Figuring out whether to switch to Spotify

Source

I listen to music all the time on Deezer, a music streaming service created in 2007 in France. I signed up for it a few years ago by mistake, after watching a review of several services at once on our colleagues' Stupidmadworld channel. I would have posted that video here if the guys' channel hadn't been hacked last week.

Anyway, then, confused by all the abundance, I got the names mixed up and just started using Deezer. But apart from that, I occasionally listen to music on VKontakte, as well as Yandex.Music. Apple Music, on the other hand, even despite our focus (everyone knows that Wylsacom is about the Apples), never really caught on with me.

I can't compare Spotify to other services, as I'm either not familiar with them or not familiar enough.
Spotify. My experience
My account was registered yesterday - I managed to transfer my favourite tracks from Deezer, some of which (about three hundred) I even unsubscribed.

But the service doesn't know me yet. I'm a new person for it, about whom there's a little more information than just a new user. But it's not worth talking about whether the recommendations are good for me or not - they only become usable after a few weeks, according to my friends who have been using the service for a while.

Recommendations

For the sake of purity of the experiment, I'll cite one of my "Mix of the Day" - daily updated playlists consisting of familiar and new tracks. It appears based on what you listen to and like.

And, as I said in my tweet, so far it doesn't look impressive: the vast majority of the tracks are familiar to me, and some I've heard but just wouldn't like ever in my life. I also find the selection, which combines progressive/post-hardcore in the form of Arcane Roots, Lenny Kravitz and the southpaw American Bang, odd. This compilation doesn't look like a whole, the moods change very rarely. In short, I didn't like it. But again, it's a little early to make any judgments about the selections.

Also, Spotify will create playlists of new music from the artists you're listening to every Friday.

Playlists

Spotify offers some reckless number of playlists. And, on the one hand, that's a good thing. On the other hand, it's the abundance that scares me. I just don't know where to click.

You go to a Soviet-era shop and there's nothing on the shelves. And then you go into another shop, where there's an abundance. And you don't know what to choose either. In general, excess, like scarcity, is repulsive. And that's what I like about the special Flow playlist on Deezer - it's a standalone on the app, made up of your favourite tracks as well as songs you haven't listened to.

Spotify, however, has a top gimmick: a playlist for your pet.

The app on your smartphone
It's worth saying that it's very fast. It's downright top-notch. But there are definite downsides.

For example, I want to find a certain artist. Let it be a band called MUTEMATH. I type in a search, and on the first page I am offered some strange and incomprehensible selections, as well as some accounts

To go to the artist's page, I have to click the "View all artists" button. Yes, it's just one tap. But why not do it like Deezer or Yandex.Music? Because of this, a lot of people get confused and think that Spotify doesn't have any artists.

By the way, not everyone has this kind of problem. Our editor-in-chief, Alexander Pobovanets, has the same search results as I do, and he has been an active Spotify user for several years, but Big Geek editor-in-chief Max Kurmaev's search works properly

Media Library

With the library, some artists' discography is more on Spotify, and others in other services. But now we live in a time when all services have +/- the same library. The fact is that most of the songs come to the streaming services directly from the labels. And that doesn't give you any exclusivity.

The exclusives are often arranged by the musicians themselves in collaboration with the services. For example, a specially recorded live session. For example, here's a session for Spotify by my favourites Biffy Clyro

Sound quality

Sound quality depends on many factors. Of course, these are the physical limitations of the chosen formats. Apple Music, for example, uses the AAC codec with a bitrate of 256kbps. Deezer uses mp3 at 320kbps and Spotify uses Ogg at 320kbps.

Many people, when they see the numbers, will start to argue with a bang that 320 is better than 256. Technically, this is true, but it only works within one format. In reality, the quality of the three services is about the same.

But, again, the quality depends very much on how and how the album or song got into the service. Nowadays, for example, many musicians use different services that upload their albums to all available services. And in this case, the quality will be the same, unless of course musicians want to take advantage of an Apple initiative called Apple Digital Masters, which prepares music for release on Apple Music.

This is a practice the company adopted from terrestrial radio, where the sound engineers do an additional mastering (preparing the song with reference to others) for a suitable sound for the radio station. That is, your song should not be quieter or louder than other songs playing on that radio station. If the sound engineers don't think about this issue, listeners will just switch over, because no one wants to sit at the receiver all the time and make the music quieter or louder.

Song lyrics

It's important for someone to see the lyrics of a song in front of their eyes. And there's no better service for that than Apple Music. Spotify has lyrics too, but they're about the same amount as Deezer, which means lyrics aren't everywhere.

Managing

I said above that I mixed up the streaming services and subscribed to Deezer by mistake. The thing is, one feature was important to me: controlling music from any device. Suppose I'm cooking in the kitchen and in the next room there's loud music playing from my computer. But then a song comes on that I don't feel like listening to. On Spotify, I can switch it up right from my phone. Or, if necessary, the other way round.

You can control the music from whatever device your account is connected to. Or keep listening to a song on different devices almost seamlessly: the song was playing on your computer, but you need to get out. You've pressed Play on your smartphone app - and now you're listening to music on the comfort of your headphones on the underground. It's the bombastic feature that got me signed up for Deezer. But what's not in Deezer?

Social functions

Spotify lets you share your profile with your friends or wherever you like. Here's my profile, for example. And here's my Deezer profile. So public profiles aren't exclusive. Except that in Deezer you have to hack into the Pentagon to find a link to share with your friends and listeners, when in Spotify it's easy.

Another interesting trick is the ability to share music in storis. It would simply be an album cover with an active link to the service in the top left corner

So is it worth the switch?

Personally, there is one reason for me to switch to Spotify: the playback control from any device. In my opinion, this is very cool. You can't, however, listen to music on your computer and smartphone at the same time, but that's a minimal loss.

The recommendations probably won't surprise me much - Flow in Deezer suits me completely. Public profiles aren't a killer feature either, the library is about the same everywhere, and getting used to a new interface that runs a little faster isn't great fun.

Add to that the unpleasant transfer of media libraries (many now don't work, and some will have to rekey thousands of tracks), and the inability to pay for subscriptions directly from the iPhone.

So is it worth switching to Spotify? That's for everyone to decide for themselves. I don't think I'll make the switch - I like Deezer just fine, and I don't need to switch music remotely anymore. But I can't decide for you. If you do decide to switch, you're likely to be uncomfortable at first - you'll be switching systems. But after a few months, the inconvenience will disappear and you'll be able to fully enjoy Spotify, which you've been waiting for more than six years.