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Spotify or Amazon Unlimited?

Started by The Enigmatic Dr X, 15 July, 2020, 09:05:12 PM

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The Enigmatic Dr X

Our family Amazon music account has expired.

It's the same cost to shift to Spotify, which I am thinking of doing. It seems easier to use.

Any views?
Lock up your spoons!

Colin YNWA

From a relativity limited use of both I've always found Spotify better for discovery nd coverage?

Like the fact I sling in a bands name, find a playlist that rotates around them but will have new things to explore within it from adjacent bands I might not know as well. Amazon Music might do that but from a quick play doesn't yet do it as well.

Buttonman

I only have experience of Spotify but have been impressed with it during my enforced working from home.

I've hardly been able to come up with a song I can't find and, as Colin says, it is good at throwing up playlists with songs similar to your taste.

They also have brand new stuff with the DMAs album up straight away - Amazon may do this too?

They have also found some old classics for me such as 'Neil's Heavy Concept Album'. Can't see me buying physical media again!

judgeurko


CalHab

Just to add that Spotify is still an extraordinarily crap deal for artists. If you like their music, then buying it is still the best way to support them. They make almost no income from streaming services.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: CalHab on 16 July, 2020, 08:14:05 AM
Just to add that Spotify is still an extraordinarily crap deal for artists. If you like their music, then buying it is still the best way to support them. They make almost no income from streaming services.

Yeah I use spotify as discover - bit like radio used to be. I still biuy CDs to listen 'in depth' to stuff I like... I'm so old... do you think CDs will ever get the romantic revival of vinyl so I can be cool again?

sintec

From my experience with both I'd say Spotify has a much broader catalogue. We used to have it on in the office and it was rare I couldn't find something I wanted to put on (and I have a pretty varied and occasionally quite obscure tastes in music).

I'll echo what CalHab said though - if you find things you really like and can afford to spare the £s then grab a copy from the bands Bandcamp or similar. It's also worth noting that Bandcamp is another quality way to discover new music. You can stream a lot of stuff for free on there and they have an app you can bung on your phone/tablet.

TordelBack

Spotify is a blight on the music industry,  but it does get me to listen to things I would never, ever have listened to, never mind buy - so someone is at least getting a tiny fraction of a centime that they otherwise wouldn't. After a lifetime of despising musicals Spotify's algorithm somehow discerned I was open to change,  and it was tragically right.

Much of the rest of what I Iisten to in frequent rotation I have bought many times in many formats,  because I am Old.

wedgeski

As an amateur musician I have complicated feelings about Spotify and similar services, falling short of the extremes, but such things were inevitable. In itself, Spotify is an excellent service. The software is slick and pretty ubiquitous. I've had a family subscription for as long as it's been available, and as a consumer, I think it's excellent VFM.

CalHab

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 16 July, 2020, 08:25:26 AM
Quote from: CalHab on 16 July, 2020, 08:14:05 AM
Just to add that Spotify is still an extraordinarily crap deal for artists. If you like their music, then buying it is still the best way to support them. They make almost no income from streaming services.

Yeah I use spotify as discover - bit like radio used to be. I still biuy CDs to listen 'in depth' to stuff I like... I'm so old... do you think CDs will ever get the romantic revival of vinyl so I can be cool again?

This is similar to my approach. I use it as a radio and take a note of music I like to buy or look into.

I still buy CDs and Vinyl, so you're not alone!

Quite a few friends of my wife are professional musicians and its galling to hear them talk about getting payments from Spotify for a quid or two after tens of thousands of listens. These are people who normally would make money touring so it just feels like kicking them when they're down.

CalHab

On the subject of CDs, if hipsters can make cassettes cool again then I'm confident that CDs will have their turn one day.

MiniDiscs still have a life as an archive medium, similar to how BetaMax lived on for professional use. Mine got donated to a Uni department.

IndigoPrime

On streaming services, I'm a bit out of the loop, because it's been a while since I did a group test. But, in all honesty, Amazon was the worst of them last time I did—and the now-dead Google Music was also pretty poor. My favourites were—and remain—Spotify and Apple Music. Both have solid user interfaces and are great for discovery. The engines that drive them are much better at getting new and interesting music to your lug-holes, versus Amazon's tendency towards "more of the same". (Spotify beats Apple for general catalogue layout by some stretch, if that's your bag. But I prize Apple Music's For You feed over basically everything else, hence sticking with that service for now.)

As for the deals artists get from streaming, I agree with that too. But then that all comes down to the same thing: support what you love, because if you don't it will disappear. So if you love a band, buy the album—even digitally—so they'll get a few quid, rather than the fractions of a penny they might get from streaming. (I don't know how many people realise that even multiple plays of a thing you like make little difference with streaming. Income isn't carved up in a representative fashion.)

"On the subject of CDs, if hipsters can make cassettes cool again then I'm confident that CDs will have their turn one day."

Probably. Honestly, I get vinyl fetishism, although I don't share it. Records are big and bold, and the cover art can be amazing. That notion of settling down to listen to a record has appeal, even if the sound quality does not. But tapes were always shit. I hated the things growing up (same for video cassettes). That they now find a market genuinely baffles me. CDs are something of a halfway house. For me, they were exciting for a number of reasons: you could skip to the track you wanted; CDR was fast and simple when it arrived; loads of impossible to find stuff rocked up on archival CDs, introducing me to loads of new bands; they were quite often cheap, like when HMV London did massive stock dumps. That said, I don't really care about my collection, which has basically turned into a dust-trap in our living room, and is currently added to at the rate of perhaps two or three CDs per year.