Over the past year, I’ve spent a good amount of time switching between Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music, trying to figure out which one suits my needs best. All three have their strengths, but after countless hours of listening across different devices headphones, home audio, and now car audio I can confidently say that Apple Music is the best fit for me.

My New (Old) Audi S8

Recently, I picked up a 2007 Audi S8, and what really tipped the scales for me was its 14-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system. It's an incredible setup, especially for a car of that age, and it made me start paying even more attention to audio quality.

When playing tracks through Apple Music in that car, the sound is simply phenomenal:

• Deep bass that doesn't shake the car.

• Clear highs with no harshness

• Mids that feel warm and natural

• Overall soundstage and clarity that just feels right

I don’t know if it’s a mix of the codec Apple uses (ALAC for lossless) or how well their audio is mastered and optimized, but there’s something about Apple Music’s output that just feels more musical in that car. It honestly feels like the tracks are tuned for high-end systems.

Spotify - The Old Reliable (But Not Perfect)

For the longest time, Spotify was my go-to. It's just hard to beat the ease of use, the UI design, and especially the ecosystem flexibility:

• Seamless switching between devices car, phone, PC, headphones

• Excellent music discovery via playlists and radio

• Social features like collaborative playlists, Spotify Wrapped, etc.

However, the audio quality never blew me away. Even on “Very High” settings, it feels a bit compressed compared to Apple Music. On a casual pair of earbuds, it’s fine. But on a proper system like the B&O setup in my S8 it becomes noticeable. Spotify's current max bitrate is 320kbps, and while they’ve been teasing Spotify HiFi for years, it’s still nowhere to be found.

YouTube Music - A Hidden Gem, But Not Quite There

YouTube Music surprised me in a few ways:

• It has a massive library, including remixes, covers, and unreleased tracks you won’t find elsewhere.

• It’s great for discovering underground and lesser-known artists.

• Audio is noticeably louder which some people might like but that doesn’t mean it sounds better.

My issue? It lacks polish. The UI feels a bit clunky, and integration between devices is inconsistent. Also, despite the library size, 99% of the artists I care about are still available on Apple Music or Spotify so the exclusives didn’t justify the trade-offs for me.

Final Thoughts

If I had to summarize:

• Apple Music wins for audio quality and overall listening experience, especially on higher-end systems.

• Spotify is still the king of usability and music discovery.

• YouTube Music is good if you want everything in one place, especially YouTube content and niche music.

The turning point for me was experiencing what Apple Music sounds like on a serious audio setup. I never expected a streaming service to make such a difference, but here we are. It reminded me that at the end of the day, music is meant to be felt not just heard.

Would love to know what others think.
Have you noticed similar differences with your car/home systems?
Anyone still holding out for Spotify HiFi?

I am at a major crossroads here. My main focus is selection of songs, and YTM is what’s in it for me. The fact I can listen to live sets and video game music is a huge plus. I listen to music primarily in my car. I am a Spotify user, so should I stick to Spotify, switch to YTM, or switch to Tidal?

So, as a long time spotify user I've been trying out both of these services over the past few months to decide which one I should stick with long term. I'm caught in the middle because both services seem to be good at various things but they have both strengths & weaknesses.
Tidal (which is now the same price as YT music) undoubtedly has better music quality (which is sometimes very noticeable but other times not as much) but the search functionality is abysmal. Like I can put in a song title and it takes me two to three times as long to locate the actual song I'm looking for.
Youtube music has an excellent search... but then I can't search withing playlists which is just... frustrating.
Both have been good for music exploration.
I feel like Youtube musics recommendations are more varied (since a lot of remixes and other type songs often show up) but Tidal's playlists are often more refined.
Youtube Premium is a great value when you consider it's only a couple bucks more than YT music so that's definitely a consideration.
However I notice that sometimes when I like a video on youtube it's reflected in my 'Liked' songs playlist on YT music which can be annoying at times.
I know this is somewhat of an apples to oranges comparison (obviously Tidal is more for high def music playback) but I'd be curious to see what other people's thoughts are.

Trying to understand the differences between the three big-name sources: Spotify Very High vs Tidal High vs Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless. Picked the top three streaming services.

Can someone help me understand how each one of these differ from each other? They use different audio formats like Ogg/Vorbis, AAC, and FLAC. What are downsides and upsides to each of them? What is considered the "highest"

Note: not comparing with Tidal's HiFi Plus. not sure if people would suggest bringing that up for comparison

Hey everyone,

I am an avid music listener on all my devices and I've been using several different music streaming services over the years to try them all and see which one was the most suitable for me. I was always bouncing between Spotify and Apple Music, and wanted to try out Tidal because of friends' recommendations. I took the free trial month at the end of January, used it for multiple occasions (home, commute, travel...) and here is my review.

Pros:

Starting with the good things, I loved how central the music is! This may seem stupid but Tidal really puts the emphasis on the music service first rather than pushing podcasts or certain artists blindly. This can be seen in the 'clickable' names throughout the interface to see music producers, composer, sound engineer... for EVERY track, how cool is that? I also loved the overall premiumness of the interface, the Tidal built-in playlists are well-organised and easy to navigate. As for songs recommendations, I actually liked them most of the time! One month is short for a service to refine my profile but overall I actually discovered new songs or rediscovered artists who were "lost" in my Spotify/AM daily listening habits.

Sound quality was the biggest hope I had before installing Tidal and I wasn't disappointed. I listened to it through multiple sources, either on wired headphones or speakers (B&W P7 and Edifier) to test the lossless Hifi quality or most often in normal mode on Bluetooth devices (car, Sony WH-1000XM4, AirPods...) and it sounded as good as AM and better than Spotify which does not offer any lossless mode at the moment. I also loved that Tidal took the time to develop quality apps for most of my devices, including standalone iPad and Apple Watch apps which are not merely replicating the iPhone app design.

Pricing was finally quite competitive, especially when compared to the increased prices of AM/Spotify over the last months. For students like myself, Tidal with Hifi quality comes at €4.99/month in Western Europe which is a very enticing offer!

Cons (I'll be more structured here with a bullet point list):

• Search is just BAD. I read before trying Tidal that its search was sometimes imprecise and could lead to unwanted results. I was used to bad search of AM compared to the overall excellent one of Spotify (which works with filters too!) but Tidal is another level below that. Example with the latest song of the British band Depeche Mode: type "Ghost Again" and not "Ghosts Again" with the -s and Tidal won't return you the song, like WHY? It was also a pain in the arse for me to find an artist whose name I misspelled and I had to open Google or Spotify to find the correct one! It is especially irritating in situations where you have little control on your screen like in the car.

• App stability is disappointed. Many times, I ran into the issue of a buggy iOS app when it said it did not have any connection (I had to restart it) or when I started a track and it froze the screen without any reason. AM can also be buggy and Spotify is generally the most stable in that field but Tidal app feels buggy and "sluggish" at certain times.- Library management suffers from the same issue as Spotify. I sometimes read music services can fall either in the playlist-oriented or album-oriented camp. Although Tidal is better than Spotify for that, it just doesn't leave me with the impression I was managing my music library like I do with AM. I am much more an album-oriented person (hence my conclusion below) and missed the smart playlists, the beautiful album grid...

• Tidal lack of popularity can be problematic. This point has different consequences and I'm not talking about the lack of marketing around it (at least in Europe) although this could be a problem for the financial people running the service. Tidal is stuck between two sides, the utterly well-known Spotify which is the most popular among my friends and has many social features (playlist collaboration, availability everywhere, public playlists choice...) and AM which offers a great sound quality (and Dolby Atmos), human-curated playlists, radios and more fine-grained control over your music library. AM is also, just like Spotify, available on many more devices than Tidal. I miss the TV (LG OS) and Playstation apps for instance.

• Personal music management is inferior to AM. Like Spotify, there is no good way to manage local files and merge them with the streaming library. It's one of the main strengths of AM and it does it so smoothly.

Overall, I liked my experience on Tidal but did not find enough pros to counterbalance its cons. The main ones being the fuzzy search and the app stability. For my own use and having mainly Apple devices, AM has a better value proposition with a similar premium sound quality,is available on more devices, a better library management and also more financial value with a student price of €5.99/month which includes the TV video service. Someone looking for better social features could also be disappointed by Tidal and prefer Spotify.

Thanks for your time!

I’ve used Spotify forever but since joining this sub and others like it I’ve read a lot about how Apple Music and Tidal have way higher audio quality. I don’t have a fancy setup at all, I use the wired earbuds that come with iPhones and have edifier bookshelf speakers at home for my vinyls. Is it worth it to switch to Apple Music or tidal with this equipment? I’d have to convince my entire family to switch to the family plans of either service so if it’s not a noticeable difference I’ll wait until I have a higher quality system and can get one of them for myself