Music Services (Slacker, Pandora, Rhapsody, iTunes, Spotify...)

[RallyMo]

I'll start off by saying that, yes, every service is different from the others in just about one way or another, but we might as well have one place to talk about them all.

 

I've used Rhapsody for almost 10 years now and I'm still pretty happy with it and have always used Pandora until very recently.

 

I gave Slacker a shot as I read that they had redesigned the service. Well... IT'S AWESOME. It seems like though it might not give me precise matches like Pandora, it's going to be better as far as music discovery goes. I'm very impressed.

 

I've given Spotify multiple chances (free and Premium) and it just doesn't strike me well. In fact, I hate using Spotify. I think it's downright terrible in comparison to the other services.

 

What do you use?

[nate]

I like Pandora but I am annoyed by the fact that you have to pay to get a good song quality.  For the most part I just listen to my own music.  Have about 200 gigs of music on my NAS.  I was just thinking about cancelling my Pandora subscription last night.  Probably will do it.

[Lifetime]

I love Spotify. I liked Pandora but Spotify is better. 

 

Didn't like Rhapsody and haven't used Slacker in a long time but wasn't impressed. 

[RallyMo]

I love Spotify. I liked Pandora but Spotify is better. 

 

Didn't like Rhapsody and haven't used Slacker in a long time but wasn't impressed. 

 

Clearly plenty of people (like yourself) like Spotify and the free service is second to none in terms of access to songs specifically. Most don't share my opinion, but I would NEVER pay for the service they have in place currently.

 

I hate the living hell out of Spotify. You have to star an item or add it to a playlist for it to be in your music, and even then it all just appears in one giant list, which is your only display option on the PC client. I don't get why they can't have a more intuitive top down personal library.

 

Spotify was designed by cats, and not the clever ones. I could design a better interface than what Spotify has in about a night (on paper, I'm no programmer).

 

Spotify suuuuucks as far as I'm concerned.

[RallyMo]

Give Slacker another shot.

[nate]

Problem for all of them is having to pay for 21st century quality stream.  I find it ridiculous that they stream at 96k or 128k.  Sounds like shit on good headphones/speakers.

[Lifetime]

Clearly plenty of people (like yourself) like Spotify and the free service is second to none in terms of access to songs specifically. Most don't share my opinion, but I would NEVER pay for the service they have in place currently.

 

I hate the living hell out of Spotify. You have to star an item or add it to a playlist for it to be in your music, and even then it all just appears in one giant list, which is your only display option on the PC client. I don't get why they can't have a more intuitive top down personal library.

 

Spotify was designed by cats, and not the clever ones. I could design a better interface than what Spotify has in about a night (on paper, I'm no programmer).

 

Spotify suuuuucks as far as I'm concerned.

We'll, I happen to like the interface. I don't get your angst for having to star or add a song to your playlist(s). It only appears as one long giant list if you arrange it that way. You can have as many playlists as you want. If you want to listen to music based on a particular style, ala Pandora, use the radio feature. 

[Lifetime]

Problem for all of them is having to pay for 21st century quality stream.  I find it ridiculous that they stream at 96k or 128k.  Sounds like shit on good headphones/speakers.

It's ridiculous to expect them to offer premium sound quality for free. 

[RallyMo]

We'll, I happen to like the interface. I don't get your angst for having to star or add a song to your playlist(s). It only appears as one long giant list if you arrange it that way. You can have as many playlists as you want. If you want to listen to music based on a particular style, ala Pandora, use the radio feature. 

 

It appears as a giant list sorted into albums - there's no way for me to look at my library in a non-list format (of course you can select how the list is displayed/ordered) but it's not collapsible. That's ridiculous if I have hundreds of artists.

 

The eight thousand year old interface on Rhapsody lets me do everything that can be done with Spotify and more.

 

I don't get it. It wouldn't fundamentally change the service to make it more navigable like that. If I wanted to search via text entry I could still do that. If I wanted to look at a list, I could do that. If I wanted to look at a list of artists, that would be available to me as well.

 

It seems like such a silly UI decision.

 

Do you have the premium service?

[nate]

It's ridiculous to expect them to offer premium sound quality for free. 

 

Every other streaming radio station does.  It would be different if I didn't have to listen to commercials.

[nate]

For your MP3 collection, what do you guys use?

 

I have yet to find a complete application that takes care of what I want in a music player.  I feel that iTunes does the best at organizing my music because of the column browser but it is such a bloated application that it annoys the hell out of me.

 

Winamp is way too old and outdated.  WMP is awful.  Media Monkey is nice but I feel that it falls short at organizing my music.

[Lifetime]

Not at the moment but I have. 

 

It does not have to be one long list. Why would you want to look at your library in a non list format? You can sort the list. Seems nitpicky and pissy to me but to each their own. 

[Lifetime]

Every other streaming radio station does.  It would be different if I didn't have to listen to commercials.

Spotify and Slacker are not just streaming radio stations. 

[RallyMo]

Not at the moment but I have. 

 

It does not have to be one long list. Why would you want to look at your library in a non list format? You can sort the list. Seems nitpicky and pissy to me but to each their own. 

 

I don't think it's pissy at all. It's such an easy alteration to UI to make. Why would I want to have to scroll up and down a list of 20k+ songs to visualize everything in my library easily? I don't use iTunes but this is where they absolutely get it right. You can see your library in just about any way you want to. It's way better than Spotify's single list + search box approach.

[Lifetime]

And I don't see the need. Like I said, to each their own. 

[nate]

Yeah, as Rally said, it is the only thing that iTunes does right.

 

I have over 100k songs.  Having a way to easily narrow down the list is such a convenient feature.  Using one huge list is what Winamp has done for the last 20 years.  There are better ways.

[Lifetime]

Oh and if you have 20k songs there will be significant scrolling no matter how your music is displayed. 

[Angel Dog and Beer]

I've been using Grooveshark lately.  I like being able to search and listen to whole albums, which Grooveshark lets you do. Haven't really gotten into making playlists and such, but it allows you to do that as well. NIce simple interface.

 

For some reason, Spotify makes my office cable go out. Not sure why, but its happened the last few times I've used it.

[Brandon]

Pretty much just use Pandora and Spotify.

 

I like Pandora in the car as a radio station and like the matching artists. Always disliked the more frequent commercials over the years, but it's free...I can't complain. I hate the limited skip aspect and the limited listening per month. I have never hit it, but my girlfriend always hits their limit and she has to pay for extended use or use another application, which she does.

 

Spotify is awesome to me. It's easy to use and encompasses just about every album I want to listen to at any given time....especially since there is a lot of user loaded content. I just like having a huge database like this in one location. Also great for hearing new albums before thinking of buying them or nowadays just downloading them for free....although, I don't download because of Spotify. 

 

My gf uses two other apps. One is Songza that is kind of like Pandora, but is generated playlists based on themes. Like, it will ask you what genre you'd like to listen to, then go off in all sorts of directions like, "Are you getting ready to go to a house party?" or "Are you in the mood for dancing indie or indie that suits being at the beach?"....just really random options. It's good for music and artists I probably would never come across. I forget the name of the other one she uses, but it is kind of a poor mans Pandora radio.

 

As for MP3 use, I am not big into using my iPod nymore because of the apps above. Plus, I absolutely loathe iTunes....from the way it organizes and confusing options to the random deletion and duplication of music. I actually miss the simplicity of the original MP3 players where you just hooked up the player to a USB and dragged songs over to it or folders.

[nate]

Oh and if you have 20k songs there will be significant scrolling no matter how your music is displayed. 

 

Not true at all.  Instead of scrolling through every song you can choose to just scroll through artists or albums.

[Lifetime]

Yeah, as Rally said, it is the only thing that iTunes does right.

 

I have over 100k songs.  Having a way to easily narrow down the list is such a convenient feature.  Using one huge list is what Winamp has done for the last 20 years.  There are better ways.

You can narrow down the list through sorting. It's really not that difficult. 

[Lifetime]

Not true at all.  Instead of scrolling through every song you can choose to just scroll through artists or albums.

You can do that with Spotify as well 

[nate]

You can narrow down the list through sorting. It's really not that difficult. 

 

And you still have to scroll through every song in that album.  This makes life so much easier:

 

[Lifetime]

I don't see that as any easier. It's really not much different. 

[nate]

What?  Otherwise you are scrolling through every single song in  your library?  For example I have about 500 Beatles songs in my list.  To get to the Cranberries I would have to scroll through all of those songs instead of just one in an artist list.

 

Your need to argue is almost comical at this point.