Music Streaming Services help

[Alan_C]

I'm new to music streaming services, and could really do with some help or recommendations. So far I've subscribed to Spotify and Amazon Unlimited on a month trial. I've started saving albums to my accounts, but very early in I noticed some glaring omissions from their libraries, for services which offer 40m+ songs. Spotify don't have Substance by New Order, while Amazon don't have Kings Of Leon's first album. Found that rather strange. I don't know if its anything to do with record companies or whatever, but it's gonna be a bit of a problem for me, if I can't have all of the albums I want on the service I pay for.

Amazon doesn't appear to allow you to upload your own library anymore. Spotify does, but when I added the Substance album from my laptop, it just went into Local Files section, so it hwith the songs in alphabetical order, rather than the album running order. 

Is there a good music streaming service that will allow me to upload my own album collection, where they will actually be recognised as an album, along with the albums I have saved from the service?

[WS_Jack_III]

I think Apple music has the best library. Also from an artist stand point I think Apple pay the best rates.

[The Nal]

Its possible on all but a pain. I think Apple Music are the only ones who offer the service straight up? Could be wrong though.  

I've used Spotify, Tidal, iTunes, Deezer, Google Play and and about to trial Qobuz. 

Deezer is a bit shit but the "Hear This" seemed decent, like Spotifys Discover playlists. 

Sound quality wise (which Im a bit of a sucker for), Tidal and Qobuz appear to be the best. Interested to hear Qobuzs 24-Bit 192KHz offering. Tidals Masters section is beautiful. Where people may not hear the difference between the Tidal hifi and Spotify premium sound, the masters section is noticeable. Very much so. On a decent setup obviously.

For new music and discovering though Tidal is fairly terrible. Lots of Jay-Zs mates shoved in your face. The app can be crap too. But I found that with Spotify at times. 

Spotify is the best overall though, no question. For new music, functionality, sharing etc. If they could just improve the sound a bit it would be perfect!

Will report back on Qobuz. Everything looks great with it.....

[clarkete]

49 minutes ago, Alan_C said:

Spotify does, but when I added the Substance album from my laptop, it just went into Local Files section, so it with the songs in alphabetical order, rather than the album running order. 

Having in the past (many moons ago) had some albums that I extracted to mp3 that ended up with the track numbers incorporated in the filename, isn't that a way of doing it so they're in the correct order, or does that bork the track name too?

I've never considered uploading the missing stuff before, but it would be good to find a way and in my case that needs to be away from apple as they never seem to play nice enough with other kids for my liking. 

I did pretty well extracting a list of several thousand tracks from itunes in the past, converting it to another playlist format and adding to spotify, with only a minority of misses.

[Alan_C]

I haven't spent much time trying things out yet, I was just hoping for a quick fix. I'm not particularly fussy about anything, other than a service that isn't gonna be missing popular albums, or at least if it is, I can easily transfer my album into the app, so it is recognised as an album, along with the streamed ones.

I've used my iPod Classic for years, but I think its on its way out, and I've just got a new laptop with an SSD hard drive, rather than HD, so I don't have a 1TB of space to store every album I have on my laptop anymore. I just want a service which offers me every album I had on my iPod, whether it be I stream it from them, or I can just transfer from my computer into their app.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Alan_C

[WS_Jack_III]

Kind of why I still buy records. At any moment, any record company or artist could just remove their songs from these services. Always nice to actually have the records. I'm going to need a John Peel style room soon though just for all the physical media I have bought in the last 15 years.