If you love music but aren’t too keen on spending a fortune on CDs and vinyl albums, you might be interested in Spotify, a digital music service that offers a huge variety of songs and playlists. It’s free to join and you can even subscribe to it on your mobile phone. There are also a few ways to access Spotify on your tablet, too, such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
Apple Music
Spotify and Apple Music offer similar services, but they operate differently. There are also different playlists and features to choose from.
With Apple Music, you can play music across your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Windows, Xbox, PS5, Android mobile devices, smart speakers, wearables, and even TVs. While it may be a bit daunting at first, the interface is clean and easy to navigate. The service uses an algorithm to generate playlists based on your listening habits, which is a big plus. Its bundled apps and web player make it a great choice for people who are more concerned about convenience.
Apple Music also offers lossless streaming. Lossless audio lets you listen to songs at higher quality than the standard AAC file format. You can choose between 256kbps, 320kbps, and 96kHz/24-bit streams, depending on your needs. If you are more of an audiophile, you can even choose to opt in for the “Hi-Res Lossless” option, which offers 24-bit/192kHz streams. However, it requires an external DAC.
Unlike Apple Music, Spotify’s free tier does not offer the most impressive of features. For example, you can’t skip songs in the middle of a playlist. Furthermore, the app’s shuffle feature only works six times an hour.
On the other hand, Apple Music has a more comprehensive library. Spotify’s catalog of 82 million songs pales in comparison to Apple’s 90 million tracks. In addition, you can listen to your library on the go.
If you are more of a music aficionado, you should consider purchasing the Premium tier for $8.99 a month. This will allow you to enjoy a plethora of features, including Spotify Wrapped.
Both Spotify and Apple Music offer a great way to discover new music. Apple has a large, exclusive content library that includes thousands of rare tracks. But the service’s algorithm-generated playlists aren’t quite as sophisticated as those of Spotify.
In addition to its bundled apps, Spotify supports other platforms such as Samsung wearables, Sonos speakers, and games consoles. And while you don’t get the latest iOS or Android device right away, you can download the app to your phone or tablet.
Tidal
Tidal is an online music service that offers streaming for a fee. Users can download the service’s iOS or Android apps or access it through the web. The service is available on many devices, including smart TVs, tablets, connected wearables, and even Sony and Microsoft games consoles.
One of the biggest reasons to choose Tidal over Spotify is the quality of the audio. The service uses MQA technology to deliver high-resolution audio. For an additional cost, you can choose a Premium subscription that includes Dolby Atmos spatial audio. Another benefit of the service is that you can share your favorite tracks on social media.
In addition to music, Tidal offers videos. You can watch music-related documentaries, live performances, and music videos. There are also several playlists, many of which focus on specific genres.
While Tidal is an excellent option for fans of audio, it has a few disadvantages. First, its search capabilities are inferior to Spotify’s. If you’re looking for a particular artist or song, you won’t find it. Also, it’s hard to tell what songs friends are listening to.
As the name suggests, Tidal offers a variety of exclusive deals for major artists. Artists who sign to Tidal receive a 10% cut of the monthly fees. Other perks include the ability to playback their music on high-quality headphones.
Tidal has also expanded into the Android TV market. You can stream Tidal’s content to a Smart TV with Google Chromecast or Amazon FireTV. But, like Spotify, it doesn’t have a dedicated video section.
Fortunately, Tidal has improved its user interface. Its desktop app features a big search bar and logical navigation. Even if you’re not an audiophile, it’s easy to navigate the app.
Spotify is one of the more social services out there. Whether you’re using it on your smartphone or tablet, you can view the social profiles of other users. However, it doesn’t give you a quick list of popular songs or playlists.
When you’re browsing the streaming library, you can compare artists and songs. Both Tidal and Spotify offer a Discover Weekly feature, which shows you 30 tracks.
VOX Music Player
If you’re looking for a great music player on your iPhone, VOX Music Player is one of the best options around. It offers you a user-friendly interface, gapless playback, and the ability to connect to online music services.
VOX Music Player also supports offline listening. You can store your favorite songs in its own cloud storage, which means you won’t have to worry about missing a track if you’re away from your device. VOX supports a wide variety of audio formats, including ALAC, DSD, FLAC, and MP3.
VOX is one of the most popular music players on iOS. In fact, it’s one of the most popular audio players overall. With over 30,000 radio stations from around the world, you can listen to a range of music, no matter your location.
Vox Music Player is available for free. However, if you want to unlock its full features, you’ll have to subscribe to a premium account. The paid version offers you a clean and friendly interface, as well as support for all high-resolution audio formats. VOX also has support for Force Touch, which lets you press and hold a button to play a song.
VOX Music Cloud Storage is a limitless cloud that keeps all of your songs in their original quality. For a small fee, you can upgrade your subscription to include unlimited cloud storage. Plus, you’ll have access to more than a dozen online radio stations, too.
VOX’s audio engine is based on BASS(tm), and it comes with five-band Parametric EQ. You can also customize your audio settings, which are all accessible through a user-friendly interface.
Another cool feature is a built-in SoundCloud player. Whenever you stream a song from SoundCloud, VOX can sync that track with your account.
Vox music player is compatible with most popular audio formats, and it even supports 5.1 channel audio. This means that you can play your audio files on a home theater system, and if you’re using a Mac, you can download the VOX Mac application to play them when you’re not connected to a WiFi network.
Friend Activity section
The Friend Activity section of Spotify is an easy way to check out what your friends are listening to. This feature is available in the desktop application as well as the mobile app. There are also some settings that you can use to control the way that you are able to see your friends’ activities.
In order to access the Friend Activity section of the Spotify desktop app, you need to open the app and then tap the cog icon on the top right corner. After this, scroll down to the Social section. Once you have opened the Social section, you will be able to choose between the following options: Disable Friend Activity, Enable Friend Activity, and Disable Publishing Activity. You can also deactivate the “Automatically make new playlist public” option.
Another way to view the activity of your friends is to visit the Blend story. In this feature, you can see how the songs you are playing overlap with your friends’ music streams. It also offers an infographics slideshow of music differences.
Another great feature offered by Spotify is that you can create and share your own playlists. This feature helps you to easily find and discover music you haven’t heard before. You can also create collaborative playlists with your friends. If you have a Premium subscription, you can also enjoy “Wrapped,” a feature that will tell you which artists and songs are trending, or what’s been popular in the past year.
In addition, Spotify has some features that you can control to see what your friends are listening to, including the ability to hide playlists from your friends. If you don’t want to see the activity of your friends on Spotify, you can either log out of the app, restart it, or reinstall it. However, you may run into issues if the servers are experiencing technical issues. To ensure you’re getting the best performance from the service, you can contact the support team to solve any problems.
While there are a number of ways to see what your friends are listening to on Spotify, the best way is to sign up for a premium account. For only $10, you can get many benefits, including discovering new music and having a larger pool of artists to discover.