this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025

47 points (98.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

30396 readers

1159 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

asudox@discuss.tchncs.de

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

KaneLivesInDeath@lemmy.world

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

What music streaming platform do you use? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by HereIAm@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I want to swap off of Spotify. Most of the time it works great, but the annoyances with their UX are starting to build up. From not ordering albums in release order on certain screens, to having to wait a good few seconds before turning off their shuffle+, and their shuffle not being very shuffle-y to begin with.

I have a couple of requirements:

A decent Linux client.
Be able to easily select playback device from other devices (for example start playback on my PC from my phone).
Preferably pretty straightforward UX philosophy, i.e. haven't started going down any enshitification with AI, "we know best" kind of elements.

I don't particularly care for the highest of lossless quality audio. I don't posses any audio equipment where I would have any shot of telling the difference. As long as its not the experience I had with YouTube music where some random persons heavily compressed upload of a song would start playing.

My main contenders are Tidal, Qobuz, and deezer. The latter two I have very little experience with.

I've tried Tidal before, but my main gripe with it was scrolling through large playlists (about 2000 songs) was very slow, as it loaded in songs as you scrolled through (think endless scrolling on ddg or Lemmy) making it tedious to go to artists starting with a later character in the alphabet. Maybe it was just the Linux client, an issue on my machine, or if they've fixed it since, would be great to hear if any of you have had the same issue.

Qobuz and deezer I haven't really tried or heard much about from a users perspective.

I know some people swear by buying (or ship in under the jolly roger) all their music and use jellyfin or just local files for playback. I'm not very keen on that idea, the convince and discoverability of music on a streaming platform is what made me go to Spotify and away from winamp in the first place.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 16 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Tidal I believe has what you're looking for and may be worth a shot.

Deezer is non American and I think it's worth a shot to try if you wanna give that a shot as well as the seem the least shitty.

That said, Plex/emby/Jellyfin although lacking discoverability is what I used to transition off Spotify in conjunction with tidal. Eventually found out the local library had CDs and used that to discover new music, started buying CDs I liked and enjoyed and have been very happy since since I don't have a month subscription now as I don't need to rent my music.

(if you're the type to be sailing, you could also copy CDs from the library)

I'd say your best shot is to just experiment around, Spotify is always going to be the most convenient. Deezer (as far as I know) the least shitty, and tidal the best quality.

[–] dmention7@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have not personally got to the point of trying any yet, but I have heard several times about plugins for Jellyfin that add discoverability and recommendation features.

You still have the issue of actually tracking down the music, which Jellyseer or similar can help with. But if one of those plug-ins were to interface with Spotify or YouTube for preview purposes, that would be pretty slick!

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Emby does as well. That said once you live without discover features and unshackle yourself from algorithms I will say ... It's really not that big a deal lol

I used to go hard finding new shit on Spotify and YouTube etc, but eventually word of mouth with friends and the library really solved the issue. Also changed how I consume music from songs in a playlist to looking at every album as one solid work of art to be understood.

Now I hit up my friends when I want new music recs, they hit me up. It's a good ice breaker. The library is also mad under used as a resource, they love supplying new shit if people are wanting it.

I got to a point where I am now where I carry around an iPod, and some CDs for the car lol may be weird however works for me and I paid zero dollars for music the last couple months cause now I have a solid personal library.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I hear you on the algorithm stuff. I normally find most my music through more organic means anyway, like soundtracks in games and movies, word of mouth from friends, or youtube/twitch. So maybe discoverability wouldn't be so bad for me if I do decide to go for a local collection at some point.

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

That's how I did it before streaming and how I do now. Fortunately I got my friends to go down this road too and we're all sorta healthier with it.

Will say, the library is an awesome resource if you start a local collection. It can be a good resource while you bridge the gaps. Most libraries also run their own streaming service for free it's not feature rich usually but ours is very simple and very stable.

Like I said generally experimenting is best. Different people have different needs :)

[–] dmention7@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Trust me, I hear you on the algorithmic shit.

I dont think i have a single playlist set up, and almost exclusivly listen to albums cover to cover. All I really want is for a service to occasionally say "Hey you spent 60 hours last month listening to these 3 bands... check out these guys if you want something fresh with a similar vibe"

Spotify did a semi decent job of that, and it's how I've discovered a few new bands, but paying $18/mo just to discover a few per year is not a great value proposition. I'd rather torrent a random album and then pick up some merch or concert tickets if I end up liking them.

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

I don't disagree with anything you're saying.

I wish there was the infrastructure for that without Spotify like what radio used to be, or when the average person had nueanced opinions and it was easier to get recommendations from everyone.

However we don't live in that world so there's nothing to judge anyone on atm until Spotify collapses under its own weight.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I switched to Tidal recently; it feels a bit featureless in some areas. No Mono Audio mode (i frequently have 1 earbud in at work, don't like hearing only half the audio.)

Shuffle is either on or off, theres no way i see to set it by playlist/album

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

I used it as a way to discover music not as my main player as I said but that's also probably not a common issue (even if it is at its heart an accessibility issue for the partially deaf). I'm not sure if Deezer solves that issue but it also will feel shallow, but idk if it solves that issue.

Plex has gone kinda stupid lately. However Plexamp is very very feature heavy if you wanna own instead of rent the art you consume though. If you want a tier down from Plex, jellyfin with Finamp worked well for me as well when I switched. Emby isn't feature heavy so maybe about Emby.

Personally though if you wanna get away from streaming I'll throw in my two cents: an old iPod or iPhone would work great, have decent battery life, and allows you to listen to music without buffering. Takes a bit of getting used to but once you're on it, you're on it and it's unfathomable for me to go back now.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Having a local (well local as on my Jellyfin instance) might be an end goal for me. I have started buying and playing LPs recently, it's a good vibe to have it physically spinning next to me. I only really look for what I already know when I go into a record store, maybe time to expand when I next go into one.

[–] ScrewCapital@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

I've over time accumulated a record player, cassette, and CD player for my deck that I love. (I also have a decent 8-track and DCC for novelty purposes lol). It's really nice being able to go into a record store and the format not be a hindrance.

That said it's out of scope for the convo I think so I left it out. It also wasn't something I got into until I was able to acquire some disposable income as I got older. But I will say, Thrift shops and broad horizons are your friend :)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't know if it hits all your needs but I switched to Deezer a couple of weeks ago and I really dig it.

Free trial month and absurdly easy to import all your stuff from spotify, so I'd just give it a shot and see if it scratches your itch!

[–] lsibilla@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The same for me. I tried Qobuz and Deezer.

I find Deezer better for my usage:

Wide variety of great playlists
Deezer Connect (equivalent to Spotify Connect) so you can instruct your speaker to play songs and completely disconnect your phone.

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Ha, yeah that connection capability made me switch from Qobuz. (My receiver has an app that connects to Deezer, no such luck with Qobuz.)

And fully agree on the playlists, I've really dug a few already.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Mm good shout about the free trial with Deezer. Not much point not giving that a shot then.

[–] Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Over the past couple of months, I have tried out all the major streaming services as I moved away from Deezer, so I will give an overview of my perspectives on each.

Deezer

I used Deezer for the past five years, and for most of that time I loved it. In the past year they did a UI and branding overhaul which I didn't really like, but it was fine. They have recently been getting more into music quizzes and games, which I am not very interested in. There was a big banner for games on the home screen at one point, but I ended up blocking it with UBlock Origin. I ended up leaving Deezer because they removed the option to sort downloaded music in any way. (I think they have added that back now)

Deezer has a fantastic range of curated playlists and radio stations, some of the best out of any service I have used. It has quality generated playlists and autoplay, and good algorithmic discovery.

Deezer seems to favour playlists; Your favourited playlists show in the sidebar at all times and there is no option to change this, I only listen to albums, so I don't really like this.

They have a public forum for discussing Deezer and reporting incorrect artist catalogues.

In my time of using Deezer, I have noticed many annoying bugs and changes on Android, like when they temporarily removed the option to sort downloaded music and an ongoing bug where downloaded music isn't playable offline.

I can't figure out if they have a connect feature. Someone in this thread said they do, but I've never seen it.

The unofficial Linux app is just a basic electron wrapper.

Apple Music

Apple Music is a good streaming service, but it was a terrible experience to set up on Linux. I spent six hours trying to create an Apple account only to get stuck at a page where a button didn't have any JavaScript attached to it, so it didn't even let me.

Very infuriating, anyways, Apple Music doesn't have an official Linux app, but the unofficial app https://cider.sh/ exists, and is the only fully-fledged non-website-wrapper app for a major streaming service that I know of on Linux. The app is impressively feature-rich, featuring connect, custom audio profiles, a fullscreen mode and miniplayer, real-time lyrics, and a plugin/theme store among many other things.

While the UI looks very nice and is customizable to an extent, there are many actions that require an extra click, such as favouriting an album, or editing a playlist, as many things are tucked away in menus. This, along with the excruciating account creation process is what led me to not choose Apple Music as my service of choice.

Discovery is good, although maybe not as good as on Spotify, Deezer, or Tidal, and the selection of curated playlists is less then what's available on other services.

I have noticed UI bugs and inconsistencies, but nothing that largely detracts from the user experience.

Tidal

Tidal is pretty similar to Qobuz, and I don't have many bad things to say about either of them.

It has all the features you would expect in a streaming service, and it does all of them pretty well. It has good algorithmically generated playlists and discovery, a clean, simple interface, and I've experienced no bugs. I don't think it has anything like Spotify Connect.

The unofficial Linux app is an electron wrapper, but it does have some additional functionality that the official apps do not. Another unofficial GTK app also exists, called High Tide. Tidal is the service I ended up choosing personally.

Qobuz

Out of these, Qobuz is the one I have the least experience with. It seems pretty similar to Tidal in most regards, but seems more aimed towards audiophiles and has less automatic curation, and the manually curated playlists have are focused on a much narrower range of genres and artists, but are far more detailed and in-depth than any other service. The interface may also be nicer depending on your tastes, although it doesn't have a lyrics view.

Qobuz is mostly known for allowing you to purchase music to download at full quality, which is pretty awesome.

The unofficial Linux app is a basic electron wrapper, but it doesn't MPRIS support.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wow, that's a fantastic write up! Very cool to hear from someone who has used all the major platforms. I'm leaning towards Tidal, but they all seem to work quite well for everyone in here. I think what I'm going to do is dedicate a month to each service, write down my experiences with it, and go from there. Deezer has the free trial, so could start with that. Some other people in this thread has noted about the non-sorting of downloaded tracks and other questionable UI choices, so I'll keep an eye out for that.

I didn't expect to find any native apps, even Spotify's client is an unoffical distribution, but I'm glad to hear they all have something available at least. I'm intrigued by Cider, seems like one hell of a project.

[–] Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks! All of the services have a one-month free trial, and Tidal has a two-month $3 trial. I'm currently on the trial for most of them.

[–] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I just switched to Deezer because I'm Canadian and I'm abolishing all American products that I can. I was a YouTube Music person for years though, and I absolutely loved Google Play Music, but YTM is trash. I will not use Spotify because of Joe Rogan, and I tried Apple Music and it's not what I want because their classical music selection is different from all other platforms and it is missing stuff I want. I like Deezer so far.

[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Pandora; I use the terminal client Pianobar in Linux.

But I'm not a music nerd like you seem to be. I want RADIO, without ads. I pick a song, Pandora picks other music like it to play. I don't have time to dick with "albums being in order" kinda shit.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've used Deezer before. At the time I felt like their audio quality was better than Spotify. They also had a much cleaner and less cluttered interface. I don't remember seeing the option to select the playback device though, but that was like 6 years ago where desktop clients were just running on electron. Not sure if they allow switching playback devices now.

[–] Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

Still not a thing. I switched away from deezer a month ago, when they removed the option to sort downloaded music and albums (why would they think that's a good idea?) I am now on Tidal, and they're audio quality is even better than deezer and Apple music, and I'm liking it a lot more.

[–] 0485919158191@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use Spotify but only because I get it for free. If I didn't I would use YouTube Music which is included in my YT premium subscription

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Funnily enough that is the exact situation I got. Parents started paying for Spotify almost 2 decades ago, and the great people they are have just kept it going since for me. I do have a YouTube premium (I know this is a bit frowned upon on Lemmy) sub going, but YouTube Music just doesn't quite function the way I want it to.

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use Tidal (buy it from a cheap country by vpn) and Apple Music because the wife wants Apple TV so the bump to get the bundle wasn't much. I prefer Tidal by a long shot, but use Apple Music when I need to play music that I don't want fucking up my Tidal algorithm.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh, the VPN is a good idea. No struggles with playing back when not on a VPN?

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 2 points 22 hours ago

Nope. In fact, tidal isn't even available in my country. So I had to select which country to buy from, Argentina used to be cheapest but now they have payment processing issues so Thailand was my next choice. Only had to vpn the first time while making the account.

[–] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As a community radio manager I wish just one of them would allow us to broadcast from their service. Since we aren't allowed to, I can't see how we can hope to get many younger presenters since most don't have physical media or purchased tracks.

I know some stations including the ABC cheat and use it anyway.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hm, yeah that sounds like a big missed market! I love tuning in to live DJ's on twitch sometimes. Would be really cool to have some of that directly in a streaming platform. Now you've made me really sad it's not a thing.

[–] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

We can manage by buying each track off Apple music, but that's a pain.

[–] callyral@pawb.social 3 points 2 days ago

I download songs off of YouTube Music after making a playlist

I play the songs with Tauon

[–] tabris@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I use Qobuz, and I like it a lot. You can easily download music for offline listening, there's a lot of high def on there, and from what information is known about how much streaming services pay back to record labels, Qobuz appears to be the biggest payer per stream.

The app is no frills, they only added auto generated playlists a year or so ago. Their recommendations are less tailored, but high quality if you're wanting to explore outside your usual tastes.

Plus, it's just music. No podcasts, no audiobooks, no games, no generative ai for some reason.

[–] FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 3 points 3 days ago

Foobar2000

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

I've been using RiMusic

[–] OhmsLawn@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I mostly listen to DJ mixes on SoundCloud.

[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago

Depends on if I want to listen to music or just have a radio on.

If I'm listening to music, I'm using Jellyfin. But I also have a large music collection.

If I just want a radio, it's either Spotify or Amazon Music depending on where I am.

[–] vvilld@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I'm generally not particularly picky when I'm listening to music. I don't often want just one specific song or artist. Usually I'm looking for a genre/vibe and that's it.

With that in mind, I prefer Pandora. I've been using it for ~20 years now and have a lot of VERY well curated stations. I also don't mind the ads so much, and, therefore, have never had to pay for it. On the rare occasions I want a very specific song, I can just pull it up on YouTube.

My wife and I recently sprung for a Spotify account. We have a 3 yo and 5 yo and, like most children, they want to listen to a few specific albums on repeat. We had Amazon Music for a bit, but really disliked it. So we switched to Spotify. I mostly only use it to play music for my kids.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

Navidrome.

[–] Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

You could use any of these services and include them in music assistant for easier streaming on all your speakers ecc? Idk, I mainly just use spotify on my phone to discover tracks etc, then download the files and put them on my navidrome instance, with then is connected to music assistant, which lets me syncronize speakers ecc.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I had deezer for a while and it was pretty good. iirc, they don't have a linux client though.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There is an unofficial flatpak client. Spotify is in the same situation, so that wouldn't be a downgrade at least 🙂

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 days ago

Browser works great

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 2 points 2 days ago

YouTube music with YouTube music on GitHub

[–] Presi300@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Tidal, they don't have an official client, but tidal-hifi is pretty good

[–] Generic_Idiot@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

I kinda love YouTube music.

It has heaps of unreleased stuff as well. It has every obscure thing and all the well known stuff.

[–] cb900f_bodhi@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 3 days ago

I'm in a similar boat. Spotify is infuriating for a variety of reasons. For one, I just cannot understand how they screw up their android app so frequently. It's constantly riddled with new bugs almost every update. And I hate how little they pay the actual artists.

I've been reading the buzz about music streaming services for a long while now. Qobuz is what I'm going to try next.

I also keep Pandora because their recommendations algorithm is the best in the business, in my experience.

load more comments