I am a Rhapsody subscriber, and I’m pretty happy with it. I certainly could not afford to buy all the albums and tracks I frequently listen to from iTunes; OTOH I don’t mind listening to free services like Pandora or (more often these days) Songza to get ideas for new music, but I still want to be able to hear a certain track or album when I am in the mood to do so.
But it can be frustrating to listen to albums that are designed to flow continuously without any real separation between tracks. Recent examples of albums I listened to on Rhapsody where the little pause between tracks grated were Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, and Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. That little half second pause just totally breaks up the flow.
So I’m wondering if any of the other subscription services (Spotify, Google Play, Slacker, Rdio, etc.) have some kind of “album mode” where it stitches together albums seamlessly. Anyone know? I would jump ship in a second if the price were relatively similar, even though it would be a hassle to rebuild all my playlists.
Spotify does gapless playback. Rdio claims to on their mobile app, though I don’t use it anymore so I can’t confirm; but their desktop app definitely does not (and it’s a serious oversight IMHO).
This is something I want sometimes too, and the only place I’ve found it is…YouTube! What a treat to discover I could impulsively listen to The The’s Soul Mining in its entirety at work! Yeah, sometimes you have to listen to an ad, or the recording quality sucks, and you may not find everything you’re looking for…but it’s OK in a pinch.
Search your artist and/or “full album”.
Spotify’s really works? Totally smooth and seamless?
I found YouTube invaluable when picking Beatles songs to purchase on iTunes; but I need something that will go with me wherever I go. And I want the artist to get their cut as well.
It’s been a while since I tried it, but it seemed to work fine during casual listening. Spotify has a free version and offers free trials on their premium subs, so you can try it yourself. Rdio does free trials too, if their mobile version is something you’re considering.
I’m a Google Play Music Subscription member and you can do exactly what you’re looking to do.
Find the album you want, click “Add to My Library” and it’ll be there just like any other album you would have purchased from (or added manually to) Google Play. The main drawback is that subscription music can only be streamed, not downloaded.
I also was a Zune (Microsoft has rebranded it, but they still have a similar service) subscriber a few years ago. the beauty with Microsoft is that you could download the files as a protected wma file. That meant you could use most media players to listen to them including Winamp, and Media Monkey.
I know Google offers a free trial, 30 days maybe? And I assume Microsoft does as well. Oh, and Google costs ~10 bucks a month. I think Microsoft is about the same.
I use Spotify all the time - it absolutely has seamless album playback, so long as your connection is good enough. The Beatles, however, are not on it. Pretty much everything else I’ve looked for is, though.
I went ahead and got me a 30 day trial of Spotify, and the playback is indeed seamless. Exactly what I want. So much better! Thanks for the tip.
Only problem is that now I need to transfer all my extremely lengthy playlists over from Rhapsody…ah well, just gotta suck it up and do it.
I may look into Google Play. That is intriguing as I already do a lot in the Google ecosystem. OTOH I have several Facebook friends on Spotify, as it turns out.