Music streaming

zed

Legend
Whats everyone using?
I'm using Spotify but don't like their app (and there looks to be very few options to customize it, eg how can I see how often I've played an album/track)
Alternatives?

desires
- PC / android / IOS support in that order (web on PC is semi OK but much prefer an app)
- I dont listen to pop, so which have to have an extensive collection of music not just top 20
- ability to listen offline
- podcasts would be nice though not important

ta zed
 
I'm a huge proponent of content ownership and as such I have a NAS with all my music, movies etc all stored to be streaming locally across my various HTPCs etc. I want to be in control of the quality of my media and not rely on the streaming service to broadcast in a sufficient quality (yes I know they tend to stream music at a decent quality). I listen to my music selection in my car and the idea of having to stream music from my phone to my car is just stupid to me, relying on internet, possible issues with direct voice control. So I have a large USB drive in my car with 10k+ songs that I can control via voice easily. I also work from home and playing music all day in my office. My own collection currently sits at 260gb and 44,000 tracks.

That being said, I do need streaming occasionally from my phone when I'm at the gym or other places I want to listen to music. I also bought into Google Home + Mini at Xmas so I needed to stream to that in my home since you can't stream directly from your local files. Thankfully, Google allow you do upload your entire music collection and even have a client you can run to monitor your files and upload anything new added to it. I'm able to play anything in my collection on my phone or my smarthome devices without any kind of subscription. I buy my music via Google Play Store as well and download the files to my storage for use locally/car and it doesn't need to upload it again since it's already there in my library online.

Since I have the Google Home now and planning to expand it, I'll probably buy into their music service to get access to a lot more music but that won't stop me buying specific albums and storing them locally for my normal preferred method of listening at home in different ways.
 
You can't stream your own local files with Google Home? That's pretty stupid from them.
Obviously they want to sell their music service but it would add a lot of complexity for basically no benefit. These systems require online connections to function anyway so why not just stream it?
 
How much will it take to upload hundreds of gigabytes maybe even terabytes? Why would it be so complicated to implement when devices from early 2000s do it easily?
 
so why not just stream it?
It'd be going across the river for water...maybe across the ocean. Like, drinking French Perrier in Australia.

If you have the files locally it's dumb having to stream them over the internet. Genuine waste of computing power and electricity in multiple levels and locations.

That said, personally I enjoy streamed music, mostly because I don't have a built-up library of my own, and I'm not wealthy enough to create any decent one either. An album costs what, fifteen bucks these days? Maybe more? Well, I haven't been THAT busy assembling playlists, but the ones I have in Spotify encompass like five thousand tracks or so in a variety of genres. I could buy a fucking house for what that'd cost me in iTunes or whatever.

Nobody with any sense would spend that much for music, but thanks to streaming, $10/month gets me all that and a lot more too. Algorithmic playlists that present stuff I've never heard before and never would have discovered on my own. Such awesome music I've found this way, it's mindblowing.
 
We just switched from Pandora to Spotify, but we're thinking about going back to Pandora. We like how Pandora tries to "learn" what you like and adding new songs, we miss that with Spotify. I will say, it seems like Spotify has EVERYTHING under the sun when compared to Pandora. What is nice with Spotify, you can listen to new music and see if you like it before buying a CD/Record/Blu-Ray Audio disc.
 
I think I heard about Deezer as some advertisement for their app now on Xbox. I never heard of them before. They're a much larger and older company than I thought, according to Wiki. Still haven't tried them yet.
 
I think I heard about Deezer as some advertisement for their app now on Xbox. I never heard of them before. They're a much larger and older company than I thought, according to Wiki. Still haven't tried them yet.
Just downloded it again on my phone. Nothing special I can see. Spotify seems better considering it's the only premium service I can access from Cortana & my Invoke. Will check out their app on Xbox to be sure though.

Still think $10/mo is too much just for music. Especially when I only listen to one group & I already own all their music on CD & MP3s.

Tommy McClain
 
Does Pandora allow you to select an artist and play specific albums? Or is it still radio station-style only?
 
Especially when I only listen to one group
Why on earth would you only listen to one group? That sounds like madness to me. :p

There's so much more out there. Broaden your horizons a bit, like! (Well, I'm sure you're aware already there's a multitude of music out there, in a variety of styles... lol)

$10/month for what Spotify offers me is great value for money. Unfortunately, many albums of some of my favorite artists like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre are not available - right now anyway. They have been previously though. Maybe they'll come back someday perhaps.
 
Spotify..as it's the only thing on PS4 and it automatically becomes premium-like when accessed from ps4

Still have many gigs of music files tho. As Spotify is still buggy for years when used with micro SD card..

Any apps for making its easy to stream from my computer to my phone via internet?
 
Any apps for making its easy to stream from my computer to my phone via internet?
You can store up to 50,000 songs on Google Play Music and stream them whenever you want. So technically not from your computer but the equivalent.
 
Spotify..as it's the only thing on PS4 and it automatically becomes premium-like when accessed from ps4

Still have many gigs of music files tho. As Spotify is still buggy for years when used with micro SD card..

Any apps for making its easy to stream from my computer to my phone via internet?

You can upload up to 25,000 (I think) songs to Google Play music and then stream them from there.

Edit: Didn't see Malo's post before I wrote this one. 50,000 now? That's a lot of music....
 
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I like Slacker radio. I created one custom station and added basically every group and song I could think of that I liked for it to use as seeds for it's algorithm. Between that and my liking and disliking songs over years of usage it does a damn good job curating the songs it chooses to play. And I really enjoy the hard left turns it takes between songs because of the eclectic mix of genres/artists I added. It can go from Beatles to Wu Tang to Daft Punk.

The way I use it is not that great for discovering new music, though. I actually find YouTube to be pretty good for that.
 
Edit: Didn't see Malo's post before I wrote this one. 50,000 now? That's a lot of music....
Yeah it was 20,000 until last year sometime when they raised the amount. It's crazy that it's all for free.
 
It's crazy that it's all for free.
Not so crazy really... They want to make you invested and tangled up into their web of apps and services. Basically, it's a honeypot trap for legit users. :p

Speaking of apps... Spotify was going to release an Apple Watch app sometime last year like, but it looks like they cancelled development - again. 2nd time now they do that.

If they don't get their thumbs out their rears, I'm going to have to switch to Apple Music when I upgrade my Watch to a cellular-capable model. Not looking forward to that!
 
I will say, it seems like Spotify has EVERYTHING under the sun when compared to Pandora.
not everything and its a bit random eg a week ago I wanted to listen to Danzig's 4th album, and it wasnt there the others were but not that one ( I looked just now and now even fewer albums are there! huh)
I'm using spotify (even though I hate subscribing to shit) the app sux ball's it wont list how often I've played a track, or any basic info, music app's had this functionality last century, I link it in to 'last.fm' but even thats not great
 
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