Deezer or Spotify

Which music streaming app do you use?

sorry messed this up - can't find the button to delete and start again or add the poll for it.

Anyway just wondering if there are preferences for any specific music app - I wanted to add Deezer, Spotify and other.

 

I use Spotify and I think you have a fantastic range of music and I'm guessing you like classical so you'd have an excellent choice selection within that genre. With the free version you do get adverts but at times Ad Muncher is able to block them. I've heard Deezer is good if you like French music. Grooveshark is another one to look at though I don't really use it myself.

I sometimes use Sandboxie to contain Spotify but it's a nuisance when adding songs etc. Make sure you turn off Spotify web helper otherwise Spotify has a process running all the time.

 

Well, considering Deezer is only available in select areas, that one is out of the running. Grooveshark was much better before they had any deals with labels (not promoting anything illegal with that comment, but generally licensing deals subtracts more music options than it adds). Spotify has its moments, however, it's chock-full of "covers" and special edition stuff more than original songs and albums.

Every single service is hit and miss, there's no perfect one due, again, to licensing deals and artist preferences. But, for the money, I find MOG to be about as good as it gets if you're not into simple internet radio-type functionality. 320 sound quality on every song, very few things missing from catalogs, 5 bucks a month for simply streaming over the net, a "Just for you" feature that shows you albums you're likely to enjoy based on what you have added to your "Favorites" and listened to. For a while there, genre searching was a no-go, which made it quite hard to search for things unless you knew what you were looking for. They do now have genres, though it's very simplistic. It's still there though, so kudos to them for that.

It's supposedly going to be changing to a new name/service soon, so there's that, but hopefully it won't be too drastic. After MOG, I usually just hit 8Tracks and Songza for general, no fuss listening. Youtube if I'm in the mood for music videos (kind of fun watching old performances from the Old Grey Whistle Test and other footage).

 

I vote Spotify

Great service

 

Spotify Premium. It is included in my all in one packet (Internet, telephony, TV)

 

It's probably worth mentioning a website called Stereomood which as the name suggests will play you songs based on what mood you're in and of course there's always Pandora....

 

I've not heard of StereoMood, I'll check that out. Pandora, well, with about 700k songs, it won't last long if you're a heavy listener. The biggest drawback is the severe restrictions you're placed under for free accounts. They don't simply have ads, they cut you off after so many hours until the next month. They're also the poster child for bad licensing deals. They have great music discovery ability, but as soon as that insane few hours per month restriction was put in place, they lost a lot of people.

 

For Rock & Heavy stuff I didn't find big differences between the libraries of these two companies. Music promotion is quite bad on both. I don't understand why they promote pop albums/artists when I haven't listened a pop song since the day one I've started using their services.

 

Yeah I don't rate Pandora at all. I am excited about the prospect of Apple, Google and You Tube providing a streaming service. I would have thought that Google would focus on one project rather than two.

I recall that you use Ad Muncher. The hope is that v5. when it arrives will stop the ads on Spotify effectively giving you their Unlimited service for free. Must admit, this is what's stopping me from paying for it so far.

 

Because unless you're a 12-14 year old girl, you don't determine what's hot or not You know, you can look at that as a horrible way to do business, but if you look at the industry from about the 1950s on, young people have always made or broke an artist/band. Pop music is just not meant for adults, it never really has been. There's also the issue that labels are always going to go for the quickest dollar. The Justin Beibers of the world may not have long careers, but they are a quick way to get rich off of them and move on to the next one.

It's hard to determine what's really "hot" outside of Pop unless you know where to look. The radio in your car is not such a place. The radio, even though it's technically illegal, still get "payola" from the labels to play certain things...and guess what they want played? Bingo, the "easy money" artists/groups. "Billboard" is also all but a sham, it has been for a long time. The same tricks are played with it as they are in the rest of the industry. Last but not least, if we're discussing the U.S, it's audience is notoriously fickle.

 

I'm not excited about them at all. Let's start with Apple. Once upon a time they were DRM'ed out the rear end because they were new, rather powerless and digital music wasn't expected to go anywhere. iTunes destroyed any doubts. Years later, they turned into a gigantic success. As Apple has always been, they wanted to run things their way and not be leashed to anyone or anything else. This led to DRM being thrown back into the faces of record labels and, eventually, said labels grew resentful as Apple continued to pretty much say "Our way or the highway" to an industry that found it hard to ignore the money from such a hot thing.

Well, there's a whole lot more competition out there now, nobody is using DRM really, and cheap to free streaming services has left Apple with a lot less leverage than it used to have when it was THE game in town. Record labels remember the past, and Apple will likely have a harder time getting any meaningful deals to stream. Most other services grumble about licensing costs, but they play the game. Apple has never liked anyone's rules but their own, and that is going to make it difficult now that they aren't alone.

Google has a better shot, simply because of Youtube. Google arguably is bigger than Apple, and Youtube bigger than iTunes. Google is the one who is likely to get very good deals. They have their issues with the industry at times with copyright takedowns of videos, but that problem will never go away as long as the music industry is ran how it is. Even so, put iTunes use next to Youtube use, and Apple has to hang its head in shame. Google could pretty much be in the position Apple was in a decade ago.


I gave up on AdMuncher. I personally think "v5" is vaporware. They've had years now of "coming soon". I don't want to get into that argument though, I'd rather keep it on track with music services (a discussion I very much enjoy honestly).

 

I just tried it, not bad. It's a bit "busy" and at first I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do, lol.

 

That's a very interesting post and you make some excellent points. I guess Apple are very single minded about doing things their own way. I must admit I've never used iTunes and I've been wary of Apple and their tendency to charge over the odds for many of their products. I certainly would never pay for an Apple music streaming service but would happily use a free version in conjunction with using a free version of Google/You Tube along with Spotify and maybe some others. Saying that, I've just been looking at MOG and it looks pretty good esp the sound quality though I'm concerned about WOT comments about people getting their email addresses spammed.

I think choice and competition is the best thing for music streaming as it should work out as a better deal for the customer. I think we're so lucky now that we can so easily listen to so much music especially when I think about the fortune I've spent on music in the past and that invariably if you wanted to listen to something you had to buy it and pay a lot for it.

 

But they don't need to do much. They just need to show the latest Rock & Heavy albums available in their library and/or random related stuff. When a guy has limited music preferences you don't have to be Google to suggest him relevant stuff. Now I have Pink, Lumineers, Fedez + 2 other relative known metal bands on Spotify and Daft Punk, Kutso & other stuff which I already listened or never heard of (but I'm sure I would not listen their stuff) on Deezer.

 

iTunes the program is nothing like it used to be, I don't use it either these days. It's a bloated mess. Anyway, regarding MOG, if you consider spamming to consist of a MOG newsletter once maybe twice a week with new releases, then yeah, they do I guess. Not once have I received any other 3rd party stuff by signing up with them though.

Competition is both good, and hard to come by, at least in the U.S. Going back to licensing deals, we have some of the most restrictive licensing and copyright laws in the world. A media service like Spotify or Netflix might take 6 months or so to get deals and launch elsewhere, but here in the U.S it often takes more than a year, sometimes several to launch. There was a period of time that it looked like Spotify would not launch here. Deezer still hasn't.

 

Mman79, I've just signed up to MOG and I'm enjoying it so far. It's great to have another pretty good music streaming service to pick from and I haven't received any spam. I suspect that was WOT scaremongering that you can sometimes get.

I remember when Spotify finally launched in the US and I was telling a number of my friends located there to sign but having never heard of it, they'd tell me they were happy using Pandora.

As for Stereomood that I'd previously mentioned, it's a nice idea but it's not extensive and it uses Soundcloud a lot.

 

MOG really is a nice little service. They have a desktop app you can download as well, but I don't think it's needed (I use it though). As I said, some things just aren't there, which is a shame. Then again, Led Zeppelin is kind of hard to find regardless, lol. The one huge knock against MOG I have is organization..there really is none. Playlists are near impossible, there's no organizing albums and their "radio" leaves a lot to be desired as it doesn't matter if you ask it to play only an artist or similar ones, you end up getting the same short list of songs. I don't look at MOG as a radio service anyway. I look at it as what Rhapsody used to be.

WOT is one of those things I look at to get a general idea, but I don't "rely" on it so much. It's too easily gamed and trolled without much real verification.

I couldn't go back to Pandora now, not even paid to get rid of the restrictions. Songza and others are just too good to bother doing so. Yeah, Stereomood is okay for an occasional "soundtrack" to work by, but not serious listening from what I've experienced thus far. Still, it's an available alternative so I can't knock it too much.

 

Mman79, I can't for the life of me see where I can download the MOG desktop app. While MOG and Spotify aren't perfect when you look at what you can get, it far out weighs what's not available. I can find anything else on You Tube.

 

Nice thread. Good to see this once in a while. While I love music, I gave up hunting for such services since most of them are either US-only or not available for my country. I'm not going through hoops just to access them. Apart from Grooveshark, what else are there? Last time I tried Grooveshark, it was slow as molasses (at least for me). It'd be nice to get suggestions from those who're more into this...

 

Mobile is here: https://mog.com/#!mobile. It's strange, I don't at all see the desktop download on the site anywhere..yet mine is still working fine. I would have thought if they discontinued it, the program would stop working/I'd get a warning.

 

Here's a few radio suggestions:

http://8tracks.com/

http://songza.com/

http://tunein.com/


All of these can be accessed for free. I think it's just the paid options that have country restrictions due to the licensing BS that has to be in place.

 

I use Grooveshark sometimes.

 

The problem with Grooveshark is that it could die at any time. After all the lawsuits and ongoing legal issues, Sam Tarantino (CEO) is literally broke. The catalog numbers are much lower than even the lower paid services in the list of options, and having a free, unlimited option along with a paid option is showing free users to vastly outnumber paid subscribers. That's not a healthy business outlook after you take operating costs into account.

It's possible that they can come through it in time to be a top contender. But, much like Apple, they have a bit of a bad rep to the music industry now and, without major license deals, they'll likely end up getting ran over by the increase in streaming services. For the time being, they're going through the "XM/Sirius experience". Alive, but not well.

 

I first used it a few years ago. I had a feeling that all wasn't particularly well though these days.