I am surprised no one mentioned/uses YouTube Music. I just recently moved to it from Spotify and find it equally good. Plus you can watch YouTube ad free and in background on mobile. YouTube has more songs from individual creators and also allow you to upload your own songs to your library which is awesome!
I am super happy I have stopped paying $9.99/month (as an individual user) and pay $3/month (for YouTube premium + music, in family plan)
EDIT: I also like the fact that YouTube Music is just a music app rather than bundling postcasts/radio etc. into a single app (like Spotify does; takes more clicks to do things; becomes overloadad)
I subscribed to YouTube Premium ($12/month for no ads, etc.) early in the first covid wave but didnāt try their Music service for a couple of months. When I did I found the music selection virtually identical to Apple Music. And with a simple Shortcut, I can āaskā Siri to summon the Google Assistant to request music and information, etc.
I have no need or desire for lossless or spatial music (I grew up listening to AM radio) so YouTube Music offers everything I need.
Spotify, but Iāve been thinking of switching to Tidal after the whole Joe Rogan thing a couple of weeks ago. Pricing seems to be the same, and both have Roku apps, which should let me use both on my Roku TV. If anyone else has Tidal Iād love to year how the experience has been, (especially if you switched from Spotify).
I use both YouTube Music and Apple Music (as part of Apple One 2T family plan) but I preferred YouTube Music for videos and bigger variety of Asian musical selection. One BIG advantage of YouTube Music is the large amount of āmusicā uploaded by others.
However, I do like the lyrics feature of Apple Music
IMO, Googleās desktop app is the Chrome browser. I need a chromium browser to use with what appears to be an increasing number of sites that donāt work well with desktop Safari. So I use Google Chrome, almost exclusively with Google services.
The way I look at it both Google and Apple know a disturbing amount of information about us, but neither share it and only use it to make money for themselves. In any event, with the exception of our medical data (in the U.S.) there is very little that either can learn about us that isnāt already widely available.
this may be OT for this thread but I thought Google has been very clear what data they have on us and how to use that? You can check that out on your account page
I switched from Apple to spotify after Appleās block of explicit music kept failing. They wouldnāt fix it so I switched. It seems if you have a family account and you are the admin, that thereās a problem with filtering out explicit music on the admin account.
Thanks, itās been a while since I read Googleās privacy statement, etc. but in general, Google sells targeted ads, not specifics about us. IMO, if they shared our details no one would need to buy ads from Google. And rather than highjack this thread Iāll sign off with that.
People who said they do not subscribe to streaming music, can you please share what do you use as an alternative?
@MereCivilian Do you think it would be good idea if we add this to your post so people can comment? Not sure people will scroll down to this comment share what alternatives they have. Up to you!
EDIT: Out of context but just looked at your blog and it looks so clean and minimal. Sleek is the word that comes to mind.
I donāt spend much time with the editorial content, reallyāitās neither an inducement to keep subscribing nor a reason to leave for another service. I LOVE having access to PDFs of the CD insertsāvery handy for texts and translations and opera libretti. We opted for Qobuz because of its strength in classical music, but they seem to have everything else, too.
Spotify - however recent developments with Joe Rogan have our family questioning whether stay with Spotify. We will give it another 6-8 weeks and if he hasnāt evolved we will leave Spotify for Apple Music.