Upvote: Spotify

Upvote: Rdio

Rdio: they pay artists/songwriters/labels/publishers more than any other streaming service.

Also I love the design, UI, and functionality.

I switched from Spotify to Rdio about 3 years ago because I like the way it organizes my music. Spotify was all about creating playlists, but I prefer to listen to music by the album, and Rdio did that better.

I've been impressed by Spotify's updated UI, but haven't had much of a reason to switch back. Looking forward to Apple's streaming service though ;).

Upvote: Other

Upvote: iTunes Radio

Google Music because Android and ChromeCast.

Grooveshark. I've tried Spotify and Rdio, and I just keep coming back to Grooveshark because it's free without ad interruptions, and for this:

The queue is visual, clear, easy to manipulate, and most importantly, it's always present, no matter what pages I'm browsing through, it's there. This horizontal interface seems to me to be obviously the best way to handle the queue because it offers so much more room than a vertical layout.

All of that said, it might finally be time that something else gets used by me because Grooveshark just redesigned to a vertical queue, which kinda sucks, and the old design won't be usable for much longer.

Any Grooveshark users share my annoyance and have found satisfaction elsewhere?

A mixture of Spotify, Bandcamp and SoundCloud (plus my own collection on iTunes when I can face it).

I still use iTunes for playing back audio I actually own. To me it's more full filling knowing I get what I pay for rather than "getting" to stream it and never actually download the music. I do use spotify to discover new music though.

Other: Streamus

Cons:

• Chrome only extension
• not available on phone / tablet

Pros:

• Free
• No adds
• All that is available on youtube
• Pandoralike features, that lets you find out new stuff that you might like

https://streamus.com/

People who are interested in discovering newer, up+coming bands should check out Tradiio (http://www.tradiio.com/). It is a pretty interesting and unique experience. Definitely more of an active (rather than passive) application--not intended to just be a "on in the background only" type of app.

Amazon Prime Music: I'm a cheap bastage and it comes free with my Prime membership.

The catalog isn't the best, but it is "free" so that works for me.

Rdio and others (soundcloud, youtube, hypem, TIMJ, Deezer ...) None of this music services has all the music. We are exposed to more and more sources. Our music librairies are more and more fragmented. I'm building http://disco.io with a friend to offer a personal streaming music librairies, that can centralize all our favorites and playlists. We don't support Spotify for now, because they are much less open that the other services. They don't allow users to match their collections and playlists to other services. That's a bit strange, but they own that, not you. Rdio and Deezer are much nicer about that.

For now, Spotify. I switched from Spotify to Rdio and back again. Rdio has an awesome UI and is better at organising your music. The whole Music listening experience is better from a designer point of view, to my opinion. "Then why did you switched back to Spotify?" you might ask. Well Spotify had some really great updates that fixed most music organising (artist, album) issues I had with the service, so that eliminated one of the biggest differences between the two. But one of the most important reasons I switched... Streaming. Spotify nails it when it comes to streaming experience, it's almost instant where as Rdio needs a few seconds (sometimes really long) to buffer when skipping songs. It made the service feel slow, combined with the desktop and mobile apps that are just less snappy than Spotify's. I use Spotify on my mobile (iPhone) in the car a lot and Spotify is really much more responsive, less annoying. Also I have a lot of friends on Spotify I refer new music to so that's an obvious choice and Spotify is a lot more active in my country (Netherlands) which leads to more interaction and updates (Rdio thinks we are German given the browse feature is in German instead of Dutch). That said, Spotify also still has it's flaws, the UI mainly can be a bit daunting to understand, especially when switching to devices etc. But hey, no piece of software can be perfect right ;) And at least Spotify is updating a lot, for the better.

Tl;dr It al comes down to streaming music, Spotify, for now, is fastest, almost like you're playing local music files. I was starting to get annoyed with the streaming delays with Rdio, so I switched.

I'm really looking forward trying the upcoming Apple music service though. I love competition ;)

I use all 3 but been trying out Tidal recently. Overpriced & poor interface but the high fidelity music is nice!

I know it's silly, but I actually pay for both services. I just can't decide which one is better.

Rdio is perfect if you like to listen to full albums and don't care too much about music discovery and social interactions. I mean, the way Rdio lets you organize your music library is flawless.

Spotify, on the other side, makes your life harder if you're into listening to full albums or full discographies (since the service is more focused on creating playlists), but it's discovery features are fantastic. Spotify is always making me find great new bands. Also, since Spotify is so much more popular than Rdio, it's much easier to find friends using it. That means recommending songs to people you like (and also receiving a lot of recommendations).

That said, I prefer how Rdio approach design — it has a much more cleaner and more objective than Spotify's unfocused and dark interface. Rdio's design problem relies on its Mac app though, which is not native (it's just a lame and slow webview). Spotify's Mac app, on the other side, is much more snappy. Things like selecting multiple songs to perform an action (like saving or deleting them) work much better. That helps a lot when you're trying to organize songs in playlists.

I strong recommend you try both services (maybe even paying for a couple of months) before making your decision.

Hypem + Soundcloud

Google Music

Spotify for trips because of offline playlists. Otherwise I use Soundcloud for radio shows and new daily content.

I've used Rdio and Spotify, but I'm currently paying for Google Play Music - which I'm not that into either. Here's some thoughts:

Rdio - Good, clean, and simple UI. However the radio feature that I use to discover new songs were really bad.

Spotify - Also love the visual design of Spotify but it's too confusing. It does too much and I had hard time getting comfortable with it. The thing I loved the most is their radio stations were good and if I gave feedback on songs (thumb up/down) it immediately altered the queue to cater to the feedback.

Google Play Music - Good recommendations and simple UI. Doesn't feel like a music app though - compared to Spotify and Rdio. When you use those two, you can tell you're using something related to music and it helps set the mood. The Google app while looks good feels like a regular app playing music. Their recommendations were great but the queue didn't change right away (like spotify) based on my feedback.

I really wanted to try Beats Music and iTunes Radio but since they've not come out in Canada yet and going to be prob merged soon, I'm excited to see the outcome.

Mixture of Spotify, iTunes and vinyl.

Spotify is mainly for creating playlists and wishlist for tracks I don't have yet. Plust ofcourse the huge catalog and social interactions.

iTunes as main music player for OS X and iOS with iTunes Match (love that).

And vinyl for the true sound and those specific albums which just sound better on wax. And the whole collecting thing of course.

Rdio now, for their clean(light) Ui

iTunes Match still best (and cheapest) option if you're not only into only blockbuster albums. Beside that I've been used Spotify and Rdio and there's no much difference for the music I listen too. But I still prefer Rdio UI so it's what I use.

Come one everyone. We're all creators here... the numbers don't lie!

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/12/13/quicksummarystreaming

I subscribe to Google Play Music. I signed up when the service first launched, so I'm grand-fathered into a $7.99/month plan. Previous to Google Play, I was a Last.FM subscriber until it ended subscription plans.

I really like the library of music (I often listen to obscure electronic music and I have yet to find an artist that isn't on the service), the flexibility of streaming vs downloading, and you can upload your own music to the service (not sure why you would need to if you're a subscriber, but Google will replace your file with a higher bit-rate version if its version is higher). I like the web app, but the Google Play Music Android app can definitely use an update to its UX; Material Design looks great, but some interactions are bothersome to me.

SoundCloud!

I listen primarily to hiphop and electronic music. My favorite artists upload their music to SoundCloud for free. Granted, every once in a while I'll hear an ad but it's a small price to pay for the experience.

I love the sense of community on Soundcloud I love the waveform player:)

I started using Spotify but then switched over to Rdio purely because of the UI. I think it's much easier to navigate.

The only downside is that I tend to get a lot of errors & playback issues, even when on wifi or LTE.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

Which: Whatever's cheapest

Why: None of them have "complete catalogues", none of them have perfect UI, none of them have superior sound quality. For the end user they're basically the same thing.

Upvote SoundCloud, Pros Mobile app is outstanding The latest, fresher tunes around the world from indie artists. Community driven

Cons No offline storage listening Exploration system could be better

Hit me up (https://soundcloud.com/ohhko) and let me check out your profile, always looking for great music.

I've always been a Spotify user but switched to Rdio briefly because it seemed to have a nicer UI and was more focussed (at the time) on albums than Spotify was. However, I found it to be totally unreliable as a service and was missing a fair bit of music I listen to so I switched back after a month. Spotify is much better nowadays for organising albums although not as good as Rdio in that regard.

I also vaguely remember Rdio having some really annoying quirk I couldn't get past. I think it was that you couldn't hide unavailable albums or something? I dunno, whatever it was it was annoying.

Rdio because my work blocks Spotify.

Definitely a fan of Tidal these days (http://tidalhifi.com/us). Their desktop app is awful, though, so I rely on their web player and iPhone app, which are both nice.

I was a big fan of Rdio for the first year or so. It's been a steady decline since, and is practically unusable these days. The desktop app is incredibly slow and unresponsive, and the iPhone app isn't really any better.

I've never felt the draw to Spotify.

Even though i love the design of Rdio, i seemed to like Spotify's offerings more.

Soundcloud! I love the Stream. It's like Twitter for music. You can find the newest stuff there directly from the artists.

Shameless plug: If you're into electronic music try out my new site http://1song.co. 1 song delivered by email every day. It includes a streaming embeds from Spotify, Soundclud, Youtube and/or iTunes. Sorry, no Rdio (yet).

• Spotify for most general listening (collaborative playlists

— wow, My comment was significantly longer than this when I posted it. I had a "thumbs up" emoji after "playlists" and I think that totally chopped off the rest of my post. :'(

Spotify for me. I’ve been using it since 2012, and Rdio has a shitty selection where I live (in Singapore).

Design is not just veneer, and while Rdio’s UI looked way nicer, Spotify was snappier and their apps work very well. With Spotify Connect especially, it’s just a breeze.

Deezer and Spotify

Could also look at Plex + Plex Pass, your own music/video everywhere :) https://plex.tv/ ... personally used Rdio for ages because of the design and functionality, but jumped ship to Spotify for the catalogue ... thinking of moving towards a plex based solution these days though

Grooveshark for playlists and specific songs/albums, and soma.fm for background music (Iush and groovesalad are just so perfect to design...)

Spotify, because most tracks on Rdio are blocked for me (in germany)

+1 Spotify (Premium)

Spotify : all music inside it

Spotify: Why? Music Library, Design, Apps, and Premiun Features