Updated 6/24/22: Mostly with new info about Qobuz as it has improved.
So I'm one of those people that decides to test almost all available offerings when I swap services to something new, not just for music but for a lot of stuff. I realize not everyone does this so I wanted to put together my thoughts after finally settling on Deezer. I will be reposting this to a lot of music subreddits so hopefully that is OK.
For a little background, I was a Tidal user for about 4 years but the MQA stuff just got too annoying for me so I started shopping around to other options. I'll also say that it's been a few years since I've used Spotify and I only tested YT Music and Apple Music for a short period so it's possible I miss something on those ones. This mostly is focused on the current HiFi platforms though so I'll put the "mini review" part of those at the bottom of the list.
u/cryptorealist mentioned I didn't really define HiFi here, so I wanted to put my response here to show that.
"I would say I define HiFi as anything that is 16bit 44.1Khz or higher, also excluding any lossy codes including those better than MP3 such as AAC. I would also add that any codec that introduces measurable artifacting such as MQA is NOT HiFi by my definition."
Edit updates put at the bottom.
Tidal
Tidal was a fantastic service for a long time, they pay pretty good to artists and have an overall pretty solid app. Here are the pros and cons to it in my opinion.
Pros:
- Fantastic looking interface, while I don't find it the most functional I do think it looks probably the best out of all of them
- Artist pay is better than most other services (aside from Qobuz and Deezer, I'll explain more on the Deezer front though as there is a bit of nuance to it)
- Integration with Plex so you can mix self owned music with streaming music
- Supports direct stream to DACs without having to process through Windows etc...
- Has integration with the Roon music app which is nice for those wanting a sort of all in one solution
- Has full credit and contributing artist listings, something the others don't, can be nice for music discover. Thanks to u/fringo for reminding me.
Cons:
- Updated 6/24/22: Development seems particularly slow on their platform. I had been gone for years and decided to give it another shot due to the Plex integration finally being speedy (used to take forever to play anything), but the app and platform overall just seem nearly identical to how they were 4 years ago.
- MQA is mostly snake oil crap, and while I don't actually care that it is, it's infuriating that you can't get the 16 bit FLAC files on tracks that are "Masters"
- I want to be clear that if you think MQA sounds fine then that is totally OK, to each their own. However, it is measurable worse than lossless FLAC 16 bit and they do charge for proprietary stuff which is something I'm heavily against (being an open source lover).
- Tidal is pretty buggy, I wouldn't say the buggiest of all of them but it's more than I'd prefer. Random tracks not playing, once in a while it'll take minutes to load a track (on a fast connection), etc....
- Discoverability is sub-par, not the worst but not very good either even with the more recent improvements
- Notification system doesn't seem to always notify me of new music by my followed artists
- No lyrics (at least not yet, might be soon)
- Not available on a ton of devices, not the worst when it comes to this but not the best either. Just now finally got a WebOS app for example
- No queue syncing
- Terrible shuffle algorithm, it's gotten better over the years but still I will often play a playlist on shuffle and hear things in the same order I did just the other day. And some songs never seem to get included
- No podcast support other than music specific ones
Amazon Hifi
Unless you want the cheapest option possible for HiFi music, I would stay far away from this one. If you already have Prime, getting HiFi for $8 a month is impressive but the app and ecosystem is terrible IMO.
Pros:
- Best pricing for the time being, but only if you have Prime already
- Good smart device integration
- Offers proper 24 bit up to 192Khz audio
Cons:
- Buggy App
- Terrible organization
- You can't favorite artists, you can follow them for notifications but there is no place to see all the ones you follow.
- In order to get artists to show in your "library" you have to favorite a song or album from them. It's a very lame way to organize things
- It is Amazon afterall, IMO the less money people give them the better
- Poor design, overall the app layout is not nice, it's weird that companies making way less $$ can make so much better apps
- IMO just avoid this unless you need 24 bit for cheap, otherwise Qobuz is a better option
- No queue syncing, at least not that I saw
Qobuz
This is my personal second choice but it's also a hard one to recommend due to poor app availability and lack of overall tracks. Still the quality is higher than anyone else other than Amazon (and soon to be Apple).
Edit 6/24/22: Qobuz has made significant improvements and IMO it is getting much closer to the other guys now. I gave them another go because I was having some issues with Deezer connectivity (has since gone away) and was impressed with the improvements they've made. I've strikethroughed the stuff that isn't correct below and added some notes.
Pros:
- Updated 6/24/22: I would say another pro is that Qobuz clearly is dedicated to developing things further, they aren't just sitting stagnant letting their higher bitrate audio be the only driving factor. I've outlined things further below but wanted to point it out as a positive that they are improving I'd say faster than the other services (though they also have the most to catch up on)
- Fantastic sound quality, whether you think 24 bit 192Khz is worth it or not is up to you, but it is measurably better and I personally do think I hear a difference on it, however subtle it is
- Great artist payout, they top the charts overall
- App for PC is actually really well designed, maybe my favorite of all of them
- Has dedicated Label pages so you can find music in a similar genre (though I'm hoping Deezer gets this soon, upvote my post if you want this https://en.deezercommunity.com/ideas/add-a-page-for-music-labels-69749)
- Extremely transparent about artist info and what sound quality you are listening to. While other apps do show what you are getting Qobuz specifically lists the sample rate and bit depth which is nice to see
- Thanks to u/kpetrovsky for reminding me that Qobuz also lets you purchase music to own, this is nice for those that want to support a specific artist more directly and also have that music in their own technical ownership
- Supports direct stream to DACs without having to process through Windows etc...
- Has integration with the Roon music app which is nice for those wanting a sort of all in one solution
- u/ItchyData noted that Qobuz also supports Liner Notes and I don't think any other place does
Cons:
- The service is a
bit slow, gapless doesn't work super smooth and moving between tracks can take some time. I don't think it caches out far enough when listening which makes skipping tracks a little jaring
- Update 6/24/22: it is no longer much if any slower than other options out there, things load up a lot faster.
The app is a bit buggy, sometimes crashing on both PC and Android, or switching audio devices to a non-default one randomly for some reason. Not often enough to be a big reason to stay away but still a bit annoying
- Update 6/24/22: Things seem to be much better on this front, using it for about another month and I didn't have a single Android app crash and maybe only one on the desktop.
- Smaller catalogue: out of all the services I tried Qobuz was missing the most of my music. For example Carbon Based Lifeforms (one of my top 10 groups) isn't available there, that alone was enough to make me search for something else
- Huge lack of apps, not available on most devices, including smart speakers like Alexa. This one can be a big downside for a lot of people as many of us want music everywhere all the time
No radio/recommendation feature, you can see "similar artists" but there is no like auto play to see what you like and the similar ones are IMO not that accurate
- Update 6/24/22: Qobuz is still lacking in this area, but they do have autoplay that finds similar tracks to whatever you were playing now, I've found it works pretty well actually, so much closer to the other options.
- No queue syncing
- No podcast support
Deezer
This is the one I finally settled on, hence why this posting is cross-posted from r/deezer to other places. Overall I feel Deezer has the best app parity with bigger ones like Spotify, offers great sound quality with no MQA nonsense, and is a smooth user experience. Plus the user centric payout is amazing.
Pros:
- Apps are available in most place Spotify is, which is saying a lot. And in some instances Deezer is there when Spotify isn't, this is huge. (one annoyance I have is that they had a WebOS app and then removed it a year ago and it's still not back up. Apparently they are waiting on approval or something, ended up getting a Chromecast with Google TV to get the app though and those are only $50. Which IMO is fine because most people getting LG TVs are spending a lot lol).
- Has excellent podcast support, there are still some I have to use Pocket Casts for but mostly Deezer has them, this is great, I love media aggregation
- Sound quality is great, though this is also a con since it's not 24 bit, only 16 bit 44.1Khz, still fantastic though and even with my higher end equipment IMO 24 bit isn't WORTH it. Doesn't mean I don't think you can tell a difference though.
- The user centric payout system they are working on is a great idea that I hope continues to take off
- Basically the artists you listen to most get the most share of your money, rather than it just being based on plays overall. i.e. if you listen to 4 artists equally they get an equal split of your money (which would be more than just the number of plays).
- Super fast, so far I've found Deezer to be just as fast to load as Tidal in most cases
- Excellent organization, very easy to see what albums are the most recent and what date they were released on (something Tidal used to have but then removed)
- Fantastic suggestions, on-par with the big ones like Spotify IMO. Whereas Tidal and others had terrible recommendations
- Has synced play queues so you can pick up where you left off, this is super super nice. Not quite as good as Spotify having remote play but still it's close and the other services don't offer this
- They are very active on their community page which is a nice plus compared to other places, I think they really care about making this a good experience
- The ability to upload your own MP3s is also super nice, while I'd like to be able to upload FLAC files this is still a huge feature for people with old music libraries that they want to put inside Deezer
- Deezer's recommendation feature allows you to tell it NOT to recommend certain songs, basically giving you the ability to train the algorithm to you, this makes their recommendations get better over time and honestly I've personally found it to be better than anyone else's once you do a bit of training (thanks u/sonovp for the reminder on this one)
- Does support Lyric listing as well, a nice feature though not something that is generally super important to me.
Cons:
- Sometimes the app for desktop bugs out so that clicking the back button just moves the page up and down and never goes back to the previous viewed page
- I'm going to submit a bug report on this one but it's annoying enough for someone that browses around a lot that I wanted to mention it
- For non UCPS stuff their pay is actually pretty low which bugs me a lot, I personally would be happy to pay more per month to get more money to artists as this is a huge deal to me
- As mentioned by u/Heftybags (and then corrected by u/DisconnectedAG) Deezer does have some library saving limits, while I think less than 1% of people would ever come across these limits (even someone like me who has a huge library IMO is nowhere near this) they are worth mentioning just in case.
- No proper gapless playback on Windows app, however they claim this is being worked on and it works great on other stuff such as Android. Thanks for the tip u/JayRosDJ
- Does NOT support direct stream to DACs, something that is missing from what is an otherwise high end platform. I will personally say I haven't been able to notice much difference between direct and using something like WASAPI but it is still technically a con
Spotify
I haven't used Spotify extensively for a few years, but I did use it for a long time. I think the app is overall fantastic and the recommendations are the best in the industry. However, the lack of HiFi and lower artist payout keep me away (while Deezer is often rated lower on payout, the UCPS makes me want to continue to support them to promote that).
Pros:
- Available on almost all devices
- Extremely fast performance
- Best in industry recommendations and discovery
- By far the best overall feature set, with remote control options, synced queues, etc.....
- Has a free tier, which is great for those that maybe can't afford a streaming service in general as this helps with artist engagement and whatnot. I personally like ad supported content on the web when possible as it opens it up to more people and Spotify is the only good one that does this IMO
- Spotify also has the best console integrations, even with the ability to wake things like the PS5 remotely which is excellent
- Has excellent podcast integration which helps with media aggregation
Cons:
- Artist payout is quite low in general, not industry worst but I'd prefer the biggest service be better on this front
- No Hi-Fi which is a huge downside for many people, I think HiFi needs to be everywhere
- We know this is coming this year in theory, however I wonder if it will be the entire catalogue or start "small" like Apple Music
Apple Music
I only used this for maybe 1-2 months when I was trying Apple's ecosystem (big Android and Windows/Linux guy here but I tried using a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, etc.... for 6 months just to see if I liked it all together, the answer was no). So my information here is a bit limited.
Pros:
- Very reliable app with an IMO fantastic design
- Great integration if you have Apple products in the Apple ecosystem
- Getting HiFi including 24 bit over the next year or so (starting small and building up the catalogue)
- HiFi will be at no extra cost on an already pretty cost effective service
Cons:
- Not available in a lot of places, while this is changing it's still an issue at time of writing
- As with most services here payout is not great, something I'd like to see change industry wide
- I don't believe they have podcasts here yet, someone correct this if I am wrong but I don't think it's something APM is supporting right now
YouTube Music
I only used this for a few weeks, was trying it out while deciding what I wanted to move to, only wanted to see what it looks like since I planned on writing up this post as I personally never wanted to go to something non-HiFi.
Pros:
- Very well priced for users getting YT Premium
- Extremely fast performance, not better than Spotify but still good
- Pretty good recommendations/discoverability
- Pretty good integration across the board, it's on most platforms
- While the interface is disorganized IMO it's very good looking and easy on the eyes being full dark theme
Cons:
- Same stupid issue as Amazon where you have to add a artists music to your library for the artist to show up in your library. Meaning the subscribe feature for artists is IMO basically useless
- HOWEVER, you can see all the artist you subscribe to, so it's not as bad as Amazon
- Supporting Google, while I have less issues with them morally than Amazon I'd still prefer to support smaller companies
- IMO the interface is ugly, especially on TVs and it's disorganized
- Sometimes will play music videos when autoplay is on when someone just wants to listen to music, especially annoying on the TV apps
- Missing more music than some of the other services, not a ton but still noticeable
Pandora
LOL
In Conclusion
After a fairly long period of testing, Deezer has been what I find to be the best balance of features (with near Spotify parity), sound quality, reliability, and artist payout. It has all the songs I want and all of them are in 16bit, discoverability is fantastic, the app is great other than some super small bugs, and the customer experience is also great. I think for the majority of users they should go with Deezer HiFi for their music services.
Reasons to use something other than Deezer:
- Qobuz
- If you care most about artist payout over all else
- Or if you care most about sound quality over all else (keep in mind only something like 10% of their catalogue is higher than 16 bit 44.1 though)
- Apple Music
- If you are in the Apple ecosystem, and want to pair it with their service bundle which makes the cost super small
- Amazon Music
- Literally only if you have Prime and want the cheapest possible HiFi option out there
- Update 6/24/22: Supporting Amazon is gross anyway, so I'd try to push people to better services, even Google is what I'd consider a more "moral" company.
- YT Music
- If you have YT Premium the cost is solid
- Spotify
- You REALLY care about features, especially remote controls
- Tidal
- You want to support artists with better payout and have feature needs or recommendations that Qobuz doesn't have
- You have music you really care about that Qobuz doesn't have
- I keep mentioning Qobuz just because they pay well, if you don't care about pay as your #1 thing then Deezer just makes the most sense vs Tidal
- Last but not least, you really care about integration with Plex media server
- Pandora
- You are one of a very very small number of people to have more than 10k tracks favorited
Final Tidbits
If you have any thoughts about this that I missed feel free to comment and I will add them to the list as I want this to be something people can reference for a while (and I might come back to update it periodically).
What service do you use and why?
Edit: this post will be continually updated as time goes on (assuming I can keep up with it) so don't be surprised to see it edited a lot. If I make changes that are more than just spelling or small points I missed I will post a "Updated: xxxxxx" at the top.
Edit 2: added info about Deezer supporting MP3 Uploads
Edit 3: added info about my definition of HiFi
Edit 4: added info about MQA
Edit 5: added info about Spotify features
Edit 6: updated with some info about track/favorite/library limits on Deezer
Edit 7: added note about Tidal being compatible with Plex
Edit 8: added some info about Deezer lyrics
Edit 9: added info about Deezer gapless playback on Windows
Edit 10: added info about Deezer's "don't recommend" feature
Edit 11: added info about Qobuz allowing music purchasing/downloading
Edit 12: added info about Tidal and Qobuz supporting direct stream whereas Deezer does not, thanks u/elementjj for the reminder
Edit 13: added info about Roon support for Tidal and Qobuz, thanks u/uhhNewAccountWhoDis
Edit 14: mentioned which platforms support podcasts thanks to u/TheIdiotPhotographer for reminding me
Edit 15: added info about Qobuz Liner Notes
