Why does Google Play Music never come up in any of these discussions? I've found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors. They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does. Plus, you get Youtube Red for free with GPM, which is great value. They have the same family plan, and 320kbps.

What is it lacking that no one ever considers it?

I pay for ad-free YouTube Red and got Google Play Music for free, IMO best value music subscription bundle available.

iTunes Match allows you to upload your own library and stream it from every device, for a yearly fee

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204146

> They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does.

Others have mentioned iTunes Match, but they haven't mentioned that Apple Music itself includes iTunes Match. So this claim is very much incorrect.

> Apple Music itself includes iTunes Match

Apple Music doesn't include iTunes Match, they're complementary: while Apple Music does perform matches like iTunes Match, iTunes Match gives you DRM-free AAC 256 as downloads while Apple Music matches are DRM-ized.

This means that if you use source files to match with Apple Music then delete the sources, you lost them, whereas with iTunes Match you would have sort of "converted" them.

You can see the difference by adding the "Kind" column in the "Songs" view of iTunes.

I've never used iTunes match, but it sounds like you are "matching" your music signature which music that is already on Apple Music. Can you upload brand new songs that are not on the system with it? This is a major reason why I went with GPM, a significant number of the music in my library was not on any streaming service, and back then, it was the only way to get those albums streamed for me.

Yup! It does try to match with stuff it already knows, but things which aren't on the service it'll upload.

When I tried it for the free month, it was really unresponsive at times. The UI wasn't even that terrible, it was just it's responsiveness. One example being that it would hang almost every time I opened it while it was playing something, so I would have to wait 10 sec before I could do what I wanted to do. Spotify's, and even Apple Music's apps are much better, at least on iOS. It was cool that I was able to upload a lot of my video game music that isn't up for streaming anywhere, and YouTube Red was nice as I do watch a lot of YouTube content, but I had to leave because of the app.

Now I use Spotify for most of my music and GPM for uploaded stuff, because that part is actually free, surprisingly.

Having used Apple and Spotify I really like what Google is doing. They bought Songza a few years ago and their station recommended engine is so much better. You pick from moods, time of day, feelings, intensity, location, etc. Also Chromecast is much nicer to use than than Bluetooth based solutions.

lack of playlist folders is the main thing that made me move back to spotify. I was using Google music for a year or two and made maybe 80 or so playlist before it got to much to handle. I had way more playlists on spotify and I would have moved them over to Google if there was a way of organising them

most of the new music i find these days is on discover weekly so I don't have as much of a need to upload tracks. it is really odd that none of the other services have added that feature yet. talk about being behind! its been 7 years

another thing that bugged me about Google music is the albums and singles being mixed up and also the album view not showing the order by year. it seems to be just random.

but apart from that its pretty decent and it is odd that its not mentioned as much as the others

I'm not a heavy playlist user but I can understand the pain. Does Spotify allow nested playlist under folders? That's a pretty neat design.

The album listing is definitely a big issue. I don't mind EPs being mixed, but singles should really be separated.

I'm curious to see how the merge with Youtube Music goes and if that leads to better UI.

I use apple match (not apple music), which allows uploads of your own music to play anywhere.

I'm not sure why google doesn't get much mention, neither does napster (formally rhapsody) which a friend uses and likes. or amazon music for that matter..

> They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does.

For the overwhelming majority of customers this is a non-feature.

Consider anyone under the age of say 20-25 today. How many will ever have a "real" mp3?

Personally, this is exactly why Google Play is the only option for me. I would gladly move back to Spotify should they offer that feature.

Spotify has (or had, I haven't used it in years) a similar feature called Local Files. You have to be on the same network as the computer to sync the files, and there's little metadata on them, but you should still be able to comingle local and Spotify music. It's not quite the same, but it's something.

It's definitely nowhere near the same. My music is at home, and the whole reason started using a music subscription is exactly to listen to it at work or at the gym. If I was home, there are dozens of free services that stream your music locally.

It's pretty close. If you use the download feature on a playlist that contains local files while in the same network, the file is copied to the device. So you'd have it at the gym or at work, you just need to make sure you've downloaded it to the device first.

It's basically music upload without the upload (and therefore always-available nature).

Great! But you can understand that you’re in a tiny minority and why Spotify won’t/shouldn’t add this feature, right?

That's fair, but it's still not a negative. I'm curious what it lacks that makes everyone go towards other services. My point is that it has everything, and more.

Funny. The upload feature is THE reason I use Google Music. I can upload my library of independent Brazilian music that isn't in any catalog.

I pay for YouTube red and I still use Spotify. Originally it was because I didn’t like google music’s UI and they didn’t have native applications.

I’m not sure if it’s improved since then.

> I've found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors.

I've compared all, and no service comes close to Spotify's discovery engine.

I've curious, when was that? I know that Google's engine has improved quite a bit over the years. Considering it's 7 years old, I'm sure it has changed quite a bit since the early days.

I agree. For my tastes (hard rock and metal, mostly out of the mainstream), the automatic playlists have been absolutely stellar.

Why?

I've never used Spotify, but what is the "weekly playlist"? Because Apple Music offers me three weekly playlists, "Favorites", "New Music", and (for some reason) "Chill".

They seem pretty good, with regards to matching my music tastes.

He's speaking of the "Discover Weekly" playlist. I won't claim to understand Spotify's algorithms, but it basically curates music that you may not have ever heard before but matches your interests. When I used to use Spotify it was incredibly accurate, so much so that I'd duplicate most Discover Weekly playlist week's as a new playlist because it just flowed so well with what I liked, despite being probably 80% new music I'd never heard before.

AM has nothing like it, and I say that after using AM for about a year or a little longer now.

It's the one thing I really miss about Spotify. When I got into work on Monday, I'd just fire up the weekly playlist, and it would always have enough new content I liked to keep my playlists fresh for the week.

Discover Weekly is like the page rank of playlist recommendations.

I think it works by looking at songs you have in your playlists and then finding playlists of other users that have those songs. From there it’ll make a playlist for you using songs those other users have in their playlist that you don’t have in yours.

Rather than trying to do some matching based on song properties it abstracts the hard part to humans.

It works extremely well and it refreshes every week.

Spotify also has all the generic playlists that Apple has too.

I also find Spotify’s UI to just work better especially between devices.

What is spotify’s Discovery weekly playlist? Apple has a weekly, personalized New Music Mix every Friday. They also have “see what friends are listening to” as well as human curated playlists. I have found all the music apps to be lacking but Apple Music really needs to work on the app, it is a pain to navigate on many levels.

This article goes into some detail on how Discover Weekly works and why it's pretty awesome:

https://hackernoon.com/spotifys-discover-weekly-how-machine-...

Awesome, thank you! I have heard a lot about it but don’t really understand the hype.

Just to add to the praise for Spotify's discovery mechanism, here is my little story.

I was recently offered another trial of AM, and decided to give it another go. Now, I have Apple Music Match, the thing where the music I put into iTunes basically gets put up into the cloud and is available everywhere. The point is, Apple has a list of what music I enjoy, as well as existing play lists, and what I've been listening to recently.

So, I expect their recommendations to be somewhat good. Maybe not as good as Spotify, as I use them more frequently. But, and this is a big but, 1) Apple can easily get access to my Spotify history I imagine by having me give them permission to access it, and 2) they still have access to my existing music library.

So, when their personalized Music mix played crap I absolutely hated, and then the next few songs were just so far out of left-field that I had to stop... well, let's just say I hated it.

I decided to see what Spotify had in store for me in my Daily Mixes. And the first song was perfect and I just loved listening to it (it was Dirty Paws by Of Monsters and Men, btw).

Couple this with Siri not understanding me asking it to play the Beatles (I have all their albums loaded into Match), it's just not worth the frustration.

One other thing I like is the Shared Playlists. I can find other people's public playlists, and basically subscribe to them. Other people discover music for me. This has lead me to buying new albums (usually I can find albums on Amazon for cheaper than iTunes, and I get a CD), which I can rip and put into iTunes where Match takes over. It's even better when Amazon's AutoRip is available for the CD. I get cheaper digital music then Apple along with an actual CD, which I like for music.

The New Music Mix playlist isn't nearly as good as Spotify's Discover Weekly, unfortunately. Wish they could figure something else out. Most of the time it's music I've already heard before, including songs I never listen to and from genres I never listen to.

On a slightly tangential note, how do you like the Homepod?

It’s okay - I’d probably say not worth the cost, but if you’re buying it as a toy it’s fine.

Siri is bad - can’t tell me calendar information. When I say “play kqed fm” she fails because I didn’t say “play kqed”.

When I ask her what podcasts I have she can’t do it - if I name a specific podcast it’ll work.

She’s bad at pretty basic stuff and it’s irritating to use as a result.

I'm not the OP commenter, but uh, I've had a Homepod since launch, and am quite pleased with the device. It has incredible sound quality, but Siri is seriously lacking. If the sound quality wasn't as good as it is, I wouldn't have kept it. I have been using Apple Music since launch, so the fact that it's locked down to Apple Music didn't cause me any concern.

I don’t suppose it’s as good as an 8” studio monitor? Who know what’s possible today.

Probably not, I have a pair of Mackie CR4s in my office that sound a bit better, and are significantly louder. The highest volume on the Homepod is a little quieter than I would have expected. I got the Homepod as a replacement for the Bluetooth speaker I used in my bedroom and bathroom and I think it does a great job at that...