I subscribe to all the music services. I subscribed to Google Play because of the Songza concierge asset.
One byproduct? It seems that Google Play's CDN and DRM handling, not to mention caching, is way superior to Spotify. Whether I am on wifi, LTE, or getting in my car and therefore in between the two, hitting play on Google Play will always result in a song playing within two seconds.
On Spotify, it's more like 10 seconds. And it may not play at all. It may be stuck reauthing my account. It may be stuck in a stateless DRM hypoxia where every track is greyed out, although I am authenticated. It's impossible to predict.
I think Spotify built a really cool 2007-era P2P infrastructure. Then turned it off. And never tried to think beyond the state of the art since then.
I agree with how well Play music works. I did Spotify for awhile and tracks would disappear and I never really did like the UI. Then Play music came out and I switched over and never looked back. I did the Apple Music beta and it was fine, but I'm still on the early adopter Play deal of 7.99/month and now it includes ad free youtube. Hard to leave at this point.
I have the opposite problem with Google Play. I use it as a backup system for all my MP3s and it feels like when I hit play sometimes a Google employee is having to go to the shed out back, riffle through some DVDs, find the one that has my song backed up, bring it back, load it in the computer, copy it off, upload it somewhere, and _then_ I get to listen to it. Half the time the track will just sit there and spin without ever playing, and Google will just give up and progress to another track on the album. It's awful.
One byproduct? It seems that Google Play's CDN and DRM handling, not to mention caching, is way superior to Spotify. Whether I am on wifi, LTE, or getting in my car and therefore in between the two, hitting play on Google Play will always result in a song playing within two seconds.
On Spotify, it's more like 10 seconds. And it may not play at all. It may be stuck reauthing my account. It may be stuck in a stateless DRM hypoxia where every track is greyed out, although I am authenticated. It's impossible to predict.
I think Spotify built a really cool 2007-era P2P infrastructure. Then turned it off. And never tried to think beyond the state of the art since then.