[fallingreason]

  Well, guys.  This is good news: http://blog.rdio.com/us/2014/04/artist-for-quality-rdio-the-grateful-deads-bob-weir-partner-for-better-streaming-audio-.html

 Ugh, I signed up for Rdio and used it for a month or so because of this but they must not have converted most of their media to higher quality yet because it sounds like trash.
 
Going to either use Spotify @320 or see if Beats has gotten any better...

 

[SomeGuyDude]

   Ugh, I signed up for Rdio and used it for a month or so because of this but they must not have converted most of their media to higher quality yet because it sounds like trash.
 
Going to either use Spotify @320 or see if Beats has gotten any better...

 
Beats has not gotten better. They have done nothing.
 
If you're not married to Spotify's discovery engine and all of that, Google Play is prooooobably the best bet for straight-up audiophiles. 

 

[cn11]

   
Beats has not gotten better. They have done nothing.
 
If you're not married to Spotify's discovery engine and all of that, Google Play is prooooobably the best bet for straight-up audiophiles. 

 
Google Play has gotten my subscription money of late. It's still not ideal though. Their music database is missing a few of my favorite albums. Needs some filling out. 

 

[SomeGuyDude]

   
Google Play has gotten my subscription money of late. It's still not ideal though. Their music database is missing a few of my favorite albums. Needs some filling out. 

 
The nice thing about GPMAA is that you can add your own music to it and stream from mobile or whatever. It's super convenient. I buy a lot of stuff on BandCamp and it's excellent to be able to have it with me.
 
UNFORTUNATELY, T-Mobile has a deal with Spotify and a few others wherein streaming data doesn't count against your data usage, so what I did was drop my data plan to 3gb instead of unlimited and I'm sticking with Spotify. On the other hand, I can just put all my stuff on an SD card too. 

 

[adisib]

As much as I hate it, Spotify is still king of music streamers for me. It uses OGG Vorbis (rdio is the only other service I can even find info on which encoder), has a desktop client as incredibly bloated and buggy as it is, and has a good sized collection of music. Not much else; it wouldn't be too hard for a service to surpass it, though they don't. They just copy off of each other.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  As much as I hate it, Spotify is still king of music streamers for me. It uses OGG Vorbis (rdio is the only other service I can even find info on which encoder), has a desktop client as incredibly bloated and buggy as it is, and has a good sized collection of music. Not much else; it wouldn't be too hard for a service to surpass it, though they don't. They just copy off of each other.

 
Really? GPMAA uses MP3, Beats uses AAC for low quality and MP3 at high quality, I forget what the others did.
 
The funny thing about OGG (and I thiiiiiink Spotify uses their own, not Vorbis) is that it's significantly better at low bitrates, but not high bitrates. So GPMAA is actually a little better at full quality, but Spotify is way better at lower. 
 
I actually love Spotify ever since they did the "Your Music" deal. Aside from the occasional quirk in functionality, I don't even know what it needs. I can't think of anything Spotify is missing inherently.

 

[adisib]

   
Really? GPMAA uses MP3, Beats uses AAC for low quality and MP3 at high quality, I forget what the others did.
 
The funny thing about OGG (and I thiiiiiink Spotify uses their own, not Vorbis) is that it's significantly better at low bitrates, but not high bitrates. So GPMAA is actually a little better at full quality, but Spotify is way better at lower. 
 
I actually love Spotify ever since they did the "Your Music" deal. Aside from the occasional quirk in functionality, I don't even know what it needs. I can't think of anything Spotify is missing inherently.

 
Thanks for the information, I have been unable to find that information. They make it difficult to find.
 
Spotify definitely uses Vorbis, unless they have been lying.
https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/faq/#!/article/What-bitrate-does-Spotify-use-for-streaming
 
I've heard that OGG Vorbis was superior to AAC and LAME at 100+ bitrate, I think from hydrogenaudio. Wikipedia seems to confirm this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Quality
Though that information is likely very outdated. Personal listening tests between LAME, Nero AAC, and Vorbis have been entirely in favor of Vorbis, though AAC is extremely close.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Nope, looks like I was misinformed! My mistake.
 
I will say that just going from Spotify to GPMAA back and forth and back and forth has either proven a tie or a slight tilt for GPMAA, but not enough for it to be an issue. It's also REALLY hard to do that kind of test reliably by yourself. I do know that LAME has gone through some significant upgrades in recent times, but who knows if Google uses it. 

 

[adisib]

  Nope, looks like I was misinformed! My mistake.
 
I will say that just going from Spotify to GPMAA back and forth and back and forth has either proven a tie or a slight tilt for GPMAA, but not enough for it to be an issue. It's also REALLY hard to do that kind of test reliably by yourself. I do know that LAME has gone through some significant upgrades in recent times, but who knows if Google uses it. 

 
You can't perform a reliable test that way, because AFAIK there is no way to ensure the volumes are entirely equivalent, even with normalization off, as well as possible bias as you know the source of each. I suggest getting a lossless file and converting it youself with the latest LAME and Vorbis encoders, and playing it in the same music player, and ABXing it. I know I was using the most recent Nero AAC and LAME, but I was using my players included Vorbis so that one might not have been the best (though probably very little difference) when I tested. Vorbis excels for me in bass, so you will also want to test it on multiple genres.
 
Do you know how good of support GPMAA has?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Eh, even if I proved that Spotify was sonically inferior I'm pretty well tied to it now, LOL. But I like its discovery engine FAR more than GPMAA anyway, I've found tons of amazing stuff through it that Google never would have found.
 
No idea on Google's support, I've never had to turn to them. 

 

[SoAmusing777]

People, is anyone away that Sony has a service as well? Sony Music Unlimited? It's like 320kbps AAC I'm pretty sure. Has a mobile app too that has an offline mode. I love it.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  People, is anyone away that Sony has a service as well? Sony Music Unlimited? It's like 320kbps AAC I'm pretty sure. Has a mobile app too that has an offline mode. I love it.

 
Yeah, but I'm not in love with the service. The library isn't great, for one, and I'm worried about whether or not they'll really keep on top of it.

 

[SoAmusing777]

   
Yeah, but I'm not in love with the service. The library isn't great, for one, and I'm worried about whether or not they'll really keep on top of it.

What would you suggest instead?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

IMO it's between Google and Spotify. If you like using the service itself for discovery and add-ons, Spotify. If you're aiming for a big online repository of music and like the ability to add your own to it, Google. 

 

[cdeviney]

  People, is anyone away that Sony has a service as well? Sony Music Unlimited? It's like 320kbps AAC I'm pretty sure. Has a mobile app too that has an offline mode. I love it.

See post # 157 of this thread.