Best Music Subscription Services Compared
Dec 11, 2014 at 6:15 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 3

SoAmusing777

1000+ Head-Fier
Joined
Dec 1, 2012
Posts
1,011
Likes
26
This is my own personal list based on my research. Big factors are quality, library size and User interface, as well as support (in order of importance).
 
My vote would be for Google's all access service for now.

GOOGLE - Great customer support
- over 30 million songs
- 320kbps quality in MP3 CBR 3.97b2 lame (confirmed - I emailed them)
- 50,000 song upload (use to be 20k)
- http://soundexpert.org/encoders-320-kbps it actually has the best quality since it's CBR lame 3.97b2. Correction: Regular AAC (not AAC+ or that MP3) at is the best.
- No offline song Limit
**Special Note -
  Google has one dealbreaker problem: it ANNIHILATES data on cell. If you pull up a playlist or an album it starts caching the entire thing. This is a slight problem when I'm at the gym and bouncing between stuff because within 2 minutes I've used up 100mb of data. 
Used it on my iPhone and literally a minute into the first song on a playlist I'd burned up 40mb. Absurd. 
It's the fact that it caches an entire playlist/album instead of the next song ahead.
 
EDIT/Update: You can turn off caching in the settings.
 
RDIO - just upgraded all it's stuff to 320kbps AAC
- Over 30mill songs
- Who knows if it's upsampled or original 320kbps. I emailed them.
- No offline song limit as well as NO DEVICE LIMIT (only one to do this)
 
RHAPSODY (Acquired Napster not too long ago) -
- 320kbps on mobile, but not on desktop yet. That comes in the next update, which who knows when.
- They use 320kbps when the provider allows or if not possible, upsamples older music.
- Not sure what format. Won't specify. I believe it's WMA though.
- No offline song limit
 
SONY MUSIC UNLIMITED - uses 320kbps AAC
- Bad customer service
- iffy IU, especially offline.
- No offline song limit
** Can't even talk to anyone about it on the phone. Hard to get in contact with them as well so no details on the origin of the AAC.

SPOTIFY - 10,000 offline limit (so that's 3,333 per device. Seems to be that way even if you use only 1 device. Dumb. I checked their site)
- 320KBPS ogg vorbis (although I've read Google and Sony's music has better quality so maybe they are upsampling lower quality files)
- idk how much of a library (20-22million?).
 
DEEZER - is also coming stateside sometime soon
- is the largest subscription service worldwide boasting over 35mil songs
- has lossless as well as 24bit master tracks for download when available
 
As I mentioned before TIDAL is now available stateside (it comes from WiMP overseas)
- $20 for lossless (too pricey for me, especially considering netflix went 4k taking up, idk, 15MBPS, yet 320kbps is still a big deal in the audio world, lol)
- the song labeling and search feature isn't up to par yet.
 
Jan 5, 2015 at 11:58 AM Post #2 of 3
I might do a write-up for Beats. I used it for a little while. 
 
Mar 27, 2015 at 2:12 PM Post #3 of 3
Feel free anyone to shed some light so I can update this.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top