Apple Music isn't the best streaming music service — it's just the least annoying

What kind of illogical comment is that? First, you bring in Microsoft to a discussion it is not a part of; second, just because Microsoft does it wrong, it doesn't give Apple a license to do things the convoluted way too.

Apples and oranges. For all its faults (and there are lots), Microsoft doesn't require you to own a Microsoft phone or tablet in order to set up an XBox's parental controls. You can do it from a website with any device you want - including the Linux machines I use almost exclusively for computing.

Spotify does have a terrible interface though.

I've used Apple services. My kids have iPads. The parental controls and shared app library controls required for them was a pain in the ass to set up, because there is no web interface for it. You have to use the iOS or MacOS app store for certain steps.

I succeeded only because I managed to get a hold of an old, unused Mac from my work, which I could configure with my Apple account.

That’s the fediverse for you! I’ve had better software discussion outside of it tbh.

Anyhow, library management on Apple Music is also way less annoying than on Spotify, especially when handling tracks you import from your local library.

Tidal pays artists even more, and has some features Apple Music doesn't have for the same price (or cheaper if you're Military/First Responder)

But of course Apple Music is better for some people for certain features it has. And Tidal's hi-fi plan is more expensive. I get the knee jerk dislike of Apple, but nuance almost always gets lost online.

That being said, Spotify sucks lol

I don't understand how it would be convenient at all to have your whole collection just online, restricted to a single proprietary site/app. I do use musical streaming, but it's for discovering new tracks. All the actual listening happens locally on my computer and player. I cannot afford to actually buy the music, but if I did, I probably would pay for the albums I listen to the most, not the whole library.

I’ll admit it sounded a little showy to me too, but a lot of the nicher things with their own benefits sound pretentious when just being said in plain wording. I like fountain pens because they’re pleasant to write with but are more expensive and less convenient. Always sounds pretentious just saying I like them and why if I don’t throw in the caveats like I did here.

There’s the chance he is trying to, of course. I try to assume the best these days for my own sake though

I don't think his post is meant to be hostile. It's not pointless, but it would add more of a discussion to elaborate on the topic.

On the topic of choosing to own (download (without DRM)) your music, one of the benefits is that it allows you to have all your music available in whichever music player (app/program/streaming service) you like. You can access the music while offline, without being required to pay some subscription fee. If downloading, it's generally also very easy to switch between different players if you so desire to in the future. You can control the metadata (swap album art, edit track info, etc.) You can sometimes even use owned media in tandem with streaming services to put all your media in one place within a streaming service's app/program. Usually, doing this requires less purchases/downloads to get all your media in one place, but still requires a sub.

On the topic of using Apple Music as a player.. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but you needed to use iTunes (on a PC!) to import local MP3 files to Apple Music, which, iTunes, love it or hate it, requires you to not only own a PC, but it has its limitations such as FLAC files being unsupported... That being said, Apple Music does provide a great convenience for many people and it's often cheaper than legally purchasing all of your songs. You can even add your downloaded songs from a PC (but not locally from an android device for some reason??)

I prefer to own my music. For anyone who likes the idea but doesn't know where to start, I can give some recommendations for convenience.

For music acquisition, use a legal website like Bandcamp to purchase your music, most of the money goes to Artists, compared to some other platforms. Alternatively you could pirate.. (illegal! I don't care if you pirate, but I'm not gonna write a tutorial.)

If you want to sync owned/downloaded files, use: SyncThing - free software that lets you automatically mirror file directories between your devices, syncing your libraries with no fees required. Available on Android/Win/Linux/Mac

For players, I recommend:

Android:

PowerAmp - trial & one time purchase, has theming support, massive customization options

Oto Music - lite version or one time purchase, supports downloading & embedding lyrics

PC:

MusicBee - free, has theming support, allows loading network files (local or remote)

Plenty of players available for different functional needs and/or aesthetics, but these are what I currently use.

You realized what? I don't understand

Not to mention newpipe or of course the many many local storage players, Vinyl my first choice

Those are the discussions I'm interested in. YT music is making me cringe with ads between nearly every song.

I'd like to suggest adding InnerTune.

Simptube seems to not exist

I try out different things, they have apps on other platforms so the expectation is for those apps to not be a hateful cluster fuck on those platforms

If Microsoft made a thing for Mac I wouldn't want or expect it to suck either.

True

Some of these are valid, especially #6 and #7

But a lot of them, frankly, just aren't true:

1. Can't turn off album art or colorized elements changing bright colors while driving

You can turn off the flashy moving stuff entirely with one setting, if you get distracted by a static album art image while driving then you really should be using a hardware device to control playback instead tbh

1a. The last straw for me was when they deprecated car mode entirely

Car mode is still here, and works perfectly well - in fact they've improved the visual clarity recently to make it even clearer

2. Can't combine your own music

They won't host it for you, but you can absolutely combine the music on your local device with your local library

3. No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet

There is a setting for exactly this. I personally think there's something to be said for not modifying songs in the background though

4. No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization

Yes there is, afaik it's per-device only

5. Periodic check-in required

Ehh, this one's kinda fair from a business perspective - it makes sense that the platform would need to verify your subscription occasionally for licensing reasons, but I can see why this would be mildly annoying if you use it very infrequently and are eg on a plane

6. Constant background app openings

I'm not sure I can say I've seen any issue with this, but if you really don't like it being active in the background, you can just turn off Spotify Connect in the background in settings

7. Quality is terrible

If the audio quality is audibly bad then it's likely due to not using the very high audio quality setting, or automatic quality adjustment due to network conditions (again, you can turn this off though it may result in buffering)

Honestly, I don't think playing music through the worst speaker you can find is a reasonable way to assess the audio quality - like yeah, no shit it's going to be bad. "Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this"

Tldr: just look at settings lol

#2 would kill it for me. I have plenty of music in AM that isn’t available to stream on any service. A lot of older stuff isn’t available on streaming.

I don't think Spotify supports uploading your own music files. It can indeed show local files, but i'm not aware of a upload mechanism such as YouTube Music has.