karmamule
Well-known member
- Jun 17, 2010
- 527
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I have a bit of a obsession hobby with subscription music services. I've been using them practically since they first came out many years ago. I've used all of them available in the US, and still have current accounts on Rhapsody, rdio, Spotify, and now Google's service. (A couple of them are the tail end of a year long subscription that I'll be letting lapse.) They all have strengths and weaknesses.
In general I love the idea of subscription services instead of buying individual tunes and/or services like Pandora because they do let you listen to massive amounts of music, listen to full albums, download music for offline listening (if you pay the monthly fee), etc etc. It's great to just "roam around", and I listen to much more music now than I ever did when I had to just put up with what radio played or buy individual songs/albums myself.
As far as which service is best it depends on what features you want. Here's a quick overview:
rdio: Most people think it has the most elegant UI, and it is well designed. Their catalog is now as big as Spotify's, and they have similar features. Their social features are a bit better, and their playlist generator lets you pick between the seed artist only or if you want to mix in others. I also like that the web site & PC app (which has the same UI as the web site) let you search by label, which is very handy. They also monitor all artists you have in your collection and if you want notify you whenever any of them have new content.
Spotify is the most famous of these services, and their desktop app, while IMO ugly, is pretty powerful. I like that you can organize music by folders, and have hierarchical folders if you want to get more elaborate. Their web site and PC app have their own built-in "apps" that offer lots of powerful functionality. Most of them are meh but a few like moodagent are really fun. They have a huge catalog, and I think their playlist generation is generally underrated. It's very flexible, and you can start a "radio station" based on artist, single song, single album, or (most importantly for me) on a playlist of your own. I think it's pretty smart about returning good recommendations in general. It also has decent social sharing options, but I don't really value that so much as my musical taste is very different from most of my friends'.
Rhapsody has been around a long time, and could be a contender but IMO for 2 crippling things: They charge $10/month like others but ONLY IF you have 1 mobile device. If you want to use it on up to 3 mobile devices they charge you $15/month, whereas the other services let you pretty much use them on as many devices you want. The second thing is their playlist generation is absolutely braindead, and seems to work at a genre level: for example I can listen to electronica like Aphex Twin (not the most commercial of artists relatively speaking) and if I ask Rhapsody to generate artist radio for him, before long its playing stuff like Paul Oakenfold or Whitney Houston (!!!). It does have one nice feature that up until Google came along no once else had, and that's new releases *by genre* and even subgenre, which I found very handy.
Google's new service is surprisingly good for just having launched. It's UI (both web and Android app) is very responsive, well designed, and their playlist management functionality is really good. They also have the best queue management of any of the services. Their catalog is just a bit smaller than Spotify's, but still impressive, and their playlist generation is good. Still not quite as good as rdio's or Spotify's, but close, and I'm sure with a little work they'll make it better. They also (surprise surprise) have the best catalog search. Lots of the other services don't handle it well if you misspell any of the words and/or artist name you're looking for, but their service handles that like a champ. Getting it at $7.99/month at the promotional rate is tempting, and it may end up being the service I narrow down to if I keep liking it this much.
Anyway, probably WAY more than you wanted to know...
tl;dr;: Yeah Spotify and the other similar services are great. Worth checking out!
In general I love the idea of subscription services instead of buying individual tunes and/or services like Pandora because they do let you listen to massive amounts of music, listen to full albums, download music for offline listening (if you pay the monthly fee), etc etc. It's great to just "roam around", and I listen to much more music now than I ever did when I had to just put up with what radio played or buy individual songs/albums myself.
As far as which service is best it depends on what features you want. Here's a quick overview:
rdio: Most people think it has the most elegant UI, and it is well designed. Their catalog is now as big as Spotify's, and they have similar features. Their social features are a bit better, and their playlist generator lets you pick between the seed artist only or if you want to mix in others. I also like that the web site & PC app (which has the same UI as the web site) let you search by label, which is very handy. They also monitor all artists you have in your collection and if you want notify you whenever any of them have new content.
Spotify is the most famous of these services, and their desktop app, while IMO ugly, is pretty powerful. I like that you can organize music by folders, and have hierarchical folders if you want to get more elaborate. Their web site and PC app have their own built-in "apps" that offer lots of powerful functionality. Most of them are meh but a few like moodagent are really fun. They have a huge catalog, and I think their playlist generation is generally underrated. It's very flexible, and you can start a "radio station" based on artist, single song, single album, or (most importantly for me) on a playlist of your own. I think it's pretty smart about returning good recommendations in general. It also has decent social sharing options, but I don't really value that so much as my musical taste is very different from most of my friends'.
Rhapsody has been around a long time, and could be a contender but IMO for 2 crippling things: They charge $10/month like others but ONLY IF you have 1 mobile device. If you want to use it on up to 3 mobile devices they charge you $15/month, whereas the other services let you pretty much use them on as many devices you want. The second thing is their playlist generation is absolutely braindead, and seems to work at a genre level: for example I can listen to electronica like Aphex Twin (not the most commercial of artists relatively speaking) and if I ask Rhapsody to generate artist radio for him, before long its playing stuff like Paul Oakenfold or Whitney Houston (!!!). It does have one nice feature that up until Google came along no once else had, and that's new releases *by genre* and even subgenre, which I found very handy.
Google's new service is surprisingly good for just having launched. It's UI (both web and Android app) is very responsive, well designed, and their playlist management functionality is really good. They also have the best queue management of any of the services. Their catalog is just a bit smaller than Spotify's, but still impressive, and their playlist generation is good. Still not quite as good as rdio's or Spotify's, but close, and I'm sure with a little work they'll make it better. They also (surprise surprise) have the best catalog search. Lots of the other services don't handle it well if you misspell any of the words and/or artist name you're looking for, but their service handles that like a champ. Getting it at $7.99/month at the promotional rate is tempting, and it may end up being the service I narrow down to if I keep liking it this much.
Anyway, probably WAY more than you wanted to know...
tl;dr;: Yeah Spotify and the other similar services are great. Worth checking out!
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