Hacker News Reader

Comment by madsushi | Hacker News Reader

Spotify makes an amazing product. I went from spending hundreds a year on CDs and MP3s to just paying their subscription fee. It's like Netflix for music, except they actually have EVERYTHING you want and it's there the minute it comes out in stores.

View on HN

I love Spotify, but they don't have EVERYTHING. Most notably they're missing The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

And Tool. I think it's a conscious decision on part of those bands / rightsholders since they know that fans will go buy their music anyway, so they don't have to settle for the cheap stream fees.

This is why I like Google Play Music, you can upload 20,000 of your own songs to fill in the gaps (which are increasingly few and far between)

I have Google Play and Spotify. I typically play local files through Spotify and that fills in the blanks as well.

And Thom Yorke. Which doesn't stop them from telling me "You haven't listened to much Thom Yorke recently, want to now?".

I should've said "EVERYTHING.... that I like to listen to". There are definitely gaps.

Honestly, I still think Rdio has a better product.

After using Rdio for 2 years I 've finally decided to move on ( to spotify). Here are the reasons why

1. Iphone app : a)one my major complaints was that the app never recovers from spotty connection. When network goes down music goes down which is expected ( kind of , why doesnt the app buffer music?) but when network comes back music never comes back. b) Non existent buffering: Please take a leaf from pandora's book and look at how fast their music streams under spotty(any) connection. I kept thinking 'hey they are new, they'll figure it out soon', but nothing after 2 years. c) App keeps crashing: i've had several incidents where app crashes and never recovers so i have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app ( and re download al the offline music). unacceptable. The app i have now on my phone crashes every time when it comes up( which was kind of the final straw). I can send you crash logs if you want.

2. Desktop App: Super flakey. It is gone for hours every-couple of days. All I see is a blank screen ( right click reload does nothing) . There was more than one occasion where I had to completly uninstall and reinstall the app. I could go on forever, but it boils down to this - stop doing constant/minor/useless UI improvements, UI is not as important as you guys think it is, if the apps are barely functional.

Switched to Rdio (from Spotify) over the summer. Loved the syncing (your position in a song/album/playlist is synced across all devices - start listening on your phone during your commute and resume at your desk), loved the design, and loved the social aspect.

That being said, it _really_ bothers me that they are not transparent about the quality of the music they serve. Every Rdio fanboy I've talked to says "Yeah it's definitely 320" but they don't explicitly say it anywhere. They won't give a definitive answer, leading me to believe it's not really that great quality.

For that reason (and the app crashing a lot), I unsubscribed and returned to Spotify.

EDIT: I was avoiding the quality argument - but I have a pair of Denon AHD-2000s and the difference in quality between Spotify and Rdio was noticeable. I worry about placebos, though, and wanted to go by the numbers.

Why do you need to be told the quality of their music? Does it matter what the bit-rate is as long as you can't hear the difference?

If it sounds bad, switch. If it sounds good enough, stay.

It does sound worse, but I want some numbers to back it up.

Hey this is unrelated to the topic but I was wondering why you put undersocres between "it really bothers". I have seen a few people do this on hack news and I am unsure of the meaning.

They're trying to italicize the word via markdown (which accepts either _ or * ), but HN only supports * . So _really_ should be really

Just for emphasis :) Some chat clients convert _x_ to x. I feel it does a better job than a pair of em tags.

I'm pretty sure it's 192kbps.

Why do you think it is better? I recently started subscribing to Spotify, and really the only thing I could tell that was meaningfully different between them, Rdio, and Google Play Music was that Spotify has a native client on every platform I use.

Just compare streaming on mobile apps side by side you would know how terrible rdio is.

I have and I regret to inform you that your opinion is wrong.

Things that Rdio does better than Spotify:

- Ability to assemble a collection of albums instead of just playlists.

- Ability to use the client on one device to control another, without having to configure anything.

I regret to inform you that you are a moron. Did you even read my statement? I am specifically talking about 'streaming'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com