I had gotten Youtube premium and enjoyed it. My subscription ran out and I find I have 90% use of it for free. I got it to listen to the app on my phone when I was out. However the app sucks ass. I would listen to one song and then the app would just crash. SO I never got to use it for the intended use.
So which would you choose? Youtube or Spotify? and how is the Spotify app on the phone?
Spotube, it uses your (free) Spotify account to get the Playlists and artist info etc, but then uses YouTube Music as source for playing the media. No ads.
I use Deezer. Not quite the same selection, but unless you’re listening to something pretty obscure I don’t think it’ll matter.
Plus if you do iirc the creator gets more per individual listen from Deezer than other platforms (don’t quote me on that though)
Deezer also doesn’t host JRE and they didn’t provide a platform for literal nazis, so advantages all around.
I will admit I like listening to obscure stuff which YouTube does really well. The only problem is that they will play the music video instead of the song on free youtube music.
Tidal is actually THE highest paying platform for artists if I remember correctly.
However, tidal adjusts it’s prices for the country’s gdp, so it’s half the price here in Romania. This also means the artists payout is reduced, so that’s worth noting.
If you’re on Android, NewPipe is a great option.
I’m using Deezer, because its Duo plan’s T&C doesn’t require couples to live in the same household. (Fuck Spotify because of their shitty plan.)
Unfortunately Deezer’s Android app sucks, because it never reaches the server. Sometimes songs are just restarting or stopping, and you have to press the “add to favorites” button hundreds of times to finally successfully add it to your list. It’s horrible. But in the browser it’s smooth, there’s no problem with it. I even find songs I would never expect to find there (much more than on Spotify). Also you can create playlists together with others, even if others are using a different streaming provider.
If your only choice is between YouTube and Spotify, I’d go for Spotify because fuck Google, and also Spotify app is smooth, and has the ability to control your music from your phone even when the music is playing on another device. (This is possible to do with 3rd party apps with any music player, but Spotify has it built in.)
I’ve used Spotify with subscription on android for years and never had any issue with it. The Web and desktop apps have also worked well for the last decade or so.
Deezer, Newpipe, YouTube have all had their places, but Spotify does it’s thing the best.
For music, I just buy the songs I want from iTunes, it is nice not needing to rent my music.
Have both here, spotify crashes randomly or I just get a blank screen and sometimes requires force stopping the app to make it work at all. I have a phone with an SD card (rare I know) and set in the spotify app to download songs to the SD card, however it randomly switches that option back to internal storage for no reason I am able to discern. I gave up changing this setting after the fourth time as spotify just straight up won’t work for like a week or 2 (done everything except un and reinstall as I don’t want to have to manually re-download all my music (I don’t have everything in Playlist as I usually enjoy jumping from album to album without spotify shuffling the same 3 songs it thinks I love immediately after). I have over 20k liked song but spotify only want to play the same handful of songs makes it really frustrating to use. Spotify also has a really annoying habit of removing an album from the artists page whenever an anniversary or remastered edition comes out. I understand not wanting to have several of the same album listed, but sometimes I prefer the original recording before everything was ‘cleaned up’.
YouTube music is my backup music player for when spotify shits itself, as stated above it usually fixes itself after a week or two The main reason I dislike yt music more than spotify is that it plays audio from videos that are straight up not music. It also plays the outros of videos where artists are talking about the album, thanking you for listening, or upcoming tours (which have already happened since the songs were released years ago). These 2 issues keep me from fully switching to yt music.
Got a cheap mp3 player and micro sd card and use that more than either yt or spotify. No internet required, no ads, no songs getting delisted, no subscription. Just all my music readily available.
I self-host with navidrome. I fill up the library with spot-dl. I listen to it with tempo on Android.
I really wanna set up navidrome when I get my new NAS. It sounds awesome.
I use innertune which uses yt music. Its a lightweight app. Does have its issues but my favourite of the lot
Does it play when the phone is in the pocket? That was the big issue I has with the youtube music app.
Oh yeah no issue there
I have both. I find that YouTube Music has a much better algorithm, but the app really does sucks, although at least it doesn’t crash for me. Spotify’s app is a lot more polished (although lately it too has started to enshittify), but the music discovery is a bit lacking. Audio quality is better on Spotify, YTM just sounds compressed to be as loud as possible.
Deezer. They’re actually starting to fix stuff.
I switched from YouTube Music to Deezer. I like it!
I had GPM for years, and dealt with YTM for about a year before getting sick of it. Spotify isn’t bad, and a lot of alternatives the comments mention I’m sure are good as well. Honestly though, I ended up just archiving all my music in a Jellyfin server and paying $5 for the Symfonium app. It’s pretty nice.
Spotify on mobile is a torture test if you do not use a mod or have a subscription.
That’s why I’m asking. I’m trying to decide if I should renew YouTube or get a Spotify subscription. Spotify is cheaper with the three months free introductory offer.
Are you on android? So this exists It is the app you’re talking about, they just carefully don’t mention that to avoid obvious illegality. I’d also check out https://revanced.app/ for YT. The patcher also supports a number of other apps these days, including Spotify and Twitch.
These are slightly technical tools that will probably take you 10-20min of reading to understand. In think that is worthwhile to not hear ads and not pay a monthly subscription. But everyone has their tolerance levels.
Spotify app is OK. I can listen to music on background with no problems. You said you listen to obscure songs, Spotify is lacking in that regard and YTM has the best library.
Radio Free Fedi (https://radiofreefedi.net/)
