Do you guys use Spotify or other streaming service?

[ToneLab]

I'm considering it but the music quality seems like it suffers significantly, which I'm not willing to sacrifice. Plus, I like to have songs downloaded to put into Transcribe! or my DAW to play to or mix to. What does everybody else do?

 

[Fat-Elf]

I haven't had any problems with Spotify's audio quality especialyl when using the Premium which has a better quality than the free version.

 

[celticelk]

I just started using Spotify yesterday, actually, because a coworker has a doom playlist there that he wanted to share with me. I mostly purchase music for download, since bandwidth is limited at my house and I like to have my music on an iPod Classic for car and other mobile listening. Spotify Basic doesn't seem like horrible sound quality to me, but maybe my ears are just old.

 

[Rizzo]

Enjoyed Spotify for some months once it was available in Italy, then came back to regular YT streaming.
Why? About same quality (sadly), no annoying ads (if you use AdBlock at least), no listenings limits (as in the "new" free user version of Spotify), all the stuff i want (it isn't obvious that an artist must have his entire discography on S.), and i think that's it.
That being said, these times i only use S. if an artist gives an exclusive preview of his album through it, that means it wouldn't be available anywhere else.

Plus, artists earn just some cents per lots-of-clicks on S., so no big deal in saying "it's fair for artists"

 

[ridner]

no

 

[TedEH]

I've been using Deezer in Canada, usually leave it on while working. No complaints about sound quality, but I'm also not a snob about audio quality most of the time. I'm not a fan of buying CDs and going through the whole process of ripping, copying to my phone, etc- and this was the most convenient way to get whole albums instantly without pirating anything.

Best feature is the ability to cache songs/albums/playlists on your device for offline listening, and to save bandwidth, and to keep a hi-quality version in case your connection is bad.

 

[Zalbu]

I only use Spotify and have been for years. I was starting to grow tired of torrenting a bunch of music to put on my phone, so now everything I listen to is synched to all my devices and computers. The music that isn't on Spotify can be downloaded and added to a Dropbox folder and it gets synched everywhere too. Don't know about audio quality since I use Premium and 320kbps is good enough for my ears.

 

[ferret]

I used to have a hefty amount of MP3s, which I have yet to delete but never use anymore. I listen to over 3+ hours of Spotify a day right now. I used to build playlists for my tablet and then set them to "Download" for offline play.... but because T-Mobile no longer counts music streaming against my data limit, I use it on my Galaxy S4 now, have it set to highest quality and stream regardless of cellular or wifi data.

 

[TheStig1214]

I used Spoitfy a while ago, and tried Pandora. But I got sick of the ads, and I wasn't willing to pay for add free music I could play in my iTunes anyway. Besides with over 8000 songs on my iTunes anyway I can pretty safely bet I'm set on music for a while. If I want to listen to something different I'll pull up a YouTube stream of a concert or something.

 

[RoRo56]

I use Spotify pretty much exclusively these days, I'll still buy the odd physical copy/bundle of a band's album to help them out but I'll still listen to it on Spotify anyway. It's handy because I can stream in full quality as I get unlimited data from my carrier. Well worth the €10 a month imo

 

[Randyrhoads123]

Yep, I think it was a few months ago that I switched completely from iTunes/torrents (still go and buy artists new albums). It's convenient since I can't fit my whole music library on my 16GB phone, and I don't want to carry around an extra iPod just to listen to music. Most of what I listen to is on there (except Gojira dammit, put from Mars to Sirius and Way of the flesh up ). But it's also about what I don't have: I'll often shazam a song that I hear while I'm watching a video or out in public and then search em up on spotify to listen to their most popular songs to see if their other stuff is equally as good. I pay for premium because I hate ads and the iOS app only shuffle plays songs as a free member, meaning I couldn't listen to an album in its normal order. It's $5 a month since I'm a student which is a pretty good deal IMO. My only complaints are that the app is pretty buggy and the functionality of following artists/saving songs needs more work as I don't think the flow is very intuitive.

 

[PaulBrown]

Spotify is awesome. Really loving this service

 

[Murmel]

I've been a Spotify user since it launched. There is such ridiculous amount of content on Spotify Premium, it has literally changed my life. I can see how people are bummed out that they made the free version next to useless, but to me the €10 a month is beyond my moneys worth.
A few years back before it go big it was harder to find everything you wanted to listen to, nowadays I pretty much find it all.
I also really enjoy having the ability to share and view playlists. Spotify themselves make some excellent playlists.

 

[morestrings111]

Plus, artists earn just some cents per lots-of-clicks on S., so no big deal in saying "it's fair for artists"

I read it's only half a cent per click, and that money goes to the rights-holder (the label most of the time), meaning the artist sees very little to none of that money.

 

[spn_phoenix_92]

I use Pandora for its Black Metal station. It's actually really great, plays a lot of Emperor, Immortal, 1349, Burzum, Watain, you get the picture

 

[Vhyle]

Spotify is fantastic. I've had a paid subscription for year or so now, and it's worth every penny. Especially if you have smartphones with the Spotify app. You can compile as many playlists as you want, and then download them to your phone so they can play even in offline mode. It's a great service and worth the cost, for sure.

 

[TauSigmaNova]

I use it on my PC to listen to new music and songs I don't wanna buy but buy the music I have for my phone/tablet/on the go/for ....ing around with while recording guitar

 

[JustMac]

I like Last FM but no one seems to use it these days!

 

[MFB]

I've been using, and will continue to until it's closed, Grooveshark. Sure, they're in a shitload of trouble for just illegally downloading MP3's and re-hosting them on their site which costs $0/year to be a member to; but god they have like, every album I've ever wanted to listen to on there!

Surprisingly, while this lawsuit is going on against them, the court was so far-sighted it didn't issue a C&D so you can still stream music, which is pretty rad

 

[Fat-Elf]

I gotta say the playlist system is fvcking awesome in Spotify. Especially the ones made by Spotify itself. Today I went out for a long walk and put some random playlist on and enjoyed ton of new cool music.