn't normal buy or just haven't heard yet. Likely worth it for that.

I'm in the same boat as you in that I tend to purchase albums, but like you said.... the streaming service does offer exposure to content that's either new or just never been on my radar. It does this in two ways... the most obvious are their daily mixes + discover/release radar, but I'm finding just as much new (to me) stuff when it starts adding "similar" music to continue on after a playlist (or album) has finished. There's also the option to select "radio" based on either an artist or a specific track that can take you down some interesting musical paths.

As far as "offline" goes... as Sagath said, it restricts playback to tracks you've already downloaded onto your device. The difference for me on this new phone is that there's a setting outside of spotify itself which puts spotify into offline mode. Not sure if that's zenui specific or if it's a function of Android nougat.

 

[sswilson]

One of spotify's biggest complaints is the apparent inability to save the daily mixes for offline play, but there's a work-around for that in the windows client.

The windows client allows you to save the daily mixes "save to playlist" and while it initially only populates a low number of songs (somewhere under 20) once you select the saved playlist it offers recommendations which I can only assume work off of the same algorithm that the online Autoplay (continues playing similar songs once you get to the end of a playlist) feature does. Those recommendations can be easily added to the playlist to fatten the list up for offline play.

Once created on the windows client, those playlists can then be downloaded onto your android device for offline play of your daily mixes. The only downside is the static nature of those saved playlists... unlike the live daily mixes these playlists will not be dynamically adjusted based on your current listening habits.

 

[gingerbee]

prime music

 

[dustin1706]

Spotify. Shared with 5 other people (Immediate family members who live at the same address of course, not just me and 5 random friends.........) works out to $2.62 / mo / person after tax.

I work out of cell service a lot of the time, but I've downloaded about 3 dozen playlists that I like to my phone and have no issues using it that way.

 

[Bond007]

I am on google music right now. Love the selection and ease of use, but the pre-done playlists are a bit lacking. May try spotify for a few months and see if I prefer it.

 

[lowfat]

Moved from GPM to Spotify today. When I got my phone a few months ago I had serious issues getting songs to download to the phone. Had to reboot the phone over and over and over for it to finally download all the songs. 2 days ago, my entire library on my phone was deleted. And once again the same issue, but no matter what I tried I couldn't get it to download. So today I signed up for Spotify Premium.

Even coughed up the $5 to get soundiiz to import my GPM playlists in to Spotify as I couldn't find any free way to do it. Unfortunately I found this to be a pain. It will miss some songs and unfortunately only list the first 8 songs it misses :doh:. Spent so much time trying to determine what songs it missed, I could have just done it all manually.

 

[mGz]

I've been using TIDAL HiFi exclusively for a year now and I've been extremely pleased. For myself as a self proclaimed audiophile, it's the only option for me.

 

[lowfat]

With Tidal. Lets say you are playing a playlist on your phone. You no longer like the song that is playing and want to remove it from the playlist. Can you easily just click the 3 dots and hit remove? This can't be done in GPM and it is even harder to do in Spotify. If Tidal can do this I'll switch in a heartbeat.

EDIT: Signed up for trial, seems it does. :thumb:

Another issue I have w/ Spotify is that the songs in playlists aren't automatically listed under Songs. :doh:

EDIT 2: Issues w/ both providers is I have no way to tell if I've listened to a song before and not liked it. This is deal breaker.

Other issues w/ Tidal;
Absolutely terrible 'home page'. Pages upon pages of stuff I have zero interest in.
Genres. There are zero sub genres :doh:. Ok, lets look under Electronic. You look through the default play lists and they all seem to be curated by one guy. Almost none of it is popular music.
Similar artists, if I want to find music similar to an artist I'm listening to, it gives me like one result and it sounds absolutely nothing like it.

These make it way too difficult to find new music. Tidal is a absolute no for me.

I've now tried Tidal, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Unlimited, and GPM. GPM is the only one that has a way to like/dislike a song and actually gives relevant similar artists and shows new releases that are also relevant to what I listen to. :doh: