I have spotify family/premium plan which gets used by myself daily on my phone (all android in this house), my wife listening to podcasts on her phone while doing arts and crafts, and whenever we both want something played by one or all of the amazon echo devices in the house.

My wife watches youtube a lot for crafting videos and I have considered switching for a while so I signed up to the free month of the family plan. The immediate downside is that you can only play to an amazon device via bluetooth connection there is no streaming option for youtube music so I cant just say 'alexa play whatever' like I can currently with spotify. The youtube music app is just as adequate as the spotify app but there is no podcasts list, for that you have to use an alternative so the wife uses google podcasts. I have always used Pocket Casts app on my phone so I will continue to use that. Youtube premium also costs a few dollars more than the spotify plan, and while I have lost stream to device and podcast functionality, I gained the play-offline, picture-in-picture/background play function of the youtube app, removal of adds from youtube and the wife was very impressed with that. At the end of the free trial I will review and see how we all feel.
One of the family plan members was the wife's parents......they may get the news that i will cut them off if I stop with spotify, chef's kiss to the anticipation I have over breaking the news to them that they have to sort their own stuff out.

I also hold out hope for the promise that Google One will one day improve its benefits to include better bundled offers and discounts. I am a google Play Pass subscriber as my 5 year old gets a lot of value out of that on his tablet. I cannot speak highly enough of the parental control and overall ecosystem of Kids mode on a galaxy tablet combined with play pass.

I did consider amazon music, but music comes and goes from their catalogue at such a strange rate and a few of my regular podcasts dont appear on it. It also annoys me that amazon prime isnt a good deal in this country, I would get no discount for having prime video (which I currently have) and amazon music unlimited at the same time.

So my current streaming provider/subscriptions are Spotify, Netflix, Google Play Pass, Amazon Prime Video. What would be ideal is some kind of Google service bundle and Netflix, drop the rest. I think when September rolls around, or sometime close to that, and the Vodafone Tvs stop working, and when we know what will become of these streaming boxes, then I will revisit Netflix etc and decide what the options are.

fizzychicken:

 

Youtube premium also costs a few dollars more than the spotify plan, and while I have lost stream to device and podcast functionality, I gained the play-offline, picture-in-picture/background play function of the youtube app, removal of adds from youtube and the wife was very impressed with that.

 

It's worth clarifying that YT Music Premium family is actually cheaper than Spotify family - $20 vs $22.50 a month; it's YT Premium which is more expensive, but there's clearly good value for money to be had by forking out that additional $1.50 over Spotify, just to have no ads on YT.

michaelmurfy:

 

Given I've got a Tesla on the way the streaming platforms that run on it are Spotify and Tidal so decided to give Tidal a go. I used soundiiz to transfer my playlists over and so far I really like Tidal over Spotify for streaming quality, plus the app just seems cleaner. 

Shite, that's not something I'd thought about so thanks for pointing it out; I'm waiting to be able to order a Model Y, and audio integration is really important to me. With Tidal not being supported by Google Home, it looks like Spotify is the only service that'll work both in our home and in the future car (if it ever arrives here...). I could well be stuck with Spotify.

I've got Spotify Premium Family and been pondering too seeing what else is out there given the controversy currently happening.

I recently got some new Airpods 3 which came with 6 months free Apple Music, have just fired it up and have to say straight up the interface is not as nice. Seems to be no way to download music to my phone locally unless I make a new playlist up or tap each song and select download. I did find a 3rd party service which moves your playlist over but only got about half of them.

Have to say turning on Spatial Audio mode has a rather trippy feel to it

@jonathan18 i have YouTube premium family which is $19.99 per month and includes YouTube music. ive been on it for a long time now so it might be grandfathered at that price.

Google Home / Amazon Echo are the problem children. Basically if you're not in the US these are limited to a degree anyway, but Tidal will only work on Amazon Echo's if you're in the US also which is a limiting factor.

I think this may be the limiting factor. I actually don't want to give Spotify any more money but device compatibility is a major aspect of any platform. I'm still going to continue my experiment with really giving Tidal a good go but smart speaker support is likely the nail in the coffin for it.

Jase2985:

 

@jonathan18 i have YouTube premium family which is $19.99 per month and includes YouTube music. ive been on it for a long time now so it might be grandfathered at that price.

 

@Jase2985 - yeah, I'd say that's a grandfathered price as YT's site def. shows the higher prices for me unfortunately!:

I know there has been plenty of coverage of musicians pulling their music but the thing that scared me the most was James Blunt on Twitter threatening to release music on Spotify if they didn't pull that podcast.

*shudder*

Jase2985:

 

@jonathan18 i have YouTube premium family which is $19.99 per month and includes YouTube music. ive been on it for a long time now so it might be grandfathered at that price.

 

I'm on an old plan too, I should look up the price. 

My YouTube Premium is $9.99 per month. I watch a lot of YouTube and use the music app now. 

Edit. Not a family plan.

@jonathan18 correct I should have clarified that, Youtube music family is cheaper than spotify family, but that tiny difference is not worth losing podcasts and amazon integration, the few dollars more for Youtube premium family (which is what I am trialing) may be worth the difference due to the added youtube video app benefits

@michaelmurfy:

 

Google Home / Amazon Echo are the problem children. Basically if you're not in the US these are limited to a degree anyway, but Tidal will only work on Amazon Echo's if you're in the US also which is a limiting factor.

 

I think this may be the limiting factor. I actually don't want to give Spotify any more money but device compatibility is a major aspect of any platform. I'm still going to continue my experiment with really giving Tidal a good go but smart speaker support is likely the nail in the coffin for it.

 

I would go with Deezer - family plan is $5 cheaper than Spotify and it works on Amazon Echo. But their app doesn't have the functionality to select which Echo device to play - a must if you have more than one around the house. 

As mentioned Tidal only works with Amazon Echo in the USA. 

Amazon Music Unlimited works with Amazon Echo but it won't allow importing playlists.

So it is all limiting really.

freitasm:

 

@michaelmurfy:

 

Google Home / Amazon Echo are the problem children. Basically if you're not in the US these are limited to a degree anyway, but Tidal will only work on Amazon Echo's if you're in the US also which is a limiting factor.

 

I think this may be the limiting factor. I actually don't want to give Spotify any more money but device compatibility is a major aspect of any platform. I'm still going to continue my experiment with really giving Tidal a good go but smart speaker support is likely the nail in the coffin for it.

 

 

I would go with Deezer - family plan is $5 cheaper than Spotify and it works on Amazon Echo. But their app doesn't have the functionality to select which Echo device to play - a must if you have more than one around the house. 

 

Google Home in New Zealand | Deezer Community, bringing music lovers together

Lols....thread from 3 years ago.

fizzychicken:

 

@jonathan18 correct I should have clarified that, Youtube music family is cheaper than spotify family, but that tiny difference is not worth losing podcasts and amazon integration, the few dollars more for Youtube premium family (which is what I am trialing) may be worth the difference due to the added youtube video app benefits

 

my biggest benifit is no add's on youtube, ability to download them in the app and background play. Kids love the music side of things.

Under You Tube Premium benefits, it shows I’ve watched over 650 hours of ad-free videos from 2018 to now. Must be a lot of ads I missed in that time.

I have an individual one grandfathered at $13 a month.

I don’t have any smart speakers, looking at this thread looks like there are pit falls to watch out if purchasing.

I have one Bose portable  which play through using phone and Bluetooth.

Subjective, but often the audio only version of a song sounds better to me then video version, so if in background I do audio only selection.

A friend also pointed out that my 'loss of amazon integration' shouldnt be an issue considering that in my time of using it, the requirement of a spotify premium account has been removed.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/spotifys-free-music-service-will-now-stream-on-alexa-devices-plus-bose-and-sonos-smart-speakers/

So I could downgrade that account to free, given that its only ever one of us telling Alexa to play a generic playlist like 'play all out 70s', I think I can handle a few ads to keep that ability. So I might remove the account that was being used by the echo devices from the spotify plan and change that to a free spotify plan during this trial.