I’m just gonna say one thing. Yar Har Yar Har, a pirates life for meeee.
I’m just gonna say one thing. Please don’t promote piracy on the site lol (since it could cause problems later on)
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YouTube music and Amazon HD.
YouTube music: Hold up! I know YouTube music has a bad rap, but considering I pay for YouTube premium and it’s included makes it a nice pairing. I mainly use it for songs that are hard to find. Also I found that the discovery portion is very strong. Audio quality is good enough to listen to in the car or put on while I work.
Amazon HD: I found the quality to be the best I have tried so far. Between Spotify, YouTube music, and tidal. This is my preferred streaming service.
Special mentions
Bandcamp: not really great for playlists. Great for downloads and discovering really obscure bands.
Value village CD section: for $2-5 a CD it’s great. Selection is a crap shoot lol.
I tried YT music. It was OK but screw YouTube. I gave Amazon Music HD a shot and preferred it by a wide margin. Even if I didn’t, screw YouTube.
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I can respect that sentiment lol. I just hate ads so YT premium was where I went. Plus at the time I already had google play music and loved it. It’s a shame that went away.
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Welcome to the community Nikky! Tidal has been a bit of a hot topic service recently due to all the MQA controversy. Nobody here should be giving you any flack about what you enjoy, but some may disagree that Tidal is the serious option for quality. Good to hear you are enjoying Tidal though! as a diclaimer I’m not a fan of Tidal based my experiences with the other options like Amazon music HD. It could be worth a look at some of the free trials out there if you are curious to hear some of the other championed options out there.
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Had just been using Spotify for convenience and discoverability, but I finally tried Amazon HD today, and what the actual…??? It’s so much better sounding. I was convinced that there couldn’t be that big of a difference, but I was wrong.
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I’m right there with you. I still have a Spotify Premium account because I like they have a huge library and it is really good for discovery sessions or just getting artist bio information etc. etc. Amazon HD does sound so much better though, IMO.
However, recently I got into Qobuz and for me the sound quality difference over Amazon HD is almost as much, if not equal to the jump from Spotify to Amazon HD. Amazon does have more titles though, of what I like, but if one has to go - for now I’d drop Amazon HD. Primarily due to their lack of support in other apps, roon for example, and the fact that Amazon won’t release their stream api to any devices other than “commercial” devices. For example if you were to build a pi and run RoPieee, Moode, Volumio or similar. Also, Amazon can’t seem to work out their “exclusive” mode and that irks me personally, and is why I think Qobuz sounds better - right or wrong.
Spotify I will keep because they keep promising lossless - but if they don’t get it out by the end of the year - they are a gonner too.
Interesting take. I have been happy with Amazon HD but it appears Qobuz is gaining momentum. I can see myself giving it a try in the near future. Thanks for sharing.
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I should have put in a disclaimer somewhere that the opinions offered up were personal to me and that YMMV. Music and how it is heard is largely unique per individual.
Also, I was and could be still, be extremely happy with Amazon HD if it were not for the fact that I decided to centralize my local music library to a “Server” and get into streaming from that server to any endpoint of my choosing. I would not have explored Qobuz if I was able to stream AmazonHD to a RPI (Raspbery pi) or microRendu etc. etc., based streamer. As it stands now there are a few "comercial boxes that are roon endpoints and also have the ability to stream Amazon HD, but they are 2-3x the cost of an RPI + audio HAT and, don’t sound as good (IMO).
Again, these were choices I made and not something that everyone should, or wants to do. If you run Amazon HD, Spotify, whatever, and you are happy with it, Right On keep doing what you do because in the end enjoying your music your way - is the best way.
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out of all the streaming services, who has the biggest selection? largest catalog?
I wanna say Spotify…
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I mean technically it’s YouTube music because they have all of their music videos available to stream.
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Hmm, you can think what you want about Apple, but for HiFi lovers and streaming users, it is currently a huge advantage that Apple has such market power.
Today, after Amazon, TIDAL has halved its high res prices.
Amazon? I would even pay more for another service rather than giving Bezos more money…
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Racking my brain where I heard it, but it was a YouTube conversation with folks from the streaming music industry.
These famous 70 million tracks that the streaming services never shut up about, well about four million of them have never been played and another four million of them have been played only once.
Got a good laugh out of it.
That’s a surprisingly small number of unplayed/once-played tracks, IMO.
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Not sure if this is completely the right thread, but Neil Young just pulled his music from Spotify due to a dispute over the Joe Rogan podcast where he basically said “him or me” (if the news article i read was correct).
This really shows the problem with various streaming services, artists can disappear in an instance, and you are left with nothing (compared to putting that monthly fee into buying the music you enjoy.
I use spotify a lot, and its a great way of having music available everywhere, but i have always been aware of the potential problem with streaming, but there is just not much the users can influence on such matter.
so… whats it like over at Tidal? 
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Still with AMHD. Still lovin it. I never imagined I would embrace streaming the way that I have, but the technology has come a long way and now it is the primary way I get my music. Having said that, I have recently rediscovered my CD collection and have enjoyed going local source again.
If not for Amazon, I would probably give Qobuz a go. Screw Tidal.
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