Anyone use Amazon music? I have been using Spotify for close to 10 years now, but recently tried Amazon music since they started offering “Ultra HD” music.
I’m kinda blown away by how much better the quality of the audio is on their platform.
However, the desktop app sucks. My favorite part about it is that it doesn’t stop the process when you close out… lol. If you’re playing music when you X out of the program in windows it just keeps playing. Nothing like visiting the task manager to quit playing a song. The mobile app doesn’t have all of the features of spotify. You won’t find integration everywhere like you do with Spotify.
But then again… the audio quality is hands down better.
Decisions, decisions.
I would probably switch if I didn’t have so many playlists in Spotify. I can’t find a program to convert Spotify playlists to Amazon music that will actually work for free.
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Personally I don’t really have an issue with Spotify’s sound quality, but I have been looking to switch since I feel like they’ve been kinda ruining the app UI recently. TBH I doubt I’ll move to Amazon since I’m heavily invested in the Google Home ecosystem but I’ll look into it.
As far as converting goes, have you tried this guide? Sounds like Soundiiz has a limit of 200 songs if you’re converting from one service to another but apparently not if you’re just importing from plaintext.
edit: Looks like there’s also https://www.tunemymusic.com/ which someone linked in the comments there, and after just briefly looking it over it doesn’t appear to have a limit on free usage.
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I hate to be that guy, but I grew up in Seattle and seeing both Amazon and Bezos’ attitude/behavior with regard to the community, workplace, and just in general is something that has really turned me off to them. It’s something I struggle with both morally and practically working and tech and with big tech companies (most of them suck!), but I try to avoid amazon where possible. I’ve been using Spotify for a long time and they’ve been good to me (the year end recap thing said I averaged >3 hrs per day last year). I recently got a family plan with my fam which is a great deal. I don’t have the most discerning hearing, and I’ve never really had an issue with the quality, even with my fairly nice home headphone setup. That being said, I end up using AirPods most of the time (at work, out and about) so it probably doesn’t matter so much to me.
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I tried tuenemymusic, but you cannot select amazon music as a destination for playlists, at least not yet.
I never noticed much of a quality issue on spotify for 10 years. I’ve had a family plan since the day it became available. It’s just… once you hear the difference back to back… it’s really hard to ignore what you’re missing.
I’d say it’s like high refresh monitors. Once you go from 60Hz to 120Hz, you cannot go back. But the difference between 120Hz and 144Hz is not as noticable. It is certainly different, just not as drastic. Spotify is like a 120Hz monitor and Amazon music is like a 144Hz monitor (maybe even a 175Hz)
And I suppose that your setup makes a difference too. Much like having a high refresh monitor and a poor GPU, if your sound setup is your bottleneck, there isn’t much difference
Hmmm, maybe I need to try again, I went to a lot of concerts when I was in high school and foolishly didn’t wear earplugs, so my hearing probably isn’t what it could be. I’ve got quite a few CDs and periodically will listen to them directly of flac rips
Same, man. I did the concert thing from about age 5 (dad was a ticket retailer). I’m old now and don’t hear perfectly, but I can hear the difference. If it tells you anything, I came into the computer room the other day and my son (10 years old) was using amazon music instead of spotify. I asked him why… he said b/c it sounded so much better. I had not discussed the bitrate differences with him
Im only on the 90 day free trial right now. I probably wont switch over just because the app does not have near the same features as Spotify. It’s hard once you get stuck in your ways.
I just looked it up and Spotify’s “high” (or “very high” on mobile) setting is 320kbps. Are you sure you don’t have it set to low or something?
To be fair, I do know a couple of albums in particular that sound like absolute garbage on Spotify (Ten Thousand Fists UGH) so their 320s might have garbage spectrals or something, who knows.
Yeah, i have it set to very high
I don’t know that the difference is as big when I try it on my iphone with headphones on. But in front of my studio monitors running through a Sabaj D5 dac… it’s glaringly different. Spotify sounds so muddy.
I do think you’re on to somehthing about some albums. The audio quality is certainly closer on some albums than others.
Also, the biggest difference that is hard to explain is in trailing sounds. Like the echo of an instrument or a voice… it carries and has sustain on Amazon music more than Spotify. Is that even a thing? I feel like that’s what I hear. The difference is not so much in the boom but in the empty spaces.
Alright, this thread is exactly what I needed to convince me to finally take the time to switch. I may try Amazon but for now I’ve moved my main playlists over to Google Music since there’s an open source tool for that and it will definitely work with my Google Homes/Chromecast.
And damn. I can hear a difference, just using the noise cancelling headphones I got for work (Plantronics BackBeat PRO 2). It’s somewhat like how you’re describing. Pretty sure that’s actually a result of compression. Specifically, it sounds like Spotify might be getting their “320kbps” by converting to 320 from something lower which would be… monumentally stupid for a company built on music. And if Amazon is noticeably better with a quality cap of 256kbps cbr, I actually don’t want to think about what they’re converting up from.
You know what, I think I just might try to find a way to rip the downloaded ogg files I have from spotify on my phone so I can take a look at the spectral graphs and confirm whether this is the case.
edit to add: Here are some example spectrals to give an idea of what happens with lower quality encodes. Note that the lower the quality goes, the more data is cut off the top end of the frequency. This directly translates into removing those extra details as a note fades into silence.
Click to show spectral graphs
Lossless FLAC
MP3 320kbps CBR
MP3 256kbps CBR
MP3 128kbps CBR
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that’s a great comparison and explains a lot. Also explains why my son can hear it better than me, since his hearing is better at the higher end of the spectrum
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Surprise twist I didn’t see coming - apparently Spotify’s Google Home integration is better than Google music’s. And even with all the antipatterns that have been added into the Spotify app recently its still better than Google’s. Ugh.
And you know what, I’ve realized that ease of use is more important to me than audio quality. I have permanent tinnitus, it’s not like I really notice bad transcodes without really listening for them anyway. I’ll probably try Deezer (since it’s the only other app that natively works with Google home’s voice commands) and if that isn’t better I’ll just go back to Spotify 
Yeah Spotify is on top when it comes to integration and ease of use. I completely agree that ease of use will win out over sound quality. I find a lot of music from playlist off of reddit and it’s always Spotify. No way to convert to amazon music. Just a shame we can’t have the best of both worlds.
It doesn’t matter how many playlists/songs you have, you may easily transfer all of them using a fantastic tool called “MusConv”
KEEP ENJOYING YOUR MUSIC 
So do you just pay the monthly fee and then cancel after you’ve converted all of your playlists?
Yes, I guess this is how it works. If you no longer need to transfer more music you don’t need to pay in the coming months.
