And it saddens me that Google is planning its demise sometimes soon (although it's been a while they've been saying this) to focus on YT Music, which leaves a LOT to be desired.
I am currently listening to a "I Feel Lucky" playlist, based on my musical tastes and I must say that this is by far the best algorithm I have experienced, focusing on a particular genre - like female based pop music or 80s-90s indie rock. Spotify / Amazon / YT don't even reach it.
Here are my thoughts and my bug bears :
Let's assume that the services have mostly access to the same songs (although that remains to be discussed - Play Music seems to have a larger catalog than YT ?)
- Spotify : no doubt the most popular service out there (maybe because it's Swedish, Henrik's homeland ? ). Its algorithms are pretty good - I was looking forward to the Discovery playlist every Monday. The new music playlist every Friday was also well focused on my potential likes. It has one crippling flaw though : the 10000 songs limit in one playlist and the difficulty to include your "non streaming" songs in these playlists. I have a playlist of about 18000 songs which I like to listen to on a random basis. I don't want to have to separate it in two lists and I want to be able to add my own music to these. I abandoned the Swedish masters for that very reason
- Amazon Music : pretty good for a while, but stopped using them when they removed the possibility to add your own stuff
- Google Play Music : the best at the moment for me - pretty clear interface, in tune with my preferences, I can upload all my "weird stuff" and play it seamlessly with more popular stuff. Misses a "Discovery" weekly playlist. New music lists are good and spot on. Again, the "I feel lucky" is brilliant.
- You Tube Music : I had high hopes for YTM, but they've, so far, fallen flat. The real advantage is access to those unknown gems which people uploaded - maybe illegally, but still, access is good ! - although you have access to these videos from Play Music too. Their Discovery weekly playlist is pretty good, but not as good as Spotify - whilst their New Music is abysmal. The "Your Mix" playlist is terrible too, with no wide musical scope whatsoever. In short, I am concerned about the migration from Play Music to YTM.
- Deezer/Tidal/Apple Music, I have very little if no experience at all.