[John P Daniel]

There's no local storage option and the poll only mentions streaming services and hence I'm voting for Spotify. I use Spotify occasionally for recommendations and casual listening but the majority of listening is from local storage mainly due to audio quality gains. Once the difference between high quality music and low quality music is found, it's hard to go down the ladder.

My audio consumption depends on the usage scenario. When at home, I run FLAC from my PC through DAC to my music system. This is the main form of listening. During drives/travel, it's either high quality aac converted and synced from my PC through AA or YouTube videos directly under the control of my wife.

Either way, I love to own my music collection rather than stream it from any streaming services.

[Remsoft]

I'm a big fan of Spotify because of their fantastic selection of podcasts. Whether you're commuting or on a road trip, they offer a diverse range of content, from career planning and self-improvement to engaging discussions in your local language. Their podcast library is truly extensive, covering a wide spectrum of topics to cater to all interests.

[amitayu]

I am a crazy guy who subscribed to Spotify, YT Music and Amazon music!

I have been consciously training the 3 AIs differently.
So, YT has more of my Hindi and filmy collection, Amazon Music has more of the old hits and Spotify has more of the global experimental genres.
But in terms of audio quality, it's Spotify any time.

[rajwheelz]

Voted Spotify. But planning to shift to YouTube Music. I see very good improvements made in YouTube music playlists and it's almost on par with Spotify.

[akshye]

!Disclaimer!
Nerdy talk; I don't consider myself audiophile, but I'm a critique.

I currently have paid subscriptions of Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Prime Music, and I use them all. In the past I have also had paid subscriptions of YouTube Music, Saavn. At times I have played SoundCloud. But it doesn't have sufficient official releases of mainstream music, to benchmark its playback quality.

Following list is based on my personal preference of the apps.

Apple Music

Mostly neutral playback, but highs are marginally attenuated. Since my car has Polk 2 way speakers, with little bright highs, they sound best with wired Apple CarPlay. Effectively, my speaker's brightness is perfectly balanced by Apple Music's attenuation. I get perfect fidelity with this service - which I love the most.

Spotify

Spotify does some DSP, that makes everything sound little different. I find it difficult to describe, but, Spotify accentuates all the transitions, the clicking, plucking, beating sounds. Many tracks sound different and more lively with Spotify. I use it in my car when I'm sitting idle in my car with engine off. Any tracks that have prominent instrument portion, sound great on Spotify - like Rock.

Amazon Prime Music

Amazon Music is great for mids. No other streaming app has better mid fidelity as Amazon. If I'm listening to Indian Classical, or any prominent vocal track, I go for Amazon Music. If you are a fan of Indian/Carnatic Classical singers, Jazz singers, this is the app to go for.

Saavn

Saavn is the best mp3 streaming service out there. It is Mango man's Apple. No complaints for what they reproduce from mp3 compression.

YouTube Music

Inconsistent quality of tracks. Nothing worth mention. Only advantage is, it has anything you need over the planet. Whether it's someone's personal collection, old private recording, hobbyist's jam, or genuine official release. You find any track you wish. I don't know about their copyright model.

Footnote:
Music is very personal and relative. Above are my personal observations, and may not be accurate, objectively.

P.S. I forgot to mention, Spotify is the app of choice if you are into podcasts. Best collection!

[sinharishi]

I have subscribed to Apple music, Spotify Premium and YT.

Apple has the worst collection, best quality! YT has the largest collection, worst quality. Spotify is somewhere in between both. I end up using Spotify a lot. Not sure why folks are suggesting that library becomes inaccessible if there is no network. You can download your playlist and listen to it when you are in a no network zone/in flight.

[Joe367]

Saavn was the first streaming platform I've used. It was around the same time I got my first phone and we got broadband connection at our home. When Spotify was first launched in India, I immediately switched to it having heard a lot about their personalised playlists. I loved the interface, the song suggestions were great and there were lot of playlists to choose from. I am not an audiophile, I like listening to music but didn't really care for high-res audio.
I used the Spotify free version for quite some time before switching to Amazon music. I got prime membership under Youth offer for couple of years. Amazon music however was not as good as Spotify. Eventhough the sound quality was higher and ads were gone, I missed the personalised playlists and some of my favourite songs were not even available. Due to these reasons I switched back to free version of Spotify.
I was very hesitant in getting the premium version of Spotify as I felt spending money for music alone was not justifiable. Later I received Spotify 6 months subscription for free when I bought a something from Flipkart. As I realised I spend a significant amount of time listening to music, I decided to continue the subscription for another year.
Then my friend one day recommended me YouTube music. I felt the YouTube premium family plan to be better value compared to Spotify subscription. Apart from the benefit of not having to watch ads on YouTube, I can add my family members and share the benefits of subscription. YouTube music also has a lot more songs than other streaming platforms because of it's ability to stream from YouTube. This includes unreleased songs, covers, remixes, songs from less known musicians etc. I do wish there was a way to import my playlists from Spotify to YouTube music, but i understand why they won't give that option. 😅

[Amrit@wheels]

For Android users who use YouTube, there's this neat little app called New Pipe. It is basically a premium version of YouTube but for free. You can lock your phone and the music will still continue to play. It has ZERO ads and is very light on the battery as well. I can't remember the last time I opened YouTube after I installed this.

[enj0y_ride]

For my car ( Compass 2021 model ), Spotify streaming seems to work perfectly ( without losing quality ) on Android Auto as well as Car Play. In comparison, Amazon Music, Youtube music seems to lack the clarity offered by spotify.

[vshankarhere]

I have Audison VOCE speaker setup in my S-Cross with an Alpine HU, Audison 4.3 Amp and woofer. I realized the audio quality when played via Apple Music Lossless is so much more better compared to the highest quality setting of any other streaming platform even when connected wirelessly. If you listen to the same song back-to-back, you will realize how much better depth and weight Apple's lossless format brings in. From that day, Apple Music only it is.

[arijitkanrar]

I use YT Music.
Like the huge (actually massive) collecction of songs not just from mainstream artists but smaller lesser known people who might have just sang the song as part of a stage performance.
For e.g. consider the - not so recent - track Jamal Kudu.
Searching for it on most platforms we just get the track from the Animal movie and maybe a few others.
YT Music threw up this little gem here (Removed the YT Music link and added YouTube link here because TBhp page was getting messed up with the YT Music hyperlink)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrB6JCnawaU

Of course this is where the power of integration with YouTube is and I love it.
It allows us to discover far lesser known tracks. You never know what you might like.
In addition the fact that it comes bundled with YouTube premium is just sweet.

Also since most of the time I listen with headphones which cannot do justice to losless quality, the quality of YT Music is fine for me.
If I ever get around to owning hi-grade audio equipment, I may think of other platforms.

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

Youtube Music quality is poor even with a DAC. The main reason is that the Music gets the content from the Video and the Video uploaded is highly compressed. The YT music is not a dedicated music app. It is rather taking the videos and stripping the audio from the video and streaming it on the music platform.

This is probably true for music videos. But official tracks have a different audio track if you play in Audio only mode. You can clearly see this happening on the app. When you switch from song - video and vice-versa you can see the track reload. For pure music videos which have no official tracks, the track stays the same and the either the video plays or shows a thumbnail.
Not sure why you think YT Music is not a dedicated music app? Its same as any other music streaming app with the additional ability to play YouTube music videos.
Even the quality as far as non-losless audio is concerned is on par with other services like Spotify or Prime Music for regular listening. I dont have a DAC so I cannot compare the performance with one.
Of course if you dont have the Premium subscription the quality is degraded to 128kbps max.

[sukhbirST]

Though I listen to Amazon music but times force me back to AIR apps with Vividh bharti being the main choice.

[kaps454]

Wynk, got a free subscription long back with my airtel plan which is still in force, no ads. Can use amazon music too as it is part of my prime subscription, guess will try that too.

[drive.helios]

Voted for Amazon music but that's not the only app we use.

I have the subscription for Amazon music and wynk so most of the times we strean using those. We also have a few playlists saved in Spotify, so on long drives we switch to our playlist. I rarely use wynk even though the subscription is part of my postpaid connection. Got to try it out now.

We had YouTube premium subscription for a while, and it allowed us to use YT music.

Out of all these, I think the audio sounds better when amazon music is used.

Off topic - correcting via BT has a better output than connecting via Android auto on my samsung phone not sure why.

[Jeroen]

These days, mainly Spotify.

Love it and I love the recommendations I am getting. I have discovered lots of new artists I like.

I will also use YouTube. Primarily to listen to live performances. Lots of these live performances make it to YouTube, but not necessarily to Spotify as there is no album as such.

Jeroen