You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[bc-chris]

Originally Posted by Locke

I dont drive enough to make it really worth it is my problem. I basically drive to the office and back, its like 15 minutes a day total. I shall suffer with peasant-terrestrial-radio.

does your stereo not have a usb input?
my '89 chevy has a stereo that i had installed in the late 90's that i can plug a usb drive into. load up a thumbdrive with a crap ton of songs i like and boom.... all the music i like with no commercials

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

does your stereo not have a usb input?
my '89 chevy has a stereo that i had installed in the late 90's that i can plug a usb drive into. load up a thumbdrive with a crap ton of songs i like and boom.... all the music i like with no commercials

/facepalm

I forgot many vehicle had that feature after my drive died. I guess I'm getting some nano USB drives to load up some stuff I hadn't gotten around to sorting out and setting up.

USB input might also allow me to save some of the data to the vehicle's media hard drive as well.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Some idiot stopped their broken down vehicle in the middle lane of southbound Crowchild right after the bridge. I'm pretty sure someone smashed into it by now.

at 715am so people were still zooming by.

Dude on SB Crowchild going through Kensington this morning during rush hour. Trying to make a triple lane change from far right lane to far left and wasn't having much luck finding a gap. So he flat out stopped. And waited. And Waited. On Crowchild.

[cam_calderon]

I sometimes wonder what music consumption will look like in 10 years. I used to buy CDs, digital files and vinyls, now I buy a couple records a year at most. I own very little of the music I listen to these days.

[Shazam]

I've been using Spotify for like 10 years now.

[Coach]

I have a feeling the streaming will remain in some form for a while. For all the issues of artist payment, it's still a revolution in music sharing. Can listen to basically anything you want for the price of a CD/month. I can't see what would overtake it. The supplementation will continue to trend back towards vinyl for those who want physical media.

I think it's easy to forget that the CD was actually a pretty short lived piece of media. I was really only like 10 or so years of peak CD sales before things like MP3 players started to take over.

[Fuzz]

My wife had Spotify for years. I found most of their playlists not very good, random to be awful, and quality to be mediocre. She switched to Tidal a couple years ago and I've found those things to be so much better, but I'm mostly a passenger on this. Biggest loss is some of the remote control functionality, Spotify seems to be better for that.


Anyone else make the switch either way? Preferences?

[Coach]

It's hard to get off Spotify. It's basically become synonymous with music sharing.

[Fuzz]

Why is that? Because of sharing with others? Sorry, unaware of the "hooks".

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

My wife had Spotify for years. I found most of their playlists not very good, random to be awful, and quality to be mediocre. She switched to Tidal a couple years ago and I've found those things to be so much better, but I'm mostly a passenger on this. Biggest loss is some of the remote control functionality, Spotify seems to be better for that.


Anyone else make the switch either way? Preferences?

You have to switch to the 'Lossless' settings under your streaming quality for Spotify.

Also, I've found I just play my 'Liked' songs and then choose Smart Shuffle so it'll play my liked songs plus randomly interspersed related tracks. It works really well for me.

I did give Tidal a try on a trial. I get it's the 'audiophile' choice but I listen mostly in my cars, which -- while they do have the upper-end audio systems -- are still car audio systems so I'm never really going to get the full effect of lossless. If I used my home theatre for music streaming then perhaps, but even then when I used Tidal and Spotify side-by-side on my proper hi-fi setup, I didn't really get the big difference.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

You have to switch to the 'Lossless' settings under your streaming quality for Spotify.

Also, I've found I just play my 'Liked' songs and then choose Smart Shuffle so it'll play my liked songs plus randomly interspersed related tracks. It works really well for me.

I did give Tidal a try on a trial. I get it's the 'audiophile' choice but I listen mostly in my cars, which -- while they do have the upper-end audio systems -- are still car audio systems so I'm never really going to get the full effect of lossless. If I used my home theatre for music streaming then perhaps, but even then when I used Tidal and Spotify side-by-side on my proper hi-fi setup, I didn't really get the big difference.

My brother had Spotify in his Tesla, and when visiting my wife entered her Tidal account, and the difference in quality was astounding. I'm not sure if Tesla lets you change the quality, but I'm sure he would have had it as good as possible, and he had said it wasn't great. Thirty seconds was enough to convince him to switch, though I have no idea how that has gone in the long term.

[TorqueDog]

Depends on how long ago you tried it; Spotify didn't release lossless until September 2025 and -- as you said -- who knows if the Tesla integrated app even allowed it in the first place. I know the Spotify app on my Samsung QN85A doesn't have any means of switching streaming quality -- I would hope it uses the highest possible quality based on available bandwidth (haven't checked the Shield TV Pro app to see if it has quality settings). But Spotify's lossless is -- as is Tidal's offering -- bit-for-bit identical to the CD versions.

Also how the source connects is a limiting factor. BT, AUX, or integrated app. I know the aftermarket CarPlay systems in my RR and AM are both AUX-based rather than using Bluetooth transport, and audio quality took a hit on that front alone. RR is switchable to BT but I hate how it then uses the HFP profile for navigation voices.

And even then, support for lossless audio is exceedingly rare on most consumer wireless devices.

[Fuzz]

Ah, ok it was October 2024. Didn't know Spotify had upped their quality.

[troutman]

Many artists criticize Spotify for unfair compensation, claiming they receive very little money for their streams compared to traditional sales. The platform's payment model often benefits major labels more than independent artists, leading to calls for better pay and support for musicians.

Reports indicate that an artist needs over four million streams per month to earn a minimum wage in the U.S.

7 Best Music Streaming Services For Artists [2026 update]

https://identitymusic.com/blog/the-b...aming-services

https://soundcamps.com/blog/music-pl...s-for-artists/

[Sliver]

Meh, nobody's paying me for work I did 20 years ago. Go tour and sell me $60 toques and $50 t-shirts if you want money. Successful artists hardly are suffering and honestly they were ripping us the f off in the 90s on music. $20 cd in 1994 is like $43 in today's dollars. For two good songs and a bunch of filler on a disc that cost $1 to make.

Today it's way more fair for the consumer. I love my YouTube Music subscription the whole family shares. I used to buy a cd every payday for 15 years. Now I spend something like $20/month that my family shares, so $5/person for unlimited music. I absolutely love the way things are now.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ah, ok it was October 2024. Didn't know Spotify had upped their quality.

I don't know the exact details of Spotify's lossy encoding, but chances are you're really not going to hear a difference with properly encoded stuff compared to lossless. People think they do, and a very small portion can hear differences on the very high frequency part of the spectrum if they concentrate on it hard enough, but the vast majority of people can't tell the difference on a blind ABX test. Yeah the waveforms look different, but the proof is in the pudding, and almost no one can reliably detect a 320 kbps lossy file vs. a lossless one (or hi-res one) by listening to it.

So either the Spotify encoding was off in that case (perhaps set to a low enough quality that you could hear the difference), Tidal had a better master or mix source for whatever you were listening to, or the Tidal volume normalization was simply louder (subtle increases in volume are normally perceived as increases in quality). But changing the quality setting on Spotify isn't going to do anything audible for the vast, vast majority of people beyond acting as a placebo.

[Fuzz]

Ya, and I know a lot about digital audio, so that's why it was so surprising. It was instantly noticeable playing the exact same songs. It di just sound like low quality mp3s compared to Tidal.

I used to record my DJ friends. Even setup shoutcast broadcasts back in the late 90's so I'm very familiar with crappy bitrates!

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ya, and I know a lot about digital audio, so that's why it was so surprising. It was instantly noticeable playing the exact same songs. It di just sound like low quality mp3s compared to Tidal.

I used to record my DJ friends. Even setup shoutcast broadcasts back in the late 90's so I'm very familiar with crappy bitrates!

Yes of course you’re familiar with Fuzz.

[Fuzz]

Ground loops were my nemesis!

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Meh, nobody's paying me for work I did 20 years ago. Go tour and sell me $60 toques and $50 t-shirts if you want money. Successful artists hardly are suffering and honestly they were ripping us the f off in the 90s on music. $20 cd in 1994 is like $43 in today's dollars. For two good songs and a bunch of filler on a disc that cost $1 to make.

Today it's way more fair for the consumer. I love my YouTube Music subscription the whole family shares. I used to buy a cd every payday for 15 years. Now I spend something like $20/month that my family shares, so $5/person for unlimited music. I absolutely love the way things are now.

So, Google is offering a package with Google 1 for 2TB online storage, YouTube Premium, YT Music, all for family, and you get enhanced access to Gemini. All for $24.95 a month. When I am paying $20 for just Spotify, it is a no-brainer to switch. Also, in the YTM settings, you just select your other provider, say transfer it all, and it does it. Pretty awesome, actually.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ya, and I know a lot about digital audio, so that's why it was so surprising. It was instantly noticeable when playing the exact same songs. It di just sounds like low-quality MP3s compared to Tidal.

I used to record my DJ friends. Even set up shoutcast broadcasts back in the late 90's, so I'm very familiar with crappy bitrates!

I did try Tidal for a bit, but found the selection very limited and the curation far inferior to Spotify and/or YTM. I bumped Spotify to lossless and couldn't tell the difference. I don't know if YTM offers lossless yet, but for my purposes, it sounds fine.

All IMO, YMMV.