Re:Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
by least on Monday December 19, 2022 @12:49AM
(#34048935)
You're right, I do think Spotify connect is an absolutely killer feature that I'm surprised it hasn't been replicated by other companies. I'm a fairly happy Apple Music user but that's definitely one of the things I miss about using Spotify. It's truly bizarre for Apple who has fairly good integrations and Music continuity just makes sense.
Spotify Wrapped is also kind of a cultural phenomenon. People enjoy sharing and talking about it and I guess it's the default assumption that you're using Spotify so you can easily share playlists and stuff to other users. Spotify has the network that smaller services don't.
I keep looking at Deezer for its cheap hi-def support (the premium plan now has FLAC, for the same price as Spotify). But integrations with non-officially sanctioned devices seem janky, at best.
Maybe things have improved, but at one point I had a Yamaha receiver, officially supported, which basically replicated the Deezer interface inside the receiver's app. I couldn't control it from my computer. IIRC Tidal was the same. With Spotify, this just works. Bonus points for supporting the use case of "having friends over who can play their music on my stereo".
I also use multiple "devices" to play music: phone, personal laptop, work laptop, personal desktops, media PC. I don't know how Deezer's "three registered device limit" is implemented, but I'd hate to have to log in again every time I change the computer.