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Why I chose Qobuz over Spotify!
The nice thing is, we have some WONDERFUL competition in the music streaming space! There are a couple critical reasons why I chose Qobuz over the rest of the pack.
Let’s chat about getting the best bang for our listening dollar!
Headphone testing playlist on Qobuz https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/7841488
A handy little feature is being activated for premium Spotify subscribers on iOS and Android. You can now take your entire collection offline.
If you’re worried about streaming audio taking a chunk out of your precious data plan, but you don’t want to give up on the variety of audio in your playlists, the newest version of Spotify now has a setting to download the whole kit and kaboodle. You can pre-cache all that music over WiFi, and never again worry about data charges on your cell phone plan.
Of course, if you’re an avid music listener, you’ll want to make sure you have a couple gigabytes of space on your phone…
Grab it from your app store of choice.
This one’s short and sweet.
Do you use Spotify? Well now Spotify is removing time limit caps for free accounts across all devices. iOS, Android and through a browser, now all devices have the same access to unlimited music streaming. Super handy.
For those wanting to step up, their premium monthly plans will also remove ads and allow for offline storage, but those of you streaming in your cubicle are in for a treat.
More info at Spotify, or read the PR below:
Continue reading “Spotify Removes Time Limit Caps for Music Streaming”
Moving forward, I’ll be testing more accessories like I do smartphones.
You can find a collection of videos where I test the speakers on phones for example, using the same audio and video clips, so you can see and hear the differences between different phones. Bluetooth speakers are becoming very popular, and now I’ll be building that same audio test into my reviews. Starting with a speaker which really helped to popularize wireless audio, the OG Jawbone Jambox.
Coming soon, reviews on the HMDX Jam and Nokia Play360
Shop for the Jambox on Amazon.
The iTunes Radio announcement was one of the first things discussed during Apple’s keynote today, but Tim Cook ran over it so fast, I think you can still see tire tread on its back.
What should have been one of the more interesting services announcement for Cupertino was largely ignored. Apple created the online music sales market as we know it today, yet even with that legacy, very little was said about iTUnes Radio. With a nod and a collective shrug, we just took it for granted before moving on to hardware announcements.
Simply billed as “coming soon” on the official iTunes site, Radio will be another streaming service designed to compete with offerings from Pandora, Spotify, Google, and even Microsoft. It will allow you to build “stations” for your favorite music, and those stations will be synced across all of your devices via iCloud, so iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV can all get in on the act.
On a personal note, it’s a little shocking that even Microsoft was able to beat Apple to a service like this. Plus, it’s uncharacteristically tame of Apple not to work being late into more of a consumer oriented selling point. In the past being late to a service, Apple would’ve boldly claimed that they waited to perfect the offerings which were obviously inferior or confusing to consumers. There was no such bravado on display here today, and lacking that confidence is a dangerous place for Apple to be in this viscerally competitive market.
Online music streaming radio is a really competitive arena at the moment. You’ve got Slacker, Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Last.FM, even streaming  terrestrial radio. Recently Google entered this market with Play Music All Access, and we’re pretty confident Apple will eventually arrive with iTunes Radio. Not entirely sure what the hold up with them is, as they kind of created the online music scene, but I digress.
Microsoft certainly doesn’t want to be left out of this market and they’re jumping in now with XBox Music.
The service sounds fairly familiar if you’ve used any other online music streaming solution. Microsoft has a library of around 18 million songs, and you can listen to unlimited music either with ads or ad-free for $10 a month (or $100 a year). After the first six months with the ad supported service however, you will be capped at 10 hours of music per day.
XBox Music Pass allows you to sync your music across all of your gadgets, from your XBox, to phones, tablets, and computers. That might be the smart play here by Microsoft, their music streaming will also come in iOS and Android app flavors. They have to know a large chunk of their XBox live subscriber base probably have phones or tablets from their competitors, but still might consider using the Music app built into their game console.
There’s also  a music discovery service called Smart DJ which should function like Pandora, and an update to Windows 8 will allow users to catalog music they find on other sites like Pitchfork to listen to later in their library.
This is good timing on Microsoft’s part. Sure they’re late to this party, but as they’re trying to move forward with their phone and tablet solutions, filling out the media purchasing options for their ecosystem means customers will be more likely to shop in their stores. As we’re getting set for the release of the XBox One, Microsoft is making a compelling argument for their console to be the front end of the entire living room. Plus iOS and Android users wont be excluded.
And, I did mention they were beating Apple to the punch here right? I mean… That’s just weird…