So I want to swap off of Spotify. Most of the time it works great, but the annoyances with their UX are starting to build up. From not ordering albums in release order on certain screens, to having to wait a good few seconds before turning off their shuffle+, and their shuffle not being very shuffle-y to begin with.
I have a couple of requirements:
- A decent Linux client.
- Be able to easily select playback device from other devices (for example start playback on my PC from my phone).
- Preferably pretty straightforward UX philosophy, i.e. haven’t started going down any enshitification with AI, “we know best” kind of elements.
I don’t particularly care for the highest of lossless quality audio. I don’t posses any audio equipment where I would have any shot of telling the difference. As long as its not the experience I had with YouTube music where some random persons heavily compressed upload of a song would start playing.
My main contenders are Tidal, Qobuz, and deezer. The latter two I have very little experience with.
I’ve tried Tidal before, but my main gripe with it was scrolling through large playlists (about 2000 songs) was very slow, as it loaded in songs as you scrolled through (think endless scrolling on ddg or Lemmy) making it tedious to go to artists starting with a later character in the alphabet. Maybe it was just the Linux client, an issue on my machine, or if they’ve fixed it since, would be great to hear if any of you have had the same issue.
Qobuz and deezer I haven’t really tried or heard much about from a users perspective.
I know some people swear by buying (or ship in under the jolly roger) all their music and use jellyfin or just local files for playback. I’m not very keen on that idea, the convince and discoverability of music on a streaming platform is what made me go to Spotify and away from winamp in the first place.
I mostly listen to DJ mixes on SoundCloud.
I just switched to Deezer because I’m Canadian and I’m abolishing all American products that I can. I was a YouTube Music person for years though, and I absolutely loved Google Play Music, but YTM is trash. I will not use Spotify because of Joe Rogan, and I tried Apple Music and it’s not what I want because their classical music selection is different from all other platforms and it is missing stuff I want. I like Deezer so far.
I’m generally not particularly picky when I’m listening to music. I don’t often want just one specific song or artist. Usually I’m looking for a genre/vibe and that’s it.
With that in mind, I prefer Pandora. I’ve been using it for ~20 years now and have a lot of VERY well curated stations. I also don’t mind the ads so much, and, therefore, have never had to pay for it. On the rare occasions I want a very specific song, I can just pull it up on YouTube.
My wife and I recently sprung for a Spotify account. We have a 3 yo and 5 yo and, like most children, they want to listen to a few specific albums on repeat. We had Amazon Music for a bit, but really disliked it. So we switched to Spotify. I mostly only use it to play music for my kids.
Tidal, they don’t have an official client, but tidal-hifi is pretty good
Depends on if I want to listen to music or just have a radio on.
If I’m listening to music, I’m using Jellyfin. But I also have a large music collection.
If I just want a radio, it’s either Spotify or Amazon Music depending on where I am.
I had deezer for a while and it was pretty good. iirc, they don’t have a linux client though.
There is an unofficial flatpak client. Spotify is in the same situation, so that wouldn’t be a downgrade at least 🙂
Spotify has an official linux (electron :( ) app.
It’s kinda offical but not quite. It’s ported over and distributed by some Spotify engineers who wants to use it for Linux, but as far as I can tell, officially as a company Spotify don’t support Linux as a platform. Source: https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/
Browser works great
I use Tidal (buy it from a cheap country by vpn) and Apple Music because the wife wants Apple TV so the bump to get the bundle wasn’t much. I prefer Tidal by a long shot, but use Apple Music when I need to play music that I don’t want fucking up my Tidal algorithm.
Oh, the VPN is a good idea. No struggles with playing back when not on a VPN?
Nope. In fact, tidal isn’t even available in my country. So I had to select which country to buy from, Argentina used to be cheapest but now they have payment processing issues so Thailand was my next choice. Only had to vpn the first time while making the account.
You could use any of these services and include them in music assistant for easier streaming on all your speakers ecc? Idk, I mainly just use spotify on my phone to discover tracks etc, then download the files and put them on my navidrome instance, with then is connected to music assistant, which lets me syncronize speakers ecc.
I just listen to music on YT in a browser with uBlock Origin.
As a community radio manager I wish just one of them would allow us to broadcast from their service. Since we aren’t allowed to, I can’t see how we can hope to get many younger presenters since most don’t have physical media or purchased tracks.
I know some stations including the ABC cheat and use it anyway.
Hm, yeah that sounds like a big missed market! I love tuning in to live DJ’s on twitch sometimes. Would be really cool to have some of that directly in a streaming platform. Now you’ve made me really sad it’s not a thing.
We can manage by buying each track off Apple music, but that’s a pain.
I kinda love YouTube music.
It has heaps of unreleased stuff as well. It has every obscure thing and all the well known stuff.
I don’t know if it hits all your needs but I switched to Deezer a couple of weeks ago and I really dig it.
Free trial month and absurdly easy to import all your stuff from spotify, so I’d just give it a shot and see if it scratches your itch!
The same for me. I tried Qobuz and Deezer.
I find Deezer better for my usage:
- Wide variety of great playlists
- Deezer Connect (equivalent to Spotify Connect) so you can instruct your speaker to play songs and completely disconnect your phone.
Ha, yeah that connection capability made me switch from Qobuz. (My receiver has an app that connects to Deezer, no such luck with Qobuz.)
And fully agree on the playlists, I’ve really dug a few already.
Mm good shout about the free trial with Deezer. Not much point not giving that a shot then.
I use Qobuz, and I like it a lot. You can easily download music for offline listening, there’s a lot of high def on there, and from what information is known about how much streaming services pay back to record labels, Qobuz appears to be the biggest payer per stream.
The app is no frills, they only added auto generated playlists a year or so ago. Their recommendations are less tailored, but high quality if you’re wanting to explore outside your usual tastes.
Plus, it’s just music. No podcasts, no audiobooks, no games, no generative ai for some reason.
I’ve used Deezer before. At the time I felt like their audio quality was better than Spotify. They also had a much cleaner and less cluttered interface. I don’t remember seeing the option to select the playback device though, but that was like 6 years ago where desktop clients were just running on electron. Not sure if they allow switching playback devices now.
Still not a thing. I switched away from deezer a month ago, when they removed the option to sort downloaded music and albums (why would they think that’s a good idea?) I am now on Tidal, and they’re audio quality is even better than deezer and Apple music, and I’m liking it a lot more.
Tidal I believe has what you’re looking for and may be worth a shot.
Deezer is non American and I think it’s worth a shot to try if you wanna give that a shot as well as the seem the least shitty.
That said, Plex/emby/Jellyfin although lacking discoverability is what I used to transition off Spotify in conjunction with tidal. Eventually found out the local library had CDs and used that to discover new music, started buying CDs I liked and enjoyed and have been very happy since since I don’t have a month subscription now as I don’t need to rent my music.
(if you’re the type to be sailing, you could also copy CDs from the library)
I’d say your best shot is to just experiment around, Spotify is always going to be the most convenient. Deezer (as far as I know) the least shitty, and tidal the best quality.
Having a local (well local as on my Jellyfin instance) might be an end goal for me. I have started buying and playing LPs recently, it’s a good vibe to have it physically spinning next to me. I only really look for what I already know when I go into a record store, maybe time to expand when I next go into one.
I’ve over time accumulated a record player, cassette, and CD player for my deck that I love. (I also have a decent 8-track and DCC for novelty purposes lol). It’s really nice being able to go into a record store and the format not be a hindrance.
That said it’s out of scope for the convo I think so I left it out. It also wasn’t something I got into until I was able to acquire some disposable income as I got older. But I will say, Thrift shops and broad horizons are your friend :)
I have not personally got to the point of trying any yet, but I have heard several times about plugins for Jellyfin that add discoverability and recommendation features.
You still have the issue of actually tracking down the music, which Jellyseer or similar can help with. But if one of those plug-ins were to interface with Spotify or YouTube for preview purposes, that would be pretty slick!
Emby does as well. That said once you live without discover features and unshackle yourself from algorithms I will say … It’s really not that big a deal lol
I used to go hard finding new shit on Spotify and YouTube etc, but eventually word of mouth with friends and the library really solved the issue. Also changed how I consume music from songs in a playlist to looking at every album as one solid work of art to be understood.
Now I hit up my friends when I want new music recs, they hit me up. It’s a good ice breaker. The library is also mad under used as a resource, they love supplying new shit if people are wanting it.
I got to a point where I am now where I carry around an iPod, and some CDs for the car lol may be weird however works for me and I paid zero dollars for music the last couple months cause now I have a solid personal library.
I hear you on the algorithm stuff. I normally find most my music through more organic means anyway, like soundtracks in games and movies, word of mouth from friends, or youtube/twitch. So maybe discoverability wouldn’t be so bad for me if I do decide to go for a local collection at some point.
That’s how I did it before streaming and how I do now. Fortunately I got my friends to go down this road too and we’re all sorta healthier with it.
Will say, the library is an awesome resource if you start a local collection. It can be a good resource while you bridge the gaps. Most libraries also run their own streaming service for free it’s not feature rich usually but ours is very simple and very stable.
Like I said generally experimenting is best. Different people have different needs :)
Trust me, I hear you on the algorithmic shit.
I dont think i have a single playlist set up, and almost exclusivly listen to albums cover to cover. All I really want is for a service to occasionally say “Hey you spent 60 hours last month listening to these 3 bands… check out these guys if you want something fresh with a similar vibe”
Spotify did a semi decent job of that, and it’s how I’ve discovered a few new bands, but paying $18/mo just to discover a few per year is not a great value proposition. I’d rather torrent a random album and then pick up some merch or concert tickets if I end up liking them.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.
I wish there was the infrastructure for that without Spotify like what radio used to be, or when the average person had nueanced opinions and it was easier to get recommendations from everyone.
However we don’t live in that world so there’s nothing to judge anyone on atm until Spotify collapses under its own weight.
Tidal is Australian
Isn’t it owned by square?
Oh you are correct, I was mistaken.
I switched to Tidal recently; it feels a bit featureless in some areas. No Mono Audio mode (i frequently have 1 earbud in at work, don’t like hearing only half the audio.)
Shuffle is either on or off, theres no way i see to set it by playlist/album
I used it as a way to discover music not as my main player as I said but that’s also probably not a common issue (even if it is at its heart an accessibility issue for the partially deaf). I’m not sure if Deezer solves that issue but it also will feel shallow, but idk if it solves that issue.
Plex has gone kinda stupid lately. However Plexamp is very very feature heavy if you wanna own instead of rent the art you consume though. If you want a tier down from Plex, jellyfin with Finamp worked well for me as well when I switched. Emby isn’t feature heavy so maybe about Emby.
Personally though if you wanna get away from streaming I’ll throw in my two cents: an old iPod or iPhone would work great, have decent battery life, and allows you to listen to music without buffering. Takes a bit of getting used to but once you’re on it, you’re on it and it’s unfathomable for me to go back now.
