Fed up with Spotify, suggestions for switching?

[Middle Earth]

I am now coming around on streaming and for me Amazon HD/UHD makes the most sense both content and quality-wise.

 

[Adamant11746]

@Adamant11746 this thread arose from the dead. So, what did you do and did it help?

I ended up staying with Spotify. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I'm also only paying for 1/5 of a family plan. It just doesn't seem worth paying much more to use Tidal, especially with the likelihood of the same annoyances. I could have tried to make Qobuz work, but when I took a closer look at it I realized some songs actually were missing. I'd love to buy my own music at some point, but can't justify the rather large cost now when I have other priorities for my money (I'm not exactly rich, and I am having trouble finding headphones that fit well).

 

[Svet Angelov]

I am (still!) waiting around for Spotify hifi so I can make the switch from Tidal. It's not that I can reliably hear 320kbps vs flac.. but something about mp3 quality in this day and age just irks me.

 

[Sukram]

I have Tidal Qobuz and Amazon Music. The biggest catalog has Amazon and they are the most Hi-res titles.
I stream directly over Wiim pro

 

[Timcognito]

Qobuz (or Tidal) with Roon; best music discovery, NAS music integration, DSP on a single slick magazine style dashboard.

 

[Zapper]

I ended up staying with Spotify.

FYI:

It's back / still there in the US.

 

[Zapper]

I am (still!) waiting around for Spotify hifi so I can make the switch from Tidal. It's not that I can reliably hear 320kbps vs flac.. but something about mp3 quality in this day and age just irks me.

The subjectivist in me wants all the bits but the objectivist in me knows I can't hear them.

 

[Multicore]

I ended up staying with Spotify. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I'm also only paying for 1/5 of a family plan. It just doesn't seem worth paying much more to use Tidal, especially with the likelihood of the same annoyances. I could have tried to make Qobuz work, but when I took a closer look at it I realized some songs actually were missing. I'd love to buy my own music at some point, but can't justify the rather large cost now when I have other priorities for my money (I'm not exactly rich, and I am having trouble finding headphones that fit well).

Thanks for the update.

I use Amazon Music because it has a larger library. When I compared the services a couple of years ago Spotify had by far the worst selection and various things I care about were in Amazon but not Spotify. On the other hand, Amazon's user interface is terrible while Spotify is much better. Our WiiM streamer connects over SPIDF to the MiniDSP Flex and WiiM has support for Amazon Music built in. The UI is bad but I can just about manage.

I got really angry with Spotify when late last year episodes of a podcast I produce and host on a different service were kicked out of Spotify RSS syndication because they contained too much music. In the explanation Spotify said to use one of its partners to pay to have the music inserted into their music app and not as a podcast. First, I don't want to put the music into music streaming apps, I want it to appear as podcast. Second, since half the people that use a podcast app in the USA are using Spotify, this means that Spotify can use their market domination to dictate content terms to all podcast producers.

 

[Multicore]

I am (still!) waiting around for Spotify hifi so I can make the switch from Tidal. It's not that I can reliably hear 320kbps vs flac.. but something about mp3 quality in this day and age just irks me.

I know the feeling. It irks me to use bluetooth so much that I go to the trouble of using a WiiM and their dismal phone app.

 

[Multicore]

The subjectivist in me wants all the bits but the objectivist in me knows I can't hear them.

Wait, doesn't that make Amir the arch subjectivist with his quest for the DAC that can deliver 22 bits perfectly clean?

 

[JCM800]

Qobuz. If you buy music downloads, they have a store (lossless, DRM-free, no subscription required), and their highest subscription level gets you a big discount off high-res titles, usually putting them lower than the 16/44.1 version.