Music Subscription services and their various merits - The Bear and Badger

MattyJ

Dinostar77 wrote:

MattyJ wrote:

@Dino - I've got a Sonos Play1 at home and it's great. Sound quality is nice and you can adjust all the bass/treble etc from the app. You can control one or all speakers at the same time, set up different radio stations etc on there. Only bug bear is that as an Apple Music subscriber it doesn't allow for that service, so I can't play stuff off that. But it does have Spotify if you have an account.

Cheers dude. i dont have apple stuff so that shouldn't be a problem. i had a play with the sonos play1 and play3 in john lewis. really liked it as did the misses. Two play1s sounded good a play1 with a play3 sounded so much richer. Might holdoff till black friday to see if there are any discounts on a play1

Q. Can you copy music onto it?
Q. No issues with radio 1, listen again player etc? i do love my essential mixes.
Q. Can you stream music frm youtube?

Can't copy music onto it, it takes it from your device or network I think.
Radio 1 streams fine but there is no option for the listen again stuff, it works like a normal radio.
I don't think so...You can stream from a fair amount of services though like Rdio, Tidal, Deezer, LastFM

acemuzzy

I got a play 1 recently. Also like it, and it works nicely with Google play. In terms of "couldn't you just plug the speaker in", well yes, but it's nice being able to basically treat your phone as normal, plus different music in different rooms is kinda funky if you have more than one (though I just have one as it stands).

Facewon

I use my little bluetooth speakers in the bed room when I need to, and sometimes my pc speakers, when I set up my monitor with laptop, but the house is big enough that if money wasn't an issue I'd be all over a bunch of Sonos.

AJ

Haven't got it yet (no Internet here) but I reckon I'll just plug a Chromcast info my existing kit. Seems a good budget option.

weadre

Yeah I'm looking to get one of those audio Chromecasts. Seems a pretty good, cheap solution.

Facewon

Have the og chromecast. It's very handy. And even using it through the TV for audio is cool. GREAT for youtube.

WorKid

What does Sonos do over half-decent Bluetooth speaker?

acemuzzy

The other half?

Facewon

lols. Apart from sound quality, I think it's much more integrated. Linked in with wifi, play different things in different rooms, app integration, etc. Someone in one of these threads posted an article/review which made it sound the dogs bollocks.

Meanwhile, Rdio is escalating things quickly. No new subs as of now, paid service shuts down on the 23rd of Nov. The free stuff will run a bit longer, so AJ has a bit of a reprieve.

Thank you for your support of Rdio over the years. You helped make Rdio not only a place to listen and discover, but also a community of dedicated music lovers. We’ve enjoyed working on Rdio as much as you’ve enjoyed using it. It’s been an honor serving you.

As a result of Pandora’s planned acquisition of Rdio, the Rdio service will be winding down in the coming weeks.

Effective Monday, November 23, if you currently have an Rdio subscription, it will be canceled on your next billing date, and you will no longer be automatically charged. Rest assured that your subscription will remain active for any period of time you've already been billed. Also starting November 23, Rdio will no longer take new subscriptions.

After your subscription ends, you can continue listening to Rdio Free (ad-supported stations on mobile or ad-supported, on-demand songs, albums, and playlists on the web) until the service goes offline.

We’ll be in touch via email in the near future with more specifics, including the exact timing of Rdio’s end of service, as well as information on exporting your Rdio data, including your playlists and favorites.

We’re honored to have connected so many listeners around the world with the music they love. Our goal is to make this transition as smooth as possible. If you have any questions or concerns, go to help.rdio.com.
Thank You

If they come through on the export front, I'll be very happy.

Facewon

Realised I should just check back in with spotify. Still some fucking baffling design, why are some things playlists and somethings albums? Why is the app so text and list heavy, and not using nice album icons?

I'm sure I'll get used to it. Wins out, in the end, because despite not having a good discovery kinda thing (IMO), it's got my FB feed with a number of my musical breathren on it, so I'll be back pillaging their lists.

cockbeard

For me that us Google Music's biggest (possibly only) weak spot. I've never been that fused about social integration of music but do sometimes like saying what mates are listening to and it's just not possible with Google. However I don't see any other issue with the service. I don't find the interface at all difficult to use, if people mean in relation to tagging music, then yes, but it's a media player not an organiser, go to media monkey or build your own database to organiser your music before uploading it

Kow

Facewon wrote:

Realised I should just check back in with spotify. Still some fucking baffling design, why are some things playlists and somethings albums? Why is the app so text and list heavy, and not using nice album icons?

The search certainly comes up with nice album icons. What do you mean by why are some things playlists and some things albums? Sometimes I just want a complete album rather than a playlist. Anyway if you add the album it becomes its own playlist.

AJ

Facewon wrote:

Meanwhile, Rdio is escalating things quickly. No new subs as of now, paid service shuts down on the 23rd of Nov. The free stuff will run a bit longer, so AJ has a bit of a reprieve.

Nope, can't stand ads on music. Fuck. Three days for someone else to build a decent service. Fuck.

Funkstain

I've got a few Sonos pieces. The Playbar and a couple of Play3s.

You can't pair a Play1 with a Play3, you can only pair like-with-like if you're looking for stereo separation.

The advantages of Sonos, for my uses, over BT:

- Direct link, on speaker, with music service (in my case Spotify, my own music library, and all the internet radio stations) so I only need to use one app (Sonos) to control all my music playback. Can create custom playlists from all sources.

- That direct link also means I can just press "play" on the actual speaker and it will resume playing the last used service: no need to get phone, open app, find service, connect to speaker, press play.

- Different music in different rooms or same music in all rooms (which is pretty cool actually) all controllable through single app. Individual volume and sound controls.

- Auto power on and off if music starts playing, no need to ever touch sonos speaker.

- Constant improvements to software (both app and on speaker).

- Sounds really good (subjective).

- For the Playbar, auto-detection of TV source so will play TV sound with no interference.

It's expensive.

Funkstain

On the YouTube and Catch-up services. How were you planning on watching the YT videos: computer / mobile device? Or connected TV? Or computer / mobile device casting to TV?

Facewon

cockbeard wrote:

I don't find the interface at all difficult to use, if people mean in relation to tagging music, then yes, but it's a media player not an organiser, go to media monkey or build your own database to organiser your music before uploading it

I don't think it's much to ask for stuff you've added/favourited to be prominent or easy to get to. Clearly I'm in the minority, and there's no wrong way to listen to music, but Rdio just has all the stuff you've added in chronological order (as in when you added it, not release date). You can change it to alphabetical or by artist or whatever, but it just seems the obvious way to do things. Google play app has the album section 4 spots away to the right.

weadre

The main thing that annoys me about spotify on my phone is that you can't see a list of all your offline stuff in one place. Would be great to be able to browse this to see what I can play, and also to see what I can delete to free up space.

Facewon

Really? Ffs. Why is Rdio the one going out of business?

Kow

Well there's a filter at the top that lets you show only downloaded things.

weadre

ffs thanks was not aware of that!

Although...if I go into albums and filter them it lists all these albums, even if I just have one track from them on a playlist. Is there a way I can only show the albums that are fully offline?

Facewon

Kow wrote:

Well there's a filter at the top that lets you show only downloaded things.

haha. Thank god.

Kow

weadre wrote:

ffs thanks was not aware of that!

Although...if I go into albums and filter them it lists all these albums, even if I just have one track from them on a playlist. Is there a way I can only show the albums that are fully offline?

Dunno actually, I don't think I have any downloaded albums to check with.

Facewon

Oh god. This playlist shit is already doing my head in. How do I set albums for offline listening?

It's not obvious. Why are some "albums" playlists and others not?

Why can't I just put a "playlist" which is clearly just a fucking album into another playlist?

How is this the most popular sub service?

It's a fucking dog's breakfast.

How did I forget this?

Facewon

Fucking hell. Can't set up what's DLed to your phone on the laptop.

Seriously.

Kow

Are you talking about spotify? Just right click the album and choose creates new playlist and it creates a playlist with the name of the album.

weadre

Yeah its a bit confusing.

So you can save albums, but tbh if you want to save an album you're better off just making it a playlist. For reasons such as the thing I mentioned above.

Not ideal, but you do get used to it. You can make folders for playlists which helps keep them organised.

Kow

The album saves as a playlist so it's just the album with all the tracks in order. It may be called a playlist but it's the album.

Facewon

Not necessarily. I have a bunch of albums that are under the album heading, I can then make them a playlist, but if I've come across something, like I did with Anderson Paak, which was a playlist on my mate's public profile, it's a playlist, I then for the sake of the label< I had to go in and search for anderson paak and add it to my album collection. WTF?

I then discover that adding things to the queue means it plays after the song currently playing. Not after the album I'm currently playing. Are there settings I'm missing?

I realise I'm totally being a dumb Rdio fanboy, but I really can't see one thing on spotify that isn't done more logically and better on Rdio.

If I want to faff about with manually putting a list together I can, but otherwise, it does it all for me.

Kow

As far as I know, adding to albums doesn't make the songs playable, it just saves albums to some kind of place where you can remember stuff, a bit like saving artists. Right clicking on the album and choosing add to playlist and then the option "new" saves the album as a playlist. There's another option to set up a queue but I've never actually used it. I think I'm misunderstanding what your confusion is though, as I've never used rdio and spotify at this point is fairly clear to me.

Facewon

They do go to that album spot, and they are playable. I just see no reason for not just calling them albums, and just having all the options in the right click options.

It really does just add steps that aren't necessary.

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