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Thread: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

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    Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Prior to buying smartspeaker hardware, are either of these significantly better than the pther?

    Speaker? Probably either Sonos One or Echo 3rd Gen.

    Right now, I'm inclined to Sonos for audio quality, but MU for one device @ £3.99 versus Spotify @ £9.99, is a £6/month argument for Echo.

    Me = going in circles.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    I would probably get the cheapest service TBF. If this was a decent hifi setup,I would probably go for something with a higher bitrate,but for general listening,the smart device is probably more the limitation IMHO. OFC,make sure they actually have similar music coverage,as sometimes you might not be able to find as much tracks on cheaper services.

    Regarding the devices I would probably go for the Sonos - also some of the Ikea smart speakers,are apparently made by Sonos too.

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Can someone let Saracen know his login has been hijacked by an imposter who would let a smart speaker into their home and consider signing up to a subscription service?

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    I won my bet with myself.

    Serious answer - somewhat against my wishes, my circumstances have changed. My needs and preferences have changed with it.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Quote Originally Posted by spacein_vader View Post
    Can someone let Saracen know his login has been hijacked by an imposter who would let a smart speaker into their home and consider signing up to a subscription service?
    Circumstance change, so I guess this means that hell must have frozen over.
    I was tempted to post similar here, but since I am a music streaming refusenik (don't want Google et al to know even more about me than they already do...) and hence can't offer any meaningful advice, I though I'd keep out of this thread or the ultra-portable thread where was very surprised to see the Windows 10 mentioned.
    Strange times!

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Quote Originally Posted by kompukare View Post
    .... I though I'd keep out of this thread or the ultra-portable thread where was very surprised to see the Windows 10 mentioned.
    Strange times!
    Strange timez, indeed.

    To quote whoever-the-heck, "Events, dear boy, events".

    (Churchill??)
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    What is this, Saracen wants an Echo in his house...

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Or maybe a Sonos, yeah.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    I seem to recall from other threads you have some very good audio systems in place already. If they're in a suitable place for this an Echo Flex may be the answer as they have a 3.5mm audio jack to output the sound to allowing you to make use of existing kit.

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    How about a Spotify family account? We have this shared with others in my family which helps to lower the effective monthly costs.

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Quote Originally Posted by spacein_vader View Post
    I seem to recall from other threads you have some very good audio systems in place already. If they're in a suitable place for this an Echo Flex may be the answer as they have a 3.5mm audio jack to output the sound to allowing you to make use of existing kit.
    I may do that too, depending on what I get, but where I want the Echo isn't where the hifi is. Oh, and some of it (headphones, turntable, etc) is very good, but much of it was, when I bought it. Which was ages ago. And audio technology has moved on a lot since.
    Last edited by Saracen999; 09-05-2020 at 09:40 PM.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Quote Originally Posted by IAmATeaf View Post
    How about a Spotify family account? We have this shared with others in my family which helps to lower the effective monthly costs.
    Thanks for the thought, but it's just the two of us and the wife is interested in radio stations, mostly for chat segments like Radio 4, and the music is just me ....which is what makes the M-Unlimited for a single device tempting at £4.

    If it saves me £6/month, over 18 months that pays for the Echo.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    I just want something I can use to distribute my music around the house. We tried Echo but it kept dropping out and it just got too frustrating. So now I'm trying to find something that will run off a central drive and pipe the music to other devices. Not sure if that gives you an alternate route to consider?

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen999 View Post
    Prior to buying smartspeaker hardware, are either of these significantly better than the pther?

    Speaker? Probably either Sonos One or Echo 3rd Gen.

    Right now, I'm inclined to Sonos for audio quality, but MU for one device @ £3.99 versus Spotify @ £9.99, is a £6/month argument for Echo.

    Me = going in circles.
    This is a tricky one. I say that because you've mentioned that interminable money pit - "audio quality".

    I've never used Sonos, but here goes my 10p's worth.

    I have an Echo (I think Generation 1, it was a gift so can't easily check) and I really don't rate the audio quality. We use it very occasionally for music, but in the kitchen where to be frank we're rarely looking for a full-blown audiophile experience. It works seamlessly with Amazon Music, which is nice, but without Unlimited it is a bit of a pain because it's hit and miss which tracks will play. I won't pay £3.99 for the privilege though, so I just make do with Prime (2 million tracks rather than 60m). The bass bugs me because I think it overweights the bass to give people the impression it's a more quality / powerful speaker (think Beats aficionados), and although I've reduced the bass manually in the past it feels like it resets itself periodically. Since there's no speaker or physical dial it's a pain to check what it's set to - by logging into the app.

    If you just want a cheap solution, I would suggest buying the Echo and testing out Prime (if you have it) before making the commitment to upgrading to Music Unlimited. My view is that you'll have to go in with low expectations on audio quality. Amazon being Amazon, you can always return it for ~£4 if you don't get on with it. Or buy from Argos (since they're still open via Sainsburys) and physically return.

    Apparently the Echo Studio is better (https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/amazon-echo-studio) but personally I wouldn't pay that much to be locked into the Amazon ecosystem (since we're in Sonos price territory).

    If quality is what you want, then I'd be more inclined to roadtest the Sonos (it simply has to be better than the Echo) and test it out with both Spotify and Tidal trials (the latter because it offers much higher bitrate).

    For simplicity though, I think Amazon is a no-brainer, because it keeps everything together and it's inherently self-sufficient. I also find some of the smart speaker things handy, e.g. setting timers, reminders and the like by just speaking.

    I'm also questioning whether I'm dreaming.

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    i've not tried music unlimited, but tried a few others, tidal, deezer, apple music, amazon music but spotify is the one i used the most. two main reasons, firstly it has most stuff i can think of that i'd expect from a streaming music service (ie. most officially released songs i can think off), it has most new releases available to hear from 8am on fridays (which would have saved me a fortune if they had that in the 80s/90s) which is mainly because they are the biggest music streaming service (like you'd think of netflix first for video streaming), and being around a while and being the biggest fish they tend to have the most compatibility with things (that i have at least), so if you have alexa or siri you can speak to them and play tracks (not something i've done), it ties in with my phones, tablets, desktop, tv streamers, and you can google stuff like "best ambient tracks" and find blogs with playlists that you can just click and play in spotify. i don't see that for the other services. so it's like the MS office of the streaming world

    you can get cheap or free trials for 1-3 months so you can try them out and see what you prefer. as long as they work with your devices, if it has the best content you want that's the next thing

    tidal is the second one i see people prefer after spotify, partly because it does have certain exclusive content that people i know and forums etc are interested in (ie. rnb, hip hop - and jay z is a big shareholder so can get these exclusives from people he knows) - of course other options have their own exclusives too (one person i know likes apple as they make easy curated playlists of new stuff and music podcasts - not my thing personally, but if you are into the apple eco system then apple music is possibly a good choice), but tidal have a higher quality premium lossless service that works with certain streaming devices/smart speakers so you can get "better" quality sound

    deezer is ok too, but from my perspective it was mainly that they had a few tracks the others didn't have and it was one of the easiest services to use certain software to get those hard to obtain tracks permanently saved on your pc

    amazon music, hardly used it, didn't like the way it worked. personally don't like the prime video front end much either. prefer netflix, which is slightly different depending on the device you use. as well as having the content you want, having a front end you like makes a big difference. of course if there was something great you couldn't get elsewhere you would faff around to watch it, but having easy to use can make you use things more, says the guy who get's a device and finds the pros and cons then researches and gets a replacement and repeats within reason until i have the best i can get

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    Re: Spotify or Music Unlimited?

    Y'know, I love this forum. Whatever you ask, there's always people like those in this thread prepared to offer not only advice and opinion, but to give their time to explain it.

    So thank you, all of you. I'm learning a lot. And it is tremedously helpful.

    @Jim .... if you think you're dreaming, imagine how I'm finding it. Every morning, I keep expecting the sun to rise in the west. For the record, so far the sun has been boringly conventional.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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