this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Spotify and YT music have the two lowest bitrates at 192kbps for YT and 328kbps for Spotify so they both sound like garbage. I've never listened to music less than when I was using YT music. Bad personalized playlists, awful sound quality, it would mix in music videos and shit. I'd rather the radio at that point
Tidal sounds vastly better (1441kbps lossless CD quality at the same price) but their personalized playlists are quite lacking.
However... I've found Apple Music to be the best one. Its audio quality is even higher than Tidal, supporting not only lossless, but also high-res lossless (between 4608 and 9616 kbps... far above above CD quality, great for studio speakers.) Its recommendations are almost as good as Spotify too.
I don't own any Apple hardware btw, the app works great on Android. The Windows app is "in preview" but it's pretty stable and both of them support lossless audio (just don't use the website to listen, that's not lossless)
Edit: spelling and formatting looked okay on my tiny phone
Edit 2: I forgot to mention that both Spotify (and especially YT Music try as hard as possible to not pay artists. Tidal was known for paying artists really well until a year or two ago when new ownership changed things. Apple Music still pays pretty well (for a streaming service)
Edit 3: Tidal also has high-res lossless but the "Max" tier is twice the price
Tidal doesn't have lossless. Apple music and Deezer do.
https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc
Tidal dropped MQA a while ago they switched to hi-res FLAC. They sold MQA off to some Canadian company
Really. The last time I checked was about a year ago
Yea it was pretty recent, 2-3 months ago. I'm not sure if they're done ~~migrating~~ replacing all of the MQA files though because even the Hi-Fi (below Master) would get a downsampled MQA instead of a FLAC. It should be HFLAC and FLAC now
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I get what you're saying and if quality matters to you, go for it. I listen on Bluetooth headphones while commuting, and I really can't tell the difference... For me, the added benefit of YouTube Premium is better than the potential sound quality increase. It's great that we have choices :)
Edit: YT Music has 256kbps AAC & OPUS
oh neat they upgraded, it used to be 192kbps which is abysmal, they should have updated to at least 320 but whatever
What is the bitrate for the "High" (Not HiFi/FLAC) quality version? I had heard it was 320, so the same as Spotify. Unfortunately when I tried Tidal a couple of weeks ago, most of the music I listen to only goes up to "High".
Though not that I have top of the line headphones to make a difference anyways, I'm sure.
“High” is Lossless - 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (aka CD Quality). It used to be called “HiFi.”
“Low” has two options (for me at least): 96 or 320 kbps (AAC).
“Max” is HiRes and MQA.
HiRes is anything better than High, up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Some (many?) HiRes songs are 24-bit / 44.1 kHz.
MQA is older and worse than HiRes and I don’t recall hearing good things about it.
Tidal's entire library should be lossless unless you're on the free ad tier. But the high quality should be 320? I don't have a subscription anymore
I actually think that nowadays YouTube music is better than Spotify. It's just that the sound quality kinda sucks.
I totally would've agreed 1-2 years ago though.
Spotify is inching toward adding the level of personalisation that Google Play Music used to have and YT Music is still playing catch-up. GPM used to have playlists for location and time of day (Wednesday afternoon at home, or Friday night at work, Tuesday morning on the road, etc). I'm still salty they killed it. Unfortunately they all sound like trash if unless you're listening to Bluetooth. The lossless files make a tiny difference on old car Bluetooth but not much, it's a tad cleaner when it's only being compressed once as opposed to twice. On wired headphones though it's a night-and-day difference