Stereolab – Aerial Troubles

I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement for Spotify for quite a while. They’re just a shitty company that pays the artists next to nothing while they fund highly objectionable things with their billions. Not to mention all of the annoying things about the app that have always irked me. The algorithm, the preference given to playlists and shuffle, and just little things that I feel like an app built for music people would get right, but Spotify gets it wrong.

Back in the summer I downloaded Tidal, Qobuz, my phone is an Android so it comes pre-loaded with YouTube Music, and gave them all a test run with whatever free trial they offered. I imported my Spotify library and ran them through their paces. Tidal was the worst of the three. It crashed all the time and the layout was not intuitive. Qobuz was better, though it also crashed a couple of times during my commute. Being able to listen to music on my drive is kind of the whole point. But the sound quality was great and they pay artists the most of all of the streaming platforms. YouTube Music is ok, serviceable, but I don’t know.

Stereolab’s new album had recently come out when I was doing this little experiment. I used this song, Aerial Troubles, to compare how each of the apps sounded. Qobuz won hands down. I started in Spotify then tried Qobuz and it was so much better that I went back to Spotify and made sure that I had set it to play at the highest quality setting. I then tried out the Qobuz download feature at the highest quality and listened to it offline (no crashing issues that way). When Tidal first came out the buzz was all about the audio quality. It’s better than Spotify but I also read something about a shady investor or two and the frequent crashing is just unworkable. Maybe all of the apps work better on an iPhone but since I don’t have one, that’s a moot point. It’s also why I didn’t really consider Apple Music.

Anyway, I would be happy to hear if you’re using something besides Spotify and love it. Try listening to this song and see how it sounds in comparison.