I’ve had YouTube Music since it was Google Music, but the price has recently doubled and at the same time I’ve started noticing my “Radio” keeps playing the same dozen songs over and over again. Started to feel like I was listening to Triple M.
Yesterday was the final straw as every song played on repeat until you manually skipped which is just… wtf? How does that even happen?
I have jumped on to Spotify for the minute, but find it is too heavily focused on “pop” music - it seems to choose songs that are broadly more popular, but aren’t really the same as what I’m choosing to play. I somehow always end up back with top 50 chart artists in the queue, even if I started on like bluegrass or hillbilly or something. Also if I select a song or artist and choose “Radio”, it always the same 50 songs and then just stops which doesn’t seem like what “Radio” should be at all.
What other options are there that are accessible from Australia, and preferably have a decent amount of Australian local content? I have zero interests in podcasts being jammed in, I just want music. And preferably music that I can just say “play stuff that sounds like this” and it’ll go on a deep dive to focus on things I haven’t heard before.
Critical:
- No ads
- Able to actually choose the music and skip and what not, so not Sirius or similar
- Good catalogue of Australian artists
- Android and Desktop clients
- “Family” plan or similar for 2 people
Budget not really an issue.
Apple Music is very good (and you don’t need an iPhone). For me at least it recommends good songs, but even better you don’t need to use those. There are extensive playlists that are manually curated by experts - for example Aussie Pub Rock is a hundred song playlist that is regularly updated by their team of editors.
Audio quality also tends to be better on Apple Music. They encourage recording studios to produce a “Mastered for iTunes” mix and have strict quality controls as well as training for the recording studio to make sure they do a good job. You won’t find anything amateur with that label but even for professional massive artists I think they sound better there too - because Mastered for iTunes tracks are intended to be listened to with relatively neutral speakers/headphones (the only kind Apple sells) while a lot of other services have professionally mixed sound tracks designed for bass heavy speakers that so many people have nowadays out side of Apple’s walled garden. I find I often need to boost the base to get good sound from Spotify/YouTube Music/etc because they assume your speakers will do that for you.
The difference isn’t subtle - I’m not talking about a 256 vs 320 Kbps encoding difference. The same song from a major artist (e.g. Taylor Swift) will often sound totally different on Apple Music. Wether it sounds “better” depends on your speakers, but with my speakers (which are not from Apple), they do sound better. A lot better.
But personally I’ve gone back to just buying music. The idea that I’ll pay who knows what ever month for the rest of my life… no thanks.
I’ll jump on YouTube occasionally to discover new music, but i’m not paying for it (Apple Music, sadly, has no free tier… but it does have a free trial).