What you need to know
- We asked our readers what their favorite music streaming service is.
- YouTube Music received 40% of the votes, with Spotify coming in second with 24% of the votes.
- Many commenters lamented the loss of Google Play Music which YouTube Music replaced.
Following Spotify's recent controversy, we asked our readers which of the best music streaming services they preferred. Out of a staggering 8,300 votes, YouTube Music came out on top with 40% of the votes. That may be too surprising given that this is an Android site after all, but it also helps that the service is included with the YouTube Premium subscription, among other reasons to consider switching from Spotify.
That said, Spotify is still a popular (and excellent) service that many people love. While it was ahead for some time in our poll, it ended up with just 24% of votes, which is still more than double that of the following service, Tidal. In fact, you can check out our Spotify vs. Tidal comparison to see how they stack up against each other.
One commenter, Scott Wittig1, explains why he uses YouTube Music after trying out other services:
I mostly ended up using YouTube Music. It works very well with my smart hifi home theater setup. Especially with Android, it just works seamlessly, and has a very large library. I did use Spotify as well. And before that Pandora. For free service years ago pandora was great, but, then they hammered me with political agenda trash. Lately , however, I have been also using Amazon music when I want to listen to much higher quality on hifi. For some reason the built in app works well for quality streaming. But, voice control smart home works best with Google.
Another reader echoes many of the other comments as he talks about the loss of Google Play Music and begrudgingly switching to YouTube Music:
Would do anything to get Google Play Music back. Swapped over to Spotify briefly when it got canned before coming back to YouTube music once it became bare minimum tolerable. In a perfect world I'd use Tidal but their catalogue is kind of sparse for more niche artists.Would do anything to get Google Play Music back. Swapped over to Spotify briefly when it got canned before coming back to YouTube music once it became bare minimum tolerable. In a perfect world I'd use Tidal but their catalogue is kind of sparse for more niche artists.— Nicholas Hartmann (@LessThan3Man) February 2, 2022February 2, 2022
Another commenter, Brett122, seems to disagree and thinks Tidal is worth it for the sound quality alone:
Tidal is the best music streaming service out. Best sound, huge catalogue. I care about sound quality which is rare nowadays as proven by spotify's popularity. If sound quality was important to most, then spotify wouldn't exist. People don't even care about stereo anymore. If you care about music quality in stereo, then Tidal is it. If you just care about the tune(jingle), then any other service will do. Hence the popularity of spotify.
A great deal
If you're already a YouTube Premium subscriber, there's no better time to try out YouTube Music as it already comes with your subscription. And because the services are connected, YouTube Music already has an idea of what music you like.
