this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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I use YouTube Music. For 18€/month, I get unlimited access to both YouTube Premium and YouTube Music for the whole family (5 accounts). The music selection is better than Spotify, as anything tagged as "music video" on YouTube you can play in YT Music. I can't tell the difference in sound quality between Spotify and YT Music, but I use Bluetooth headphones anyway...
Spotify and YT music have the two lowest bitrates at 192kbps for YT and 328kbps for Spotify so they both sound like garbage. I've never listened to music less than when I was using YT music. Bad personalized playlists, awful sound quality, it would mix in music videos and shit. I'd rather the radio at that point
Tidal sounds vastly better (1441kbps lossless CD quality at the same price) but their personalized playlists are quite lacking.
However... I've found Apple Music to be the best one. Its audio quality is even higher than Tidal, supporting not only lossless, but also high-res lossless (between 4608 and 9616 kbps... far above above CD quality, great for studio speakers.) Its recommendations are almost as good as Spotify too.
I don't own any Apple hardware btw, the app works great on Android. The Windows app is "in preview" but it's pretty stable and both of them support lossless audio (just don't use the website to listen, that's not lossless)
Edit: spelling and formatting looked okay on my tiny phone
Edit 2: I forgot to mention that both Spotify (and especially YT Music try as hard as possible to not pay artists. Tidal was known for paying artists really well until a year or two ago when new ownership changed things. Apple Music still pays pretty well (for a streaming service)
Edit 3: Tidal also has high-res lossless but the "Max" tier is twice the price
What is the bitrate for the "High" (Not HiFi/FLAC) quality version? I had heard it was 320, so the same as Spotify. Unfortunately when I tried Tidal a couple of weeks ago, most of the music I listen to only goes up to "High".
Though not that I have top of the line headphones to make a difference anyways, I'm sure.
Tidal's entire library should be lossless unless you're on the free ad tier. But the high quality should be 320? I don't have a subscription anymore
“High” is Lossless - 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (aka CD Quality). It used to be called “HiFi.”
“Low” has two options (for me at least): 96 or 320 kbps (AAC).
“Max” is HiRes and MQA.
HiRes is anything better than High, up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Some (many?) HiRes songs are 24-bit / 44.1 kHz.
MQA is older and worse than HiRes and I don’t recall hearing good things about it.