after my 30day free trail with qobuz, i did not renew. I could not get around the sluggish and just so much worse user interface compared to spotify. Sound quality was better, and for most part the selection of music was just as good as spotify for what i listen to.
Now i’m thinking of trying out Tidal, but i know i will be quite busy for a while, with less time for enjoying music, so i will probably wait a bit before lay down my hard earned money for a second music streaming service 
This is a pretty good point, and definitely an advantage for Youtube music. If you watch a lot of Youtube (I watch a fair amount), the ads get fairly annoying. I think they’re limited to 256kps, which is probably fine, but I don’t really understand why they would limit themselves to what is essentially the lowest bitrate on offer. It’s not a big difference to get to a parity situation with Spotify.
Then again, I suspect if I blind tested, I likely wouldn’t reliably discern a difference.
As a direct reply to the thread headline:
I use Spotify. I can’t tell the difference between that and anything supposedly better. I also think that Spotify gives me the best user experience, so I’ll stick to it for the time being
I just had to install iTunes on a PC to help a friend fix her iPad, my god what an awful experience…
It’s frankly bizarre. Apple, one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and supposedly deeply concerned with user experience is content with this steaming pile of &*%$.
All Tidal for now. After the recent polarizing Spotify issue, with the misinfo podcasts and the huge huballa about all that, I made my choice and switched 100% to Tidal. If Tidal follows suit and allows unethical content because unethical content is popular, Ill do the same for Tidal. I have an extensive personal collection that I can always use.
As far as the sound quality, Tidal is clearly better quality audio on my hifi devices. (Marantz model30, sacd 30n combo, portable DACs and android devices, IEMs) Tidal seems to generate higher sound pressure on all my devices, as well, and this is with volume normalization OFF. (off on both Spotify and Tidal). The Tidal Masters are also somewhat nice, and my wife really loves a lot of the classis rock masters. We canceled our 12 year-old Spotify family plan and washed our hands of them. Im from the old school and I can fall back to all local content if I need to.
As I read through this thread, I kinda marvel at how we have this ability to enjoy such high-quality music streamed over the Internet. I mean, it’s pretty amazing! Using my stinking laptop, admittedly not the best source, I have built this system that produces no noise. No hum, no hiss, not a pop! - Just great music. So no matter what or how yer streamin - it’s pretty cool shit. I never thought I would do it, I like my CD’s and all - but I’m in now, man!
Just sayin… 
This’s not a complaint and it makes a change not blaming Covid or a Russian invasion for a price increase…but what new features? and the contents good anyway 
1 dollar a month doesn’t bother me too much, as long as I see some kind of improvement moving forward. For instance, I would like the PC desktop app to look and feel more like the mobile app. There are many more features the mobile app has that the desktop app does not. Make that a goal and expand your catalog, and I’m OK with a dollar more a month.
But we all know how that goes, right? We may or may not see any improvement at all. So at that point it becomes a matter of do I feel the service still offers value to me? If yes, then fine, I’ll continue. But if I don’t see any improvement and then another raise comes… we start shopping.
Absolutely yes…would’ve been happy with “getting this shit to you is now costing us more so we’ve passed that on to you” job done no need for fancy blah, blah’s 
100 per cent. 
I tried Apple music, Tidal, Spotify and Deezer.
Apple music is probably my go to if I can even get it working with my Windows PC. The lossless is great with my AMP/DAC connected to my Android 12 phone. High res lossles is still broken unfortunately.
Tidal and Deezer HiFi both sound great but Tidal probably has the edge slightly. I didn’t really like tidal due to the price and the MQA stuff but it sounds fine.
Spotify just lacks that magic sparkle for me, even on 320kbps. It works great when I turn on AAC with my cheap Sony WH-CH400 tho, but on PC with my Hifiman HE400i 2020 with Zen DAC it lacks that magic.
For now I use Youtube as I like it just fine and I don’t feel like spending (free regular youtube, not youtube music), somehow I really like the AAC sound. The staging is to my liking.
It would be nice to have downloaded 96khz+ FLAC files but god they are expensive if you buy like alot of songs.
Oh wow that’s awesome, how does it work can I download my whole Playlists with just a few clicks?
Qobuz by default, Spotify if I can’t find something on Qobuz. Youtube if I can’t find it on Spotify/Qobuz. Haven’t tried Amazon Music or others yet. I had Tidal before but they were more expensive than Qobuz.
For the first time I heard a clear difference between YT and YT Music. It’s as if there were more details/resolution.
@Cameleon30 Yes, indeed. Also imo a quality upgrade from there to Spotify. I added
Amazon HD recently and find that by comparison Spotify is louder, fuller bass and overall richer…but Amazon is more detailed and adds a significant amount of depth and spaciousness…so much so that I prefer it now, though YT is decent enough for the concerts and other videos I enjoy. They all have their place in my place for now. 
I’ve tried Amazon HD but the app is pretty bad (for example downloads are not organized by album smh), no Chromecast support and the library is missing some artists/albums.
I’m sticking to YT Music for now
I have had tidal audirvana Spotify Amazon some other players and now Apple lossless The later is fine for me
Apple is the one i may be tempted to try next
so does anyone here has some experience with Deezer because Amazon Musics App doesnt really work out for me 
Dont get me wrong i like the sound quality and song library but the song finding, sorting and downloading of songs doesnt really work in the app of that f*ing multi billion dollar company and its not really gotten better the last two years i did try it 
that brings me now to the alternatives i did like spotify but dont think ill see hifi music on it in a resonable time frame 
, apple music is a no go cause im not an ios user and tidal and MQA can do you know what 
