The State Of Music Streaming in 2024

The "perfect" music streaming service doesn't exist.

This is a story I’ve been wanting to make for quite some time now. I’ve spent the last four years trying all of the big (and some of the small) music streaming services. And it clicked to me the other day, they’re all bad. Whether it’s for lock-in, corporate-political issues, or being simply too small, every streaming service I’ve tried has at least one big issue that makes it really annoying to use.

It’s to the point where I’ve considered going back to local media for the most part, with streaming music complimenting everything at the top end (this is how I used streaming services back in the day when lossless streaming wasn’t a thing).

If this makes it out, well, you know the drill. The main point of this piece is to go over the pros and cons of each streaming service coming from an audiophile that has a relatively small (but important) local file library.

Spotify

Kicking things off with what most people are familiar with - Spotify. Let me start off by saying, I completely get why this is the most popular service by a country mile. Before I added a single track to a playlist or my library, the algorithm was already at work. I was just searching for and playing familiar music. And by the next day, it started recommending me some of my favorite albums. Outside of algorithmic stuff, I think the second biggest thing about Spotify is Connect. Coming from Roon made me realize they replicated Spotify Connect 1:1.

Another thing I loved about Spotify is how deep the metadata and artist details are in the now playing view. Unlike Apple Music (and only Apple Music), Spotify properly tags multiple artists. You also have listening stats, merch, and upcoming tour info.

But there are a number of reasons why I won’t stick with Spotify. Local files and no lossless support are the two biggest reasons. The latter is pretty self explanatory. Spotify has been promising lossless since early 2021. The former is annoying. Local files are strictly on your device and Spotify only allows you to play files that are stored on your device. It’s not a cloud-based system. So you can’t play those files on a watch, TV, or smart speaker. That’s the dealbreaker for me, more than lossless itself.

Other things I disliked about the service are the inclusion of audiobooks and podcasts. I have other apps that take care of that. While it might be useful for many, I wish Spotify would let you disable it.

Apple Music

I’ll keep this one short since I already have two separate posts on the matter. Theoretically, Apple has all the parts but doesn’t have the vision.

The things I love about Apple Music are straightforward. A single listing for both Atmos and Lossless is unheard of. Apple’s beat-by-beat lyrics and animated artwork support are unmatched. And, of course, ecosystem benefits.

But ultimately, the issue lies in Apple’s truly shitty desktop app, lack of streamer support, barebones local file support, and asinine shuffling algorithms are what forced me out. Apple Music has so much to love, yet the company’s clear stance on certain standards and formats is what led to the end of my three-month run with them.

Also, they make it a pain in the ass to actually play my music with my Hi-Fi gear. It’s 2024, USB audio is great but no exclusive/bit-perfect on the Mac is a crime for a Hi-Fi service. AirPlay 2 streaming is also lossy.

This is why I can confidently say that the iPad currently has the best Apple Music experience. It supports native sample rate and bit-depth switching, beat-by-beat lyrics, and animated artwork. It’s the only device that supports all of those features on a single screen, On the iPhone, you either have beat-by-beat lyrics or animated artwork. Both can’t exist on the screen at the same time. The Apple TV app is great, but everything is locked to 24-bit/48 kHz. CD quality gets upsampled, and Hi-Res gets downsampled.

Deezer & Qobuz

I’ll group these two together because they suffer from the same issues. Both of these services suffer from being simply too small to compete.

Qobuz, while I love it, and has been a compliment to my Roon/Tidal setup for the last few years still suffers from a smaller catalog and a myriad of metadata and technical issues (like new releases showing up three hours late). But what makes Qobuz great is that despite the lack of algorithmic playlists and such, its human created homepage is fantastic. It’s quite literally like going bin searching at a vinyl store. You look through what you want, tap on it, and play it. I’ve discovered so many albums this way.

Deezer, on the other hand, seems to be having an identity crisis and is lacking focus across its product. It has a bigger catalog than Qobuz and even Tidal but is stuck at CD quality lossless. It supports all the major smart speakers (even HomePod!) but doesn’t integrate or integrates poorly with most streamers. Not to mention, no Roon support. The app seems very messy and all over the place.

TIDAL

You may or may not have seen on Threads that I moved back to Roon. This means I’m back to Tidal, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s a great service, despite its catalog not being as big as Apple’s or Spotify’s. It’s big enough, that the vast majority of what I listen to is on there with only a few loose ends missing.

In my eyes, Tidal would be just as good as Apple Music and Spotify if it weren’t for the fumbles made by its outgoing artist-driven leadership in its early years. Tidal has changed so much (for the better) these last two or three years, making technically driven updates and changes. Sadly, I think the changes are a bit too late for most of the mainstream audiences since other platforms have covered these features for years.

Tidal has pre-save and animated artwork, but most artists/labels won’t implement or use it. Tidal supports music videos but is missing a sizable number of them. Or, if they do become available, it’s usually a few weeks later. Spatial audio/Dolby Atmos is there but is not quite as expansive or available as Apple or Amazon Music.

Tidal Connect is much better than Apple’s current playback systems but isn’t quite as expansive as Spotify Connect. You can start a Tidal Connect session on a device, but its control is stuck to that one device. Once you close Tidal on that device, control seemingly disappears.

Then there’s the whole MQA thing. It’s improving by the day as Tidal rips out and replaces MQA content with Hi-Res FLAC. But even today, about 4 months into the transition, there’s still loads of MQA content on the platform.

Yet, despite its pitfalls, Tidal with Roon seems like the ideal way forward for me. Roon fills in multi-room audio at home and takes my hybrid local/streaming library on the go. No animated artwork on Roon is a bummer, but not a dealbreaker.

The Rest Of Them

And then there’s the rest of them. The ones I tried for a little while, but had weird quirks in ways that make you go "Why?" Kicking things off is Amazon Music. This service is clearly built to sell Amazon smart speakers because holy fuck there’s no way anyone is happy and willing to use this app for more than 5 minutes. The bulk of my usage with Amazon Music was through the Wiim interface streaming to my Wiim Pro. Of all the streaming services that support lossless and surround sound music, I have to say Amazon is the least consistent. I would play albums that only a few tracks were available in lossless, and tons of albums only have one or two tracks in Atmos, even though it’s labeled at the album level.

Next up was YouTube Music. I can’t tell if this one is trying to be a music service or a video service. Maybe it’s trying to be both. Its interface is better than Amazon’s but is worse than any of the big players. It’s a lossy service, so no support for lossless. Local files are also reencoded to lossy MP3s similar to Deezer and Apple Music. It technically has the biggest music library because you can search the depths of YouTube for bootlegs and whatnot. And those get added to your library. I could see why someone would use this service.

Conclusion

I know I’ve missed other ones like Pandora and Napster. But I think for the most part I covered all the big ones. Each and every one of them has annoying quirks that may be dealbreakers for some.

If you had asked me a week ago which one I’d go for, it would be Apple Music. But now, thinking a bit more rationally, I was making excuses for a service that likely won’t change in the ways I want it to. Like, in the year 2024, I still wire up my ANC headphones to my phone for lossless listening on the go.

With that said, it seems it’s back to Roon/Tidal for me. It’s not perfect and has its quirks (its mobile app, Roon ARC, is still miles behind the desktop app in features) but it currently fills the vast majority of my needs. It’s just. the niceties from some of the big services (catalog, animated artwork, beat-by-beat lyrics) are missing.

But those aren’t dealbreakers, just things I’ll miss but will likely forget later on. Especially the catalog part, Roon makes it so damn easy to import music, regardless of its format or source — and, it doesn’t touch it. If you import a 5.1 lossless surround file, it’ll keep it that way. If it’s a lossy MP3, same. Everything remains intact, down to where you originally stored the file.

I just gotta pray that power outages are rare. Cause once the power goes out, rip access to Roon.

On the other hand, I’ll keep Apple Music around as well for its Apple TV and Atmos experiences. It’s insane to me that music streaming services all have terrible smart TV apps (not just on Apple TV, but others).