Which one?
Well, I can't really help you with that, because all services have different Pros and Cons. I would say it depends on what music you like. Because a big con for Spotify for example is that certain labels don't publish their music there. You won't find any The Black Dahlia Murder for example and a lot more of Metal Blade's bands.
Apple is a good idea, I would say. Does it cover the whole library of what's available in the iTunes store? Every label publishes music on iTunes nowadays, so I would say it has more songs than Spotifiy. Even I have some tracks on iTunes from back when I used to make music and had a label.
I don't have any experience with the rest though.
So what is your favorite genre? What are you looking for when getting a premium service? Give us some input to help you with the decision.
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Well, I listen mostly to rock/metal, and this is a pretty big con when using Spotify, because 1. It doesn't have some songs and 2. It suggests me WAY TOO hardcore songs for me, Google is better at suggestions
Also, those Korn songs that are unavailable on Spotify are ONLY available on Zonga, not even iTunes, but Play Music will come with Youtube Music Key soon, which may allow me to listen them offline (and I also have them in my Play Music library already, so that wouldn't be an issue there)
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Too hard? I started out listening to Korn and merged to harder stuff from there. I got to Technical Death Metal and Grindcore before I made a u-turn and started listening to other music than metal as well. :)
But I get what you mean, so Spotify doesn't have a lot of metal, mh. You can't use Spotify on your mobile device also, so this is out of the race already, I would say. Everything points to Google Play, don't you think?
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No, not that kind of hard, I can listen to any metal, but the one suggested by Spotify is more on the sounds-like-a-generic-cover-to-Iron-Maiden side of metal. Korn reminds me that I have friends that don't listen to generic pop-rap songs every day and I can share my music with them :D
The big problem with moving to Play Music is that I'll have to manually put in all my songs in playlists, since Spotify and Google don't love each other. Also, if I decide to stop paying for it, I just lose my playlists until I decide to pay again, which is an All-Access "exclusive feature".
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Really? That sucks. I just listen to Soundcloud when I'm on the road or I just download music and put it on my phone. At home I use a mix of youtube, spotify and soundcloud. All for free of course. I never really thought of paying for a streaming service.
Google Play sounds like a pain in the ass now. I'm at my wits' end. :D
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I listen to my "local" MP3s I uploaded to Play Music when I'm out and Spotify and Youtube at home, but none of them is complete. Zonga could be complete, but it's like that perfect girl which is perfect and everything, but she's a little crazy and her face man, don't look at that face!
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Perfect and everything but a fucked up face?! That's a messed up situation! Don't go with Zonga then! DON'T! :D
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I add people who agree with my stupid sense of humour to my completely useless whitelist. Legend says one day I'll make a Bad Rats whitelist GA o.O
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I stacked up on Bad Rats gifts in the Summer Sale for Steamgifts. B)
But seriously, I only know girls who are crazy without a 10/10 face but the want the D. Nothing perfect about them tho. :P
Thanks for adding me. :D
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Living in the EU2 zone is hard life, Bad Rats never went below 0.99€ here.
Girls are OK as long as they don't expect me to be prince charming and aren't double my weight (not a fat hater, but I'm way too skinny for them).
You'd think we're having this conversation here because I'm being friendly. No, I'm just bumping the thread for more help honestly, I only made this thread because I wanted to make a poll and because I love the community here and it only cost me 0.19€
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I thought you were joking since you had journalism in your username and all. Tidal isn't really doing that great and doesn't pose any competition to other services.
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You have to start somewhere. It's the only decent service that offers lossless (FLAC) tracks and pays out royalties to the artists rather than the production companies. To each their own.
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I know, the concept is great, but the promotion was a bit hypocritic tho when they feature artists like Madonna and Daft Punk. They're not starving nor are they fighting for money due to piracy or anything. I don't have the best sound system nor headphones so I'm good with 320kbps.
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Too bad Tidal still has the same, poorly remastered albums that the other services have. By poorly remastered I mean the victims of the loudness war. Personally I prefer dynamic music that doesn't have clipping.
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An original suggestion. Too bad it doesn't outperform any of the alternatives + it doesn't have the missing music, so I'm passing on it :D
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For now-- it's relatively new. More importantly, it's the first streaming service that doesn't absolutely fuck over the original artist.
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Well, music artists are either fucked over or overpaid, I'm just being too lazy to pirate music anymore and I can't live without some Internet radio suggesting me music since I discovered last.fm 4 years ago.
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i used to use grooveshark, but they closed it (some guys re-opening it, but they are not the owners of the first groveeshark, and they have few content atm, http://tunein.com/radio/Golden-Sixties-Seventies-Eighties-Radio-s140388/ a good radio website (this one its one of my favourites, and also http://musicovery.com/ its a good "radio based on your mood"
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I think I should have been more clear that I'm looking for on-demand music that should be available offline, not radios.
Thank you for reminding me of TuneIn, though, I'm shocked that I didn't have an account there yet o.O
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I've been using Google Play All Access for a long time now, and I've really enjoyed it. I like having my personal collection seamlessly integrated into the All Access stuff. I really don't plan on changing anytime soon, so losing my playlists isn't really an issue for me. Note that I'm in the US, so I'm not sure how it compares in Europe. To use your example, I can choose to listen to censored or uncensored Korn albums, both are listed for me.
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No, not the "explicit" kind of censored, I'm talking about the "I don't want the masses to hear this music" kind of censored.
This is not available on Spotify and Play Music for some reason, but it used to be available on Spotify a while ago, since I have them in my library, but it's greyed out.
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Aah, I get you. That's usually due to record company licensing, not that they don't want you to hear it. Looks like that album is on a different record label from their other albums, so Google and Spotify might not have agreements with that label. Zonga might not be following their agreements exactly, so they're probably operating in a legal grey area (I've never heard of it, it's not available in the US).
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Sadly I don't listen to enough music to have any knowledge of these services. I just use youtube (and I still buy CDs and rip them myself)
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Never have. Not even sure if it is available here.
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Any proxy will do to use it. It's truly something unique you can't live without after a while, but I gotta agree with the guy below, time will kill you before that while has passed, grandpa.
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I hope time is a little more kind that, I only graduated University a couple years ago! Still paying off the debt from it.
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"Graduated 2 years ago" and having (developer) next to my name would be living the dream for me, though University doesn't have debt here :D
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No, it works on the phone, but the free plan has no offline mode and the music is not really on demand.
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Yeah sorry, I realized that after I read your post again. It seems like Zonga would be the best since it has all of your songs and it appears to be a much cheaper option. Although the interfaces are horrible, it's probably better than trying to recreate your playlists after using Play Music and then switching services. If you plan on never switching services, or don't have many playlists, then I suggest using Play Music, otherwise use Zonga. Hopefully whatever service you choose works out for you. :)
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Yeah, I really don't think Zonga would be reliable on the long run. At least big services from Google give you a warning and allow you to export data when they close them...
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I like them for the art work, hidden things, and because I like to have physical anything I can versus digital only. If I can hold it in my hand, I feel it is mine. If I die from electrocution if I try to physically touch it... then I feel it isn't really mine.
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Yeah, I definitely get that. They have great quality as well. I probably wouldn't mind them, but they can be so expensive :p
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In the case of Mandatory Fun (Weird Al's newest album) it was $10 for the CD locally (so no shipping) or $1.29 per song (13 of them). Sure they offered a $10 bundle for them as well on iTunes, but... that's what I paid for the CD itself.
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Ahhh yeah. I still think that's expensive :p I'm pretty cheap xD
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I know this doesn't answer your question, but I humbly suggest supporting the musicians you love by buying their music in whatever format suits you. Any purchase is better than streaming subscriptions because the royalties are next to nothing. I only use Spotify to preview albums before I decide to buy.
I'll give you this though; If you decide you want to use Spotify, you could use a VPN. That's how I have access to Spotify and have a Netflix subscription, and in my case, the VPN also fixes some stability issues I have with my internet connection. Though I don't have a premium subscription for Spotify, with a VPN, I don't see how that wouldn't work.
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From what I know, Spotify requires a US credit card if I want to pay for it, but I won't pay for it, since it's double the price of what it would be if it were available "natively". I connect via proxy every 15 days, no need for constant VPN on it.
+buying all the songs in my library would be a way too big shock for any budget, so I'll stick to a subscription or free ads for now :(
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what's wrong with copying files to your phone? :D I like it... :)
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I got spoiled by Spotify, unfortunately, IT CHANGED ME
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The only streaming music service I've ever used is Pandora, but I'm too cheap for the Premium version.
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The only one I've used out of those is spotify and seeing as you can't get the premium version of it, have a bump! :D
and thanks too. Listening to a Korn playlist now ;P
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Me too! :o Did you hear my horrible version of a Korn song on Ceebers' karaoke thread? XD
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I just went and listened! It wasn't that bad! :D
All day at work and all I could keep singing was "Here to Stay" and "Freak on a Leash" xD
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Haha I think it was :p But nice! I like most of Korn's stuff.
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I think another thread was already created a week back. Clicky!
Btw, there are lots of good free services you can have a look at before going premium.
8tracks.com is a good choice, lets you play music according to your mood. Truly a niche site.
Also, you can try Streamus chrome extension. If your song is on Youtube, you can stream only audio with this extension.
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I participated there, he was looking for online players for work, I am looking for online player for home and offline player for mobile on the same service.
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i would also say spotify, but why cant you get spotify premium if you could pay for other services like deezer? explain me more? :D
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Spotify requires a US credit card (or from the country you "are" in, anyways). I don't even have a credit card, but I'll get one by the end of the summer.
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You can buy a "Prepaid" creditcard i think that works for me the best. :)
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I use a PaysafeCard for buying Steam games atm, but that doesn't work for subscriptions, unless the service has a Wallet feature, like Google and Steam do.
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I download Nightcore remixes from YouTube, some artists that I consider grand from iTunes, some songs from torrent (and some of them can only be found via torrent) and I add the songs I ripped myself. That takes a bit work but my portable library is handpicked. My PC library is a mess. (:
tl;dr: Don't use a streaming service. Be old fashioned. (:
A sidenote: If you like metal, you should totally listen Eluveitie if you didn't already. (:
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I'd recommend Luxtos, Scorched Earth and Slania's Song too. (:
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Omigosh. My friends had an Irish-style wedding today, and Inis Mona was one of the songs in the playlist. Totally, absolutely love it.
Answering your question - as far as I know, last.fm has a subscription, that allows you to use it as radio. Never used it myself, though =(
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Back when I used it, it had a 30 song limit, but I didn't know that, so I kept listening to the same songs all over, until I realised something was wrong. Oh, the good ol' AION times :D
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Deezer is totally worth it. No way you'll regret it.
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It seems to be pretty much exactly like Spotify from a functionality point of view, except I don't need to proxy every 15 days. I'll probably switch to it if I decide to pay nothing. For some reason only now you opened my eyes :O
PS: I didn't really considered it as a serious alternative because a while ago the free plan was only a few minutes a month, now it's unlimited, so that's cool.
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Hahaha. Yeah. Premium is even better, but their free plan got a lot better recently...
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Now THAT is a point for Spotify. And offline player, too.
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Well, most of them have an offline player, though. I don't usually need music when I'm offline on my PC, I always kept a 1GB library just in case for that, but I don't even have a music player (except maybe VLC) on my PC and I never felt the need for it since I use Spotify. When I'm out of Internet, I'm either playing some game without the need for it or doing something outside the computer.
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What?! You can't listen to all of your Korn?! :O HERESY!!!!
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Just buy music from who you like on Bandcamp or off iTunes or any other digital store, then keep the mp3's locally and play them in foobar or something.
However, since Zonga appears to have your entire library of Korn songs, go with it.
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Instead of using Spotify and waste your money you could easily create a playlist on youtube and listen to the songs through there.
My recommendation is Youtube. no payments, accessible from every devise, never will ask for subscriptions nor it has an expiration date. Not to mention that there was just 1 song i could not find on youtube in the 8 years i use it (everything you need is on Youtube already).
And you wish to support the singers? Use their Vevo pages. If they don't have one, bad for them.
Problem solved
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I can't multitask on my laptop with Youtube on, it's too much for a dual core, apparently... Also, my internet is puking itself when going over 360p...
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you have FB?
it is far worse... i don't have FB, but hola is fine as long as i get Pandora
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Check music.163.com. It's chinese but it shares the common type of interface. Just use your common sense or switch tabs until you find what you are looking for :P
It's for free, you need no proxy and it has unlimited 320kbps quality. Also database is really big.
Desktop app is really good too. It's buffering every song you listen on disk so you can "download" them just in seconds or listen them offline. If you want to use mobile app, there is some translated version of it.
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The fact that I kinda rely 100% on GOOGLE translate to use that webpage makes me think if I shouldn't just use GOOGLE Music instead?
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To be honest i never used any translate there beside of registration process.
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if you have an android phone, install the spotify apk from a tablet
so if you don't get what I mean, grab the apk from a tablet
install it on your phone
Then you can play any song
edit: but you'll still need internet
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I'll try that, sounds better when I just want to listen to a song and I can't, because Youtube doesn't work in the background.
Does it have unlimited skips, too?
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Yup, unlimited skips. Imagine limited skips but you could play any song, pointless amirite :p
If your phone is rooted, you could block ads as well, using AdAway
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That was the first thing I tried when I grabbed the Spotify app :D
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if you need the tablet apk let me know or you can use this one http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/mod-spotify-tablet-mode-t3106020
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with a paypal adress from another country (for example phillipins) and a vpn client you can create a spotify account for less money.
you only need the vpn to create the account. you can use the account later all over the world.
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If android Spotify +lucky patcher wink,wink, but i got all my lybrary backed up in Play Music, and i like play music
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So do I, but I sometimes want to listen to something new on my phone, and I can't do that...
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No root + pirating anything except movies takes WAY too much time for me...
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Then use Spotify if you want discover music, or flip a coin, always works.
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Nah, I opened Play Music with an US VPN and now I can apparently use the radio like I'm some kind of US rebel travelling to Romania 1 minute after getting my US citizenship for living a minute in the US :D
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So right now I'm using Spotify on my PC, but since it's not available in my country, I can't purchase premium and mobile sucks without premium. This makes me use Google Play Music on my phone (for convenience over constantly copying MP3s, I just upload them on the PC and they are always synced on the phone)
I'm thinking of using using a premium service, but I really don't know which one.
So, here are my choices:
Also, Zonga gives me my full uncensored library (no other service has all my Korn songs, at least Play Music lets me add them by MP3)
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