Anyone else here who tried both Spotify & Google Play Music?

[Broner]

Anyone else here who tried both Spotify & Google Play Music?

After about a year and a half of loyally paying Spotify my 9,99 each month, I switched to Google Play Music (GPM). I’ve always been quite ecstatic about Spotify. It caters for about 99% of what I want to listen to in an easy way, and in practice that meant it was the only medium that I used for listening to albums or playlists.

But like I said, I switched to GPM … mostly because I got angry with Spotify. A little while ago they introduced their new UI and finally allowed for albums to be saved as… Albums! (one wonders whether this shouldn’t have been an option from the get go). So, having saved all the albums as playlists until now, I figured that I would be able to transfer them in a simple way.

I was wrong. I would need to add every single album that I’ve saved as a playlist all over again.

Despite being frustrated, I was actually making the change, to get things *right*. After having added about thirty albums to the albums section (and having deleted them from my playlists), I decided to listen to one of them, but to my horror I noticed that the Sonos app doesn’t show Spotify albums, but only playlists! Aaaaarggggh!

So I started using GPM which is very nicely integrated into the Sonos system so that there are no issues as to which music I can or cannot listen to.

Now, I haven’t really tried to compare the two systems, I was just frustrated, went for something else, and decided that I like GPM. Maybe if I would be another type of user, I might still prefer Spotify. I haven’t really done any in-depth testing into the possibilities of the different interfaces, but I can say that I also really like the way in which GPM makes it easy to find and listen to new music, in particular GPM radio which adapts its suggestions to your preferences, but keeps coming up with new music nonetheless.

I am wondering if there are people here who switched or did a side by side comparison and would like to share their experiences.

 

[SPLOL4]

Forgive me but I can only say that spotify , google play and all the rest of them so called " music players " only serve to make me laugh and vomit ,

YAK , YAK AND MORE YAK . sorry

 

[Broner]

Forgive me but I can only say that spotify , google play and all the rest of them so called " music players " only serve to make me laugh and vomit ,

YAK , YAK AND MORE YAK . sorry

Yak,

Yak,

And more Yak

 

[John Duncan]

Forgive me but I can only say that spotify , google play and all the rest of them so called " music players " only serve to make me laugh and vomit ,

YAK , YAK AND MORE YAK . sorry

Odd.

 

[Hi-FiOutlaw]

Forgive me but I can only say that spotify , google play and all the rest of them so called " music players " only serve to make me laugh and vomit ,

YAK , YAK AND MORE YAK . sorry

Yak,

Yak,

And more Yak

You forgot the sorry part...

 

[Joe Cox]

We did a rather large Group Test of streaming music services in the May issue of the mag.

I've also recently switched from Spotify to Google Play Music. The main benefit is the neat integration of my own music library, which is handy generally and could potentially remove the need for a NAS in your Sonos system. The main disadvantage for me is in terms of music discovery. I used Spotify playlists created by users to keep tabs on new music and no such thing on GPM as yet. And generally new music recommendations not as good.

 

[John Duncan]

I can only really talk about either in the context of Sonos, and I find Google Play quite slow to search and move on to the next track compared to Spotify. I haven't tried GP on phone (though am currently paying for both, I really ought to) as it will require me to get rid of all my offline Spotify playlists to make room for it.

 

[plasterman]

I enjoy spotify for what is and thats how i listen to it. I've a decent system an spotify sounds very decent it has a large library it works for me. I'm not that geeky so playlists and other bugs don't effect me. It's a simple case of play what comes to mind.

 

[Broner]

I've never really been interested in the social environment that Spotify provides, but I believe GPM also allows you to share playlists (you just don’t have the friends’ network). With respect to the level of music recommendations: that is something that’s actually really difficult to assess, but if there is anything that Google is really good at, then it’s algorithms that deal with user information, so I’m confident that with the +/- system for individual songs, they will get the necessary data to fine tune recommendations and provide tailored radio.

With respect to Sonos: I haven’t experienced GPM on Sonos being slower than Spotify, but I have to admit that I ditched Spotify very quickly after I purchased my Sonos system.

@JD You also haven’t used the phone as a remote for your system at home?

 

[bluedroog]

Qobuz for me, sounds brilliant.

 

[radiorog]

I originally had spotify, but tried Google play about six months ago and noticed an improvement in sound quality. It sounded warmer but still with very good detail and dynamics. So swapped. For me the next best improvement is that Google play has a history list,showing the previous artists,seemingly going back months,on the home page.to start with,I didn't appreciate this,but very soon realised its purpose in that if listening to new music,which is the main reason I use it (and if I really like something I might buy the CD) the next day you have prob forgotten the new bands name.Google remembers for you,so a week or whenever later, you go, "oh yeah,that was really good,I fancy listening to that again". Spotify doesn't do this.