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Richard Penna

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I mentioned this in another thread, but I think it deserves some attention.

Just tried out this new service and so far I'm very impressed. You can basically listen to whole tracks/albums in CD quality, and in exchange it shows a few ads, and plays an audio advert every 20 minutes - pretty good deal IMO. There don't seem to any limits on listening, and from some initial searches, a reasonable scores selection, including some pretty recent stuff. This is the sort of thing I've been talking about, with hearing music before you buy it.

Coming from someone who thinks the music industry is stuck in the stone age, I'm liking this. The only thing to make it better would be if more labels signed on.

https://www.spotify.com/, not certain about US availability.

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Coincidence. I just got it yesterday and it's refreshing to open up to new music so effortlessly.

I'm still sentimental towards Lastfm though.

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I signed up to Spotify a couple of months ago and I agree, it's a great service, if a little thin so far. Hopefully that'll get better in time.

Lastfm seems very good, but I thought it was free? I spent ages building a playlist only for it to tell me I needed to pay before I could listen to any of it.

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Lastfm is kinda like Myspace or Facebook except with music. You download an application that synchs the program you use to listen to music with your profile. So whatever you listen to gets recorded. Other than that, there really is no purpose other than to meet other people with similar tastes in music. You can listen to select tracks on the site in full, but most of them are just 30 second clips. I think they have links to where you can purchase the music. So it's kinda like iTunes, except with the social aspect.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 8 years later...

Sadly this turned out very anti-climactic. The content is exactly the same as Deezer, which has been available here for years. I had hoped the selection would be better. At least they have a proper app for Windows, and the PS3 (two things Deezer does not have).

 

What's the difference between Free and Premium (other than pricing and audio quality)?

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35 minutes ago, JTWfan77 said:

What's the difference between Free and Premium (other than pricing and audio quality)?

 

Well of course, there is no audio adverts with Premium.

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I also gladly pay Spotify $10/month.  Me and my wife both use it literally daily, it's fantastic.

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I started my subscription at the very start of this year and use it for two reasons: as a tester for new releases and to listen to anything that I wouldn't normally buy (other genres etc).

 

Karol

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9 hours ago, publicist said:

I gladly pay the 10€ for the better audio quality.

 

But it's free with no ads and the sound is good enough for occasionally usage when sitting behind the computer.

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  • 2 months later...

This fandangled thing is growing on me. I've been listening to Solo endlessly, waiting for a chance to get the CD, and now discovered the All Out 60s/70s/80s playlists. It's certainly much better than navigating Youtube's random recommendations and at times horrible quality. I still would have had to think about paying for a premium if it wasn't for the university student discount :)

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And now that my parents know about it, of course I had to make a 60s/70s/80s roadtrip playlist so we can listen to it when going to Austria next week. It was VERY hard to restrict the Beatles selection.

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Just signed up yesterday.  Rather like it. 

Compared to the higher quality YouTube videos, instruments seem to have precedence over vocals in the sound on Spotify. 

Or is it just me?

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16 minutes ago, Steve McQueen said:

Just signed up yesterday.  Rather like it. 

Compared to the higher quality YouTube videos, instruments seem to have precedence over vocals in the sound on Spotify. 

Or is it just me?

 

Turn off the volume equalization, or whatever it may be called.

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3 hours ago, Batman's Diet Coke said:

I was removed from Spotify for stealing it. The sound quality was poor anyway.

Poor? Huh

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just signed up for the free three month trial of Youtube Muisc Premium.

 

It's not bad. It doesn't have all the features of Spotify yet (from what I can remember of Spotify) but the music selection is apparently similar (as is the layout, conspicuously so). You can access the music either through the Youtube music app or, for now, the Google Play Music app.  Unless you're just a Spotify or Apple Music junkie and are tied to your existing playlists, etc., I'd say the experiences are pretty comparable. When you do a station/music mix, it will offer live performances, videos etc. if you want from anything that's on Youtube (not just official releases) and turn off the video if you like.  Given that, I'd say the selection is probably significantly higher than any other streaming service.

 

Not sure if I'll stick with it or not (I've never consistently used any streaming service), but thing that makes this interesting is that at 12.99, a few pounds more than Spotify or Apple, you also get background playback and no ads on any video that's on Youtube. I think for a lot of people that could be huge.

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Some things that bother me about YouTube Music:

 

  • Liked artists are shown as subscriptions on the regular YouTube page
    • Liked albums and songs may act this way as well (shown as 'liked' videos, etc.), not sure though if that was fixed after the beta release
  • No option to change streaming quality on mobile app
  • No option to change download quality on mobile app
  • Can't upload songs from your own library
  • The 'Hotlist' page is pure, pure garbage
  • The app and desktop site recommend music videos to watch - no thanks, that crap is for the normal YouTube site

 

I'll stick with Google Play Music until they port all the features over, which should happen by 2019. For now, IMO, Google Play Music is still the best service out there.

 

Oh, and GPM also has podcasts on it that sync between devices (at least the desktop site and Android app do, the iOS app does not), which I like since I don't want to deal with another app for that.

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Yeah but given that you get Google Play Music w/the YouTube Music premium subscription, I don't think it matters much in terms of choosing a service. Especially since, as you said, most if not all of those features will be ported over to Youtube Music anyway.

 

Agree that the Hotlist is useless.  At least for my tastes.

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  • 11 months later...

OK, so I have Spotify Premium, sound quality set to very high, normalisation turned off.

Certain albums, like Schindler and War of the Worlds have an absolutely horrific constant warble, also here's Immolation recorded directly from the system audio:

image.pngimage.png

 

This sound issue is present both on Windows and Android, but ony with select albums.

So, they got lazy and uploaded horrible versions of the files, right? It doesn't seem like the problem is on my end.

 

Well, Chewy recorded Immolation as well and it was perfectly fine for him.

Could anyone else confirm it either way?

Is the version you can access this? This is the only album I can see:

image.png

 

If this is an issue of not just geoblocking albums, BUT only making horrifically messed up versions available, FUCK this group of cunts.

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Instead of all the notes or pitches being clean and steady, as they should be, as I can hear on the LLL set, they all vibrate and go up and down a bit constantly. The choir is especially unlistenable and the shiteness of this version is the sole reason why I first successfully listened to the Schindler OST this December.

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I still haven't bought in, but I've thought of it. I'm not overly fond of the idea to begin with, but it does have its benefits.

 

On March 14, 2018 at 10:41 AM, crocodile said:

I started my subscription at the very start of this year and use it for two reasons: as a tester for new releases and to listen to anything that I wouldn't normally buy.

Exactly. Very good!

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  • 6 months later...
  • 3 years later...

Oh God, I need to vent.

 

Decided to get Spotify yesterday to get to know more Irish music and possibly songs. I thought it would be nice to add most of the albums I have on there too, so it would be able to recommend me more things and it would be a great way to listen to stuff on holiday. Boy, was that a great idea. Siri can’t shuffle your library, only your liked songs. So what’s the point of the library then? I mean, obviously I wouldn’t mind liking Rey’s song, Hedwig’s song and County Songway 1894, etc., but I’ve kind of collected stuff for 20 years.

 

So I decided to try and delete all the albums from my library. Didn’t work either. ‘Hold down the ctrl and select everything.’ Yeah, right. I totally get that using a touchpad is a thing, but to not add keyboard support at all is just irritating. Not a single app has this issue.

 

Decided I had enough and close my account. Well, that was the next crusade. 40 minutes before I got to talk to a human because they don’t just let you close the thing, oh no, you have to go through automatic customer support, whatever that is.

 

So they deleted the albums. And now I’m going to have to like every song I like. So many songs. Fuck albums. Songs! Songs! Good song everyone!

 

EDIT: Oh, you can like songs en masse. You need to open the album and select all the songs. What a mess.

 

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That's weird. I cancelled my Spotify subscription at the start of the year and it took me a couple of minutes. I just had to click cancel, no need to call in. Perhaps you had a different subscription to me.

 

I've been using the free version to sample albums before buying but that's become a huge pain lately as the ads seem to have doubled in length and frequency. I'm strongly considering using YouTube as at least their ads can be skipped after a few seconds, and one can play an entire album in sequence without the need to keep skipping back to it when Spotify decides to shuffle to the latest "popular music" based supposedly on my likes.

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Yeah, I had bought Premium already.

 

Also, does anyone know if your likes count towards your top artists? As in, if I start mass-liking albums now, will that reflect on my profile? Or will I need to listen to things before they show up as top?

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  • 1 month later...

I wish Spotify didn't have this stupid feature that turns the progess bar into a lightsaber whenever you listen to anything Star Wars related. It doesn't even have to be a Star Wars release, it shows up for individual tracks as well. For example, on the Violin Concerto No. 2 album from Deutsche Grammophon.

 

Stupid.

 

image.png

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7 minutes ago, rough cut said:

I wish Spotify didn't have this stupid feature that turns the progess bar into a lightsaber whenever you listen to anything Star Wars related. It doesn't even have to be a Star Wars release, it shows up for individual tracks as well. For example, on the Violin Concerto No. 2 album from Deutsche Grammophon.

 

Stupid.

 

image.png

 

I think this is the coolest thing ever.

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3 hours ago, rough cut said:

I wish Spotify didn't have this stupid feature that turns the progess bar into a lightsaber whenever you listen to anything Star Wars related. It doesn't even have to be a Star Wars release, it shows up for individual tracks as well. For example, on the Violin Concerto No. 2 album from Deutsche Grammophon.

 

Stupid.

 

That's an option you can turn off.  Just click the lightsaber.

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I get that it looks neat, so I totally respect anybody who thinks this is a cool feature. I just don't need that kind of branding in spotify and I almost find it invasive in my music experience, when I want to focus on the music from a music fan-perspective, rather than from a Star Wars-fan perspective. Also, it's a little bit annoying that "zero" isn't at the same starting point due to that the progress bar has to "shrink", leaving space for the saber.

 

But I get that this might be a minor complaint, and I'm probably in a minority to find it annaoying. So no offense to anyone. Just got annoyed by it and needed to vent. Thanks for listening. :)

 

@Jay Thanks for the tip, but clicking the lightsaber doesn't turn it off - it just switches between different sabers. I've tried many times. I can live with it.

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