Technology
A new online music service is joining Spotify and Apple in the battle for our ears.
A new online music service is joining Spotify and Apple in the battle for our ears.
Someone asked me recently what I thought was the best way to listen to music these days. “It’s a toss-up between Spotify and Apple Music, but the new YouTube Music may shake things up,” I replied.
The response was derisive laughter. This was an audiophile expecting me to launch into comparing the virtues of CDs versus vinyl versus the high-end home-theatre boxes that play “lossless audio” – high-fidelity music as the artists intended it.
The truth is I dumped my CD collection years ago; the vinyl went even earlier. They are obsolete technologies, prone to scratching and requiring dedicated hardware to play. Good riddance. Lossless audio systems that don’t compress the digital audio files are fine if you are a well-heeled hometheatre buff with the speakers and hardware to do the uncompressed music justice.
No, my answer stands. Streaming is the best way to listen to music these days. The three biggest services each boast a collection of 40 million-45 million songs, offline play so you can load hundreds of songs onto your phone, and sophisticated ways of discovering new music.
A few artists are hold-outs from digital streaming, but you’ll get most of the new releases online the day they appear in the few remaining stores stocking CDs. In most cases, the songs are encoded at 320kbps (kilobits per second), which means an algorithm removes bits that the human ear can’t discern to reduce the size of the file, making it small enough for playback on a smartphone, the music player of choice for billions of people.
But which streaming service is best? Until a couple of months ago, the answer was easy: Spotify. The market leader, with more than 70 million paying subscribers and many more using the ad-supported service, has a great user interface and playlists and stations that match my tastes. Spotify has done a deal with Spark to make the service available as a free extra on some mobile plans and at half price on others.
Apple was late to the streaming game, wedded as it was to the iTunes model of downloadable songs and albums. But it has passed 40 million subscribers since it launched Apple Music in 2015. It doesn’t have an adsupported version, but has benefited from being heavily integrated into the iPhone’s music app.
The usual Apple design sheen is reflected in its software and it often gets early access to new music. It also has a 24-7 music radio station, Beats1, which plays exclusively to subscribers and gets top-notch acts. Apple Music is available as an app on Android devices, but its aesthetic is more aligned with existing Apple users.
The third big player, Google, has dabbled in music streaming for years, with services Google Play Music and, more recently, YouTube
Red. Both had great aspects, but neither seriously challenged Spotify or Apple, so in May Google replaced them with YouTube Music Premium.
The service has a key advantage over its rivals – it integrates videos from YouTube with official songs and albums. So bootlegs, live tracks, remixes and covers you normally go to YouTube to watch are available in video- or audio-only format through the new YouTube Music Premium app. There is also a free ad-supported version.
YouTube Music Premium has a key advantage over its rivals – it integrates videos.
The app can use your phone’s
GPS capability to figure out where you are. The other night it told me, “Looks like you are at home unwinding”, which I was, before offering to play the “Death by Metal” playlist. It knows me so well.
These features, and the revamp of the app to make it more Spotify-like, finally turn YouTube into a viable music-streaming option. The top three all offer free trials or ad-supported services so you don’t have to shell out to listen for yourself.
YouTube Music Premium $12.99 (YouTube Premium $15.99) Spotify Premium $14.99, family $22.50 Apple Music, student $7.49, individual $14.99, family $22.99