I don’t think I could leave Spotify Premium for the reasons you said also…plus the music discovery is very nice. I do pay for Qobuz and use them as my lossless streamer…I’m still waiting on trying Roon…I am waiting on building out my FLAC files first…Plus I have too many other toys that I physically want in the $500 price point lol…but Roon is such a slick operating system…I’ll cave here this year probably and pick it up.
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I’ve got wholeheartedly agree with you guys on this one. I’ve also cancelled Tidal for reasons I’ve already been into. But primarily the extra cost for not a great deal of benefit. I continuously use Spotify and I really cannot see myself using anything else in the near future. But who knows. Never say never.
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I liked the old model used by Microsoft’s Zune and eMusic where you paid a monthly subscription for unlimited streaming but got to download a handful of songs each month. There were issues with selection, download quality, etc, but the idea was good. I got excited every month when my download credits refreshed and I had to ponder which songs I wanted to permanently add to my library. In a way it was like getting an allowance as a child - a small, regular income stream you’d plan to spend right away or maybe save up for something big (like getting that entire album instead of just the hits!).
Unfortunately I don’t think any service follows this model any more. These days I’ll check out things via Amazon Music/Pandora/Spotify/YouTube and then buy the album/song elsewhere. I haven’t lost anything functionally except maybe a bit of convenience, but I no longer feel excited to spend my own money every month on music…so maybe in the end I came out the winner. 
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I still have my ZuneHD I think it was way ahead of its time, and was very under-appreciated.
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Tidal lets you download, just like Spotify. But in the same way, if the service were to go under, you would lose access, Quobuz seems to be superior here - if you are willing to pay extra for downloads.
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I believe what @geniekid is referring to is that the Zune subscription gave you 10 (as I recall) credits a month that bought you permanent, DRM-free, downloads that you could keep, and play (with anything that supported MP3) even after you cancelled your subscription.
If you wanted to buy 10 songs a month then, compared to the competing services, it was effectively free … but still got you the full streaming catalog (and unlimited songs you could download and play off-line while your subscription was active).
My ex-wife used these religiously. I always forgot (and the credits didn’t carry over).
There were a couple of problems with the service though … mostly notably that it was apparently run on an aging 80286 with 4MB of RAM but with a huge drive array. This made it the slowest application/service ever. It made 150 baud transfers via acoustic coupler modems seem sprightly.
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Yea, everything @Torq said. And yea there were technical issues and the downloads were only MP3 as opposed to something lossless, but the model is really what I liked.
One thing that’s remains constant with all streaming services is that songs and videos go in and out of their catalog, so permanent downloads was a nice way of ensuring you’d always have access to your favorite songs regardless of what happened to the service. That theoretical value became actualized when Zune Pass removed the download feature (before being discontinued completely) and when eMusic “went back to their roots” by dropping all the major labels from their catalog (sorry, sometimes I need my mainstream music).
Of course, one can still pair a streaming-only service with good old fashioned purchasing of their favorite songs, although I personally have found it significantly more difficult (and expensive) to obtain singles when you really like one or two songs on an album but dislike the rest. That was another thing the Zune Pass and eMusic did well - letting you use your credits on individual songs.
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I decided to finally give Qobuz a shot. I’ve found a lot of my favorite albums are simply missing. The acoustic guitar catalog is severely lacking. Greats such as Tommy Emmanuel exist but are woefully underrepresented. Antoine Dufour doesn’t even exist there.
Classical is a similar situation. Deutsche Grammophon is there, but many other excellent classical albums are not.
Some of the lesser-known liquid electronic artists are either missing or most of their albums aren’t present (e.g. ZES, who is my favorite electronic artist).
I really wanted to ditch TIDAL and switch to Qobuz, but I’m not finding its catalog to be particularly competitive.
Are there any genres for which it is considered exemplary?
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From what I understand, Qobuz is still populating its US library (just because they have a license for something Europe doesn’t mean they’ll have it here, or that the terms don’t have to be renegotiated), which is one of the reasons it is still in Beta.
I haven’t found any streaming service that has full coverage for what I want - even when they do have the label or the artist represented at some level there are often things missing. Sometimes even a single track where they otherwise have the rest of the album, but another service has the whole thing.
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Gawd. I have a Spotify Premium subscription because it’s the best for music discovery and the Spotify Singles are excellent. I have Google Play Music subscription because it comes with YouTube Red which my kids watch all the time for their nursery rhyme and Peppa Pig videos. I keep buying a month here and there of Tidal HiFi whenever I have too much wine. And I buy FLAC albums on Qobuz whenever I’m on coke. DSD on prostudiomasters/hdtracks whenever I’m on meth. I buy vinyl whenever I’m smoking that sweet, sweet Jeffrey.
I kid, I kid. I can’t afford drugs with all the money I spend on gear. The music is the cheapest part of this thing we call a hobby that’s really an addiction.
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2nd row seats to Journey concert in Las Vegas, $960 each, plus airfare and hotel. Wife is a Journey fan, and I’m OK with them. She’s now looking at the Atlantic City NJ or Bethlehem PA concerts just announced at a much more reasonable $450 per seat (VIP section).
I figure I just have to wait, and I’ll get to see Janis and Jimi, James Brown, and Jim Morrison (my ideal “4J” concert) for free from the front row.
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While I maintain a Spotify sub for the family and it’s great for discovering new music, I’ve been slowly migrating over to a “be your own streaming service” model with Plex (and the add-on Plex Pass). As much as I loved Roon and how much value they seem to continually add, I didn’t really have the money to spare for a lifetime sub and didn’t want to feel like I was wasting my money with the annual. Plex satisfies me for now, though it’s not nearly as good with grabbing metadata as Roon seems to be. The extra info Roon seems to grab is awesome and I’m not sure whether I find that to be its strongest point or the fine control you have over the signal chain. Both are equally as awesome.
To make content for Plex, I ended up ripping all of my CDs (all 800+ of them) with dBPoweramp and DVDs/Blu-Rays with MakeMKV. Records will be needle-dropped for the forseeable future…that’s a long process to do properly. After they’re imported in my Plex Server, I manually fix all of the biographies and tags missed. It’s a slow burn, but I enjoy the process enough to keep with it. Being able to be on the go and either stream directly from the home server or, if I’m going to be in areas of low reception, sync directly to the device does a pretty good job of mimicking streaming services like Spotify/Google Play/Tidal/etc.
It just gives me reassurance knowing that this is media I physically own and I’m not dependent on agreements between streaming services and record labels. We may be riding the current wave of “all the music at a convenient fee” right now, but IMO it’s only a matter of time before a major label dispute causes people to go back into wanting to own their media again. Maybe that’s the prepper in me speaking, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
Since I didn’t see it mentioned much elsewhere, don’t discount Bandcamp as another source. If you happen to listen to a lot of artists that use the service, mobile apps will grant you access without needing to download the content. I also like that a significantly larger amount of what you pay goes to the artists which seems to be a chronic shortfall for the big boys.
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That’s some dedication ripping all those albums. Good on you I am sure it’s a worthwhile venture and will give you great satisfaction once completed.
dBPa makes it relatively painless. Really good success rate on metadata retrieval, SACD detection worked flawlessly (and it hard-encodes the extra data), and a clean disc rips in maybe 2 minutes flat. EAC’s a great free alternative, but dBPa is/was worth every penny.
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I am sure I used the self same program for ripping some albums a while back. I tried a few before settling on this one. I liked it and paid for it. Though I didn’t have as nearly as many to do at the time as I had already done the bulk of them previously. I can’t recall what I used to rip that batch though. Never mind, can’t have been that good if I don’t remember.
Limiting votes to just one was a mistake IMO. I use and employ many different playback schemes. Also, one should be able to change a bote as I’ve accidentally hit an answer I didn’t intend to. IE; fat fingers on a tablet! LOL
I employ Roon, Tidal, MQA, local NAS and vinyl. Physical media should survive, when the net goes down, we will survive.
Long term? I haven’t a clue who will survive a year from now but physical media will. Great topic, txs
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I think you have a point. @andrew, it’s time to re-do that poll. ROON claims not to be a “service” but a player. Like my SONOS speakers, it can incorporate many players or sources.
Maybe it should be a “How do you Listen to Music” and what are your primary sources there?
In the car - I use Sirius first, my iPhone connected 2nd, FM 3rd
At Home - Tidal Service, Vinyl, other streams
Or something like that. As for vote changing… once you hit reply, it’s over.
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I agree with you on your Roon sentiments. I think Roon has a superior interface, but for pure music quality, Bryston MPD and Audirvana from my desktop soundbetter to me in my systems.
Most Roon endpoints allow for other formats.
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Starting to build a bigger appreciation for Google Play Music, even if it’s in its terminal stages. I feel like it’s a little more hefty on the low end in comparison to Spotify. Could just be psychoacoustics at play, but it brought out a lot of goodness from the KZ ZSN when I was cleaning the apartment today.
But…and this is equal parts confusing and frustrating…if you’re trying to build a playlist and accidentally select “Add to Library” instead of “Add to Playlist” and subsequently remove it from your library, GPM will inexplicably remove that track from your playlist as well. Continuously. Only fix I could find was clearing cache and data before it would stick. Even the tech in chat was confused, but I guess it’s a thing.
Tidal managed to get back to me and let me know that I’m good to go with my military discount pricing again, so I added that back in and built the demo playlist I normally use. Does this mean I now use too many streaming services? Yeah, probably, but UAPP hasn’t been successful in getting Spotify to provide them with an API or ability to use Spotify from within UAPP…meaning here I am.
That means I’m now with Tidal, YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music and GPM), Spotify, Bandcamp, and a slew of locally-hosted CD Rips in FLAC (which I can also host remotely via Plex Pass). I don’t have a problem, I swear.
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