Are you using Apple Music or Spotify?
Would love to try it, but like 99.9% of existing companies, Apple also doesn't seem to think that people might move and thus not have a CC tied to their current location, so I can't sign up. And as such I shall stick to having to use a middleman to purchase Spotify gift cards to pay for their Premium, which works nicely but is bothersome as fuck.
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Get a prepaid Visa/Mastercard card. It works like a regular credit card/debit card. You go to the post office, send the money to your card and then you can spend it. It's great, like credit card but without its flaws lol.
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AFAIK those are only available via banks here, and opening a bank account is not a fight I'd want to bother with. Besides, when I already have a card with money on it, doesn't it sound borderline insane to get another card just because?
I also don't know which "flaws" you are talking about.
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You can have someone else with a bank account get the card for himself and then permanently give it to you. I had it done like that.
Well, if you do have card with money on it then why won't you use it to sign up for Apple Music lol? I'm either misunderstanding you or missing something from your story.
Flaws like, if you go above the limit of money you have there you pay a fine. Or if someone steals your card/credentials and uses it he can get you in serious debt (unless you have some blockade but I don't trust it). With prepaid card you only can spend as much money as you put there and can't go above the limit as far as I know.
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High five! I started completing a collection as well. Got like 30 so far, but had to stop buying once I stopped working :P Probably gonna start collecting again quite soon.
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I've bought 1 CD in my life so far and not planning to buy anymore. I've always downloaded music. I guess I got into music properly after the generation of CD's! Wasn't really into music properly before that time.
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I used to walk around all the time as a kid with my CD player =P I guess I'm just a tad old school.
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dont feel bad i used to walk around with a Walkman cassette player lol wasn't til high school that cd players came out and you were lucky to listen to one maybe two cd's before the battery's were dead lol.
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Ha Ha, after reading ou comment, i had to google the Walkman i had.
I remember the lock was so crappy.
But that was a good device.
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I used to but it's too much money to buy all the albums I listen to plus many are not available in Poland and shipping from US is very, very expensive. Plus it's not like I have unlimited space for storing them :)
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while you're right on the availability (i live out of my country and my home country music is largely unavailable here) and on real estate consumption (exaggerating a bit here), i still love the feel of walking in the music shop, asking, choosing, buying, taking out the plastic fold, read the booklet, and finally having something physical that i can listen over and over again after years and even lent to friends. more or less the same that vinyl addicts say, but without the vinyl flaws ;P
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Yeah, I agree it's great. I have a lot of hard copies of albums, most of them shipped from overseas. But it's too expensive at this point and it's taking up too much space. But in the future when I have a great job and more money and a house of my own (the bigger the better) I will start collecting again.
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The thing that I love the most about it is that you can edit song metadata. And adding local files to Spotify is a real nightmare. So Apple Music for the win.
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I've only got it because of YouTube music key. It's so useful having ad free music listening on YouTube! But never actually used Google Play Music. As I said below due to my massive spotify music collection i've built up it would be difficult for me to change over.
Also i've only got YouTube music key because they gave me like a 1 year free trial or something like that to test it :P
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Apple music imo, ive been an apple fan since my first device was an ipod touch, still i only buy tablet and phones from apple. But not my laptop/pc thats still windows XD, and yea I love applemusic also
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I try to stay away from everything apple. They're way to expensive for my wallet.
So there's really no point in me using apple music because i'm guessing you can't use it on windows PC's or on android phones.
I'm currently using spotify premium and have been using it for well over a year now. I've built up quite the offline music collection so it would be difficult for me to change now.
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Don't guess then cause you're guessing wrong ;) I don't know about Android but I'm using it on PC. And first three months are free. It's worth checking out at least, you may love it.
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Well I just assumed that because apple seems to like keeping to themselves usually :P
But I found this. "Android Coming this fall." Quite a surprise to me that they are actually working with android!
I will try the free trial when it comes on android because I listen to most of my music on my phone!
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Apple Music is available for Windows and it's coming for Android most likely in October.
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well, at least apple music is not that expensive. same price as spotify, i believe.
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Yeah I think it is. Although I get spotify for half price because of student discount so that's still way cheaper to me.
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Yep. Just download Last.FM scrobbler software and then install the plugin for iTunes (it can be done from the software itself - install plugins > iTunes and it's done).
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Oh nice, didn't think it was for iTunes, I might try it
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FLAC on Apple? Well... umm... no... Maybe if you pay 30GBP per month to listen to 3 CD's max!
That's funny if you consider using free chinese music.163.com streaming service that's using 320kbps and has really impressive music collection. Just use your common sense or google-whole-page-translate. http://android.wonderhowto.com/how-to/netease-music-free-service-will-get-you-leave-spotify-0162417/
-EDIT-
You can also listen cached songs offline or download download them directly through their desktop app as mp3's without any restrictions.
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Why would I use some Chinese service when I have almost all albums on Spotify/Apple Music? Spotify is 320kbps in Premium as well and iTunes is apparently 256kbps which is good as well.
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Yeah, but there you may get 320 without paying for premium or standard version just to use that service.
I'm not saying that "not paying" is good or something, i'm just pointing out alternatives that anyone can use or at least try to define if one like it or not.
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I doubt it scrobbles to Last.FM though and I'm 100% positive they don't have as many albums as Spotify/Apple Music. Apple Music has everything that is on iTunes which is the biggest library of music in the world nowadays.
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In the matter of library size - Netease is something like google in china. It's ranked on the world 9'th place (in 2015) in terms of popularity.
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So you're saying it has bigger library than iTunes?
Not to mention that nowadays Apple Music will have some exclusive albums (I don't know if those exclusives are timed exclusives or not but still). For example new Dr. Dre's album is NOT on Spotify but it's on Apple Music. I think it'll be same with new Weeknd album as he's affiliated with Apple Music and premiered his new music video there. So yet another reason as to why use Apple Music.
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This album - http://music.163.com/#/album?id=3257184 ?
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Yeah lol, how is that possible? It's possible to stream it? If so, how come it's not on Spotify? They wouldn't give Spotify the licence but they would give it to some Chinese company? I find it very hard to believe. Doesn't make sense.
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Well... don't ask me such questions :P
But yes, you can listen to that album already.
Maybe "they" (as for music company) divided market on two parts - Asian and the rest of the world. Or maybe Spotify couldn't afford it?
Not so long ago there was some big movement of massive licenses purchasing by biggest Chinese music services so it's not said that this is some not-so-legal stuff.
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Well, there are still things in this world that take me by surprise - this is one of them :)
Still, I prefer Spotify (already bought 3 month premium gift card) and Apple Music (it's free for three months) but it's interesting :)
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It's only exclusive because his damn service IS Apple Music. It's Beats Radio rebranded ffs :P.
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I'm a Spotify guy, but I'm gonna have to use Apple Music for the new Dr. Dre album. Glad to hear it's decent.
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Oh yeah, I need to check this album out too. Definitely looks interesting.
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I've heard great things about it so I hope it's worth a listen. Supposed to sound a lot like Kendrick Lamar's recent work. My plan is to buy it off iTunes if I like it and then add it to my Spotify local files lol
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i usef grooveshark for years till they closed down a few months ago. now i'm in plug.dj but of course the music is from youtube...
i don't pay too much attention to the quality, it's nice to have a chat and hear what others play. if i really want to listen to something, i download an album and use winamp.
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It has more albums though (especially in my region - Poland).
And quality is comparable.
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Comparable doesn't mean better. VPN is your friend for your full audio needs on Spotify.
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See, with Apple Music I don't need to use VPN. And if they can offer me those albums then Spotify should be able to do so as well (especially that some albums not being available don't make sense at all, for example Strange Music, independent label, 95% of albums from the label is there but there's like 4-5 missing and those are random ones that are missing, I think it's just negligence but it's even more annoying if that's the case).
I think I'll be using both, at least for now when Apple Music is free for three months.
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Have it your way but I wouldn't trust Apple with a napkin.
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Trust with what? My personal data? My pre-paid "credit" card credentials? Cause it's all they're getting. I trust them more than 90% of bundle sites where I provide the same data.
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spotify collects all your data aswell. it's no better than apple in that regard. guess you didn't read the privacy policy. ;)
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What data, what I listen to? I only (extremely rarely) ever used their free service.
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all data they can get, including all your personal data, in order to use it for personalized advertising (and for use for their "partners", which probably means they sell the data). if you say now, that you use the free service anyway and didn't give them much data - well, then this is not a fair comparison to apple music. we should of course compare it to spotify premium. nothing else makes sense.
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Spotify isn't even available in my country, so Apple wins hands down. xD
Not a fan of hopping thru VPN just to use a service.
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in my country... apple = Lamborghini + Ferrari + Bugatti
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Malaysia is not for me then, I would get punched in the face for hating Apple :).
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i still remember years ago when i received that email form pandora saying they stopped giving service to europe. it was my #1 music service back then. w usa.
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I just use mp3.
If you want listen music on the phone do you need apple phone? If yes, then it's crap.
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Someone in this thread said they're working on Android version so I don't think so.
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Apple may have a lower bitrate but they'll be using AAC and not MP3 like Spotify. I always preferred AAC myself as you getter a better compression which allows you to either safe space without sacrificing quality or improve quality whilst using the same space. If they did offer lossless I'd also expect it to their own ALAC and not FLAC.
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They'll never invest in lossless, they made a fortune out of doing the absolute minimum for the most profit.
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Minimum acceptable quality would be 128kbps ;P They have 256 and it's AAC like flagrantnutwaffle said so it's good - comparable to 320 mp3's of Spotify.
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They already have their own lossless codec. What I was saying was they'd use that over FLAC if they did offer lossless. Which was in reference to OPs original thought that they may be using FLAC.
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The cost of streaming lossless isn't worth it to them, it wouldn't bring in enough extra people to justify the costs. How many Apple users do you think have good enough headphones to actually make use of lossless? They probably have shitty Beats at best(or should I say worst). Lossless on bad headphones is like trying to watch 4k video on a TV from the 90s. Pointless.
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I wasnt saying they would offer lossless I was pointing out that if they did it wouldn't be FLAC, just as none of their services are MP3.
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I know, it's just a moot point, they won't do it either way. But what are they doing with ALAC anyway?
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I think the only direct use is as a conversion option within itunes. I know Bandcamp offer both FLAC and ALAC as download options so they are licensing it which makes sense for those who want lossless but insist on sticking with apple products as I'd guess they won't natively implement FLAC support.
The issue with ALAC though is that unlike MP3 vs AAC there's no quality difference and they haven't managed to come up with a better compression. So assuming format support isn't an issue FLAC is the better choice even if only slightly.
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i don't like half-eaten fruits...
i use spotify now but i don't have problem to switch to something else besides apple stuff.
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I dont like anything Apple, way too overpriced and not worth it IMO...
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It's a streaming service, first three months three and then 10$ per month. A little more expensive than Spotify but still a great deal IMO.
I never liked Apple either but this Apple Music is really nice.
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Oh, good to know, I might aswel try it then. Do you know if you can also download music from them by paying the 10$ monthly? and is it restricted to Apple devices?
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I think you can download but there's some kind of DRM. I don't know much about this stuff so I can't say more. I only use it for streaming :)
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CD offer one thing that most places that offer when downloading and that is better quality,you pay a bit less for even worse music then what is on a cd,i never did get that concept of ease of use over quality,but maybe that is why nothing is hardly made in the U.S.A anymore and why even if it is,half the time it just as cheap as imported stuff people rather have cheap and easy then pay more for quality.
Though i think mp3 do have uses like for an ipod and such as most use cheap headphones and the audio quality they put out is terrible so you would never notice it.
I guess i just prefer quality music over eas of use and lower quality for not much less then a cd,I wish all services offered everything in FLAC or something akin to it for downloading,and 320kbs for streaming FLAC steaming i do not think is ready for prime time for a lot people.
Also i dislike Apple more then i do Microsoft,i bought an ipod touch that worked and did what i needed and still could run the apps i wanted but they cut off support for the OS and hence i could not update the app,forcing me to either not use it or update.Fuck them,i got the ipod to play music and run some music apps,not be forced to update my ipod every couple years because they want to keep printing money.
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You do realize than for 10$ per month you get just one album and for 10$ per month you also get access to almost every album ever released in 320kbps? This "CD is better quality" is only true if you listen straight from the CD or rip it as FLAC. I used to rip my CD's as mp3's in 320kbps anyway so it was the same as Spotify for me. I don't even notice the difference between 320kbps and FLAC. After the point of 320kbps the quality is great IMO and I don't need anything better.
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At this point I just use Youtube for music. Free music, any music.
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Most artists don't offer full albums there though. And YT is cracking down on copyrights very fast nowadays so users very often upload slowed down or faster versions of tracks which is a complete mess. YT is a mess when it comes to listening to full albums in good quality.
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Google Play Music subscription here. Solid 320kbps and everything I have ever searched for has been there. To be honest though my library has been built more from suggested songs and 'radios' of things I like than from me actually searching for things. The discovery features are far and above the best I have experienced, though I haven't tried Spotify's in quite some time and haven't tried Apple's at all.
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Apple's subs don't allow you to download the files to local machine?
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I have no idea what you're talking about because I use it to stream music only.
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Hmm, free for 3 months. I didn't know that. DOWNLOADING! I'm curious on the differences.
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Spotify is 320kbps on premium and it's only $4.99 a month with student discount. I think the biggest advantage for me is being able to download playlists for offline listening on my phone. I don't have to use cellular data when I'm in my car listening over bluetooth.
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Spotify lets you download the mp3s offline? Guess it's good since I can listen when I am out of signal.
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I've been a big Spotify fan for a while but I just installed Apple Music and damn! Music quality is way better than on Spotify (I suspect FLAC while Spotify only had 320kbps in premium) and I think there are more albums in general. And it's free for the first three months. Great service, I've never been a fan of Apple but this may change just now. Anyone here using it? What are your thoughts?
Edit: Apparently it's 256kbps on Apple Music in terms of quality but I think it sounds better than on Spotify. But then again some people think otherwise lol. Still, Apple Music has more albums.
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