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I went through a maddening period recently of trying to find something, anything that met the following criteria: 1. Lossless playback. I am willing to / curre

I went through a maddening period recently of trying to find something, anything that met the following criteria: 1. Lossless playback. I am willing to / currently pay for it. I don't care if it's a placebo--I think I can hear the difference when I'm listening through good headphones and a reasonable quality DAC. Plus, some musicians like Neil Young have made this a not-odious condition for being on a service. 2. Best effort on catalog. A huge catalog isn't actually super important for reasons stated below. Amazon's catalog is a little on the sparse side, but the others' are fine. 3. Allow personal user-uploaded tracks, and stream them back to the uploader account losslessly. This allows me to backfill the crazy and not so crazy stuff I've purchased over the years that is not on any of the streaming services. 4. Support a reasonable number of devices such that I don't have to choose between Prime Video and your streaming music service on my TV (to which my hifi equipment connects digitally). Right now I'm running Tidal (best compromise for me) sideloaded on a FireTV. Or distilled to first principles: "Allow me to enjoy the convenience of streaming music, while allowing me to access any content I wish (even if I must pay for it), at the same quality I experienced when I was 16 shopping at the local record store." Nobody does this. Google Play Music: Not lossless; doesn't support FireTV because arbitrary corporate bickering reasons. Props for self-uploaded tracks. Amazon Prime Music: Not lossless (worst encoding). Props for self-uploaded tracks. Apple Music: Not lossless; limited device support. Props for self-uploaded tracks, however the interface to self-uploaded tracks and streaming music not really well integrated on AppleTV. Spotify: Not lossless; no self-uploaded tracks. Tidal: No self-uploaded tracks. Deezer Elite: Only available in lossless on Sonos. Props for amazing catalog and self-uploaded tracks. In terms of fixing things... Amazon Prime Music could be my choice overnight by going CD quality (not like they don't have the infrastructure to do it). Their device support is surprisingly good. Their catalog isn't great, but I'm willing to buy / upload CDs that are missing--provided Amazon doesn't start shitting-up their content availability to drive CD sales. Google Play Music also not too far off mark. Fix the lossless thing, and I might be convinced to live with their Amazon bickering. I suspect Apple will launch lossless soon, but also think it will be a cold day in hell before I can use Apple Music on something like FireTV. Also, the integration of self-tracks and streamed-tracks is bad and should feel bad. Deezer Elite: OMG, don't make me buy a Sonos. I want you. Tidal: I like jazz, and your partial Pat Metheny albums and anemic Dave Holland selection kill me. But if you allowed me to upload my own, I could buy my way around your content negotiation failings.

svantana 11y ago
Re:1 You don't care whether it's a placebo?!? We should get in touch, I have some expensive sugar pills to sell you that will do wonders for your ailment of choice.
- peatmoss 11y ago
  To be clear, I don't think it actually is. I think many people don't listen in a way that any differences could be discerned. Streaming over your car stereo, going down the highway, for example. Or listening on a cheap phone with a bad DAC and cruddy headphones. I've read about various tests (usually not conducted with sufficient rigor to make me think too much about the results) in which people: 1. Couldn't differentiate lossless and lossy encoding 2. Preferred the lossy to the lossless. The former case isn't too worrisome for me. The latter case is, in that it signals that there is a discernible difference, and that we're habituating to compression. Yesteryear's LP pops and hisses replaced by crunchy, compressed cymbals. I am too young to be crotchety about the way music should sound, but I swear the music industry has turned me into this :-)
- ksenzee 11y ago
  I seldom care whether something that works for me personally is a placebo or not. If I can harness the power of my brain with a sugar pill, excellent. The placebo effect is powerful, and was the basis of a lot of medicine before the 20th century. Where it does matter, obviously, is science, which is the only tool we have to come up with solutions that are better than placebo. But "better than placebo" is a fairly high standard[1]. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102: "The placebo effect accounted for 68% of the effect in the drug groups. Whereas clinical trials need to control the placebo effect, clinical practice should attempt to use its full power."
ergl 11y ago
If you have a mac and an iphone, you could try vox loop, where you upload your own music (any quality) and then streams it back at the same quality (works with wav / flac). Only bad thing about it is that you have to upload your own music. As for having a big catalog, well, you can either buy the cds / vinyls and rip them, or have access to a good private tracker.

svantana 11y ago

Re:1 You don't care whether it's a placebo?!? We should get in touch, I have some expensive sugar pills to sell you that will do wonders for your ailment of choice.

peatmoss 11y ago
To be clear, I don't think it actually is. I think many people don't listen in a way that any differences could be discerned. Streaming over your car stereo, going down the highway, for example. Or listening on a cheap phone with a bad DAC and cruddy headphones. I've read about various tests (usually not conducted with sufficient rigor to make me think too much about the results) in which people: 1. Couldn't differentiate lossless and lossy encoding 2. Preferred the lossy to the lossless. The former case isn't too worrisome for me. The latter case is, in that it signals that there is a discernible difference, and that we're habituating to compression. Yesteryear's LP pops and hisses replaced by crunchy, compressed cymbals. I am too young to be crotchety about the way music should sound, but I swear the music industry has turned me into this :-)
ksenzee 11y ago
I seldom care whether something that works for me personally is a placebo or not. If I can harness the power of my brain with a sugar pill, excellent. The placebo effect is powerful, and was the basis of a lot of medicine before the 20th century. Where it does matter, obviously, is science, which is the only tool we have to come up with solutions that are better than placebo. But "better than placebo" is a fairly high standard[1]. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246102: "The placebo effect accounted for 68% of the effect in the drug groups. Whereas clinical trials need to control the placebo effect, clinical practice should attempt to use its full power."

ergl 11y ago

If you have a mac and an iphone, you could try vox loop, where you upload your own music (any quality) and then streams it back at the same quality (works with wav / flac). Only bad thing about it is that you have to upload your own music. As for having a big catalog, well, you can either buy the cds / vinyls and rip them, or have access to a good private tracker.