Set me up with home music! I know nothing!

[Holman]

My wife and I still listen to music in only three ways:

a) Radio
b) CDs/LPs on a home stereo
c) videos on YouTube

It's time to move into the 21st century.

So here are my questions:

1) What is the best streaming music service? Or is buying music through iTunes better? How and why?
2) What is the best way to play music from a streaming service (or iTunes, whatever) on quality speakers in a house?
3) How much will all of this cost?

Thank you!

[Jaymann]

I am kind of partial to Pandora. You can set up stations with groups you know you like, then add more as you discover them. Then put the stations on shuffle. You will also occasionally be exposed to songs you had forgotten or were not aware of. Then I would invest in some quality PC speakers, that can also be used on a laptop.

[Baroquen]

I'm a Spotify guy. Pandora came first, but it was during a time where you couldn't request specific songs, just artists/songs you like. Then, they'd play music similar, and sometimes, the actual songs you wanted. Spotify had the ability to make playlists out of specific songs, and was free. So I haven't switched from them. Drawbacks to free Spotify - Ads. (They don't bother me much). PC client - you can choose the order/queue of songs; mobile - you can only play in shuffle mode (but I like shuffle mode; so also doesn't bother me).

I can't help with your other questions, as I just play music off my PC in my living with pretty cheap speakers. I don't do anything fancy.

[RunningMn9]

I’m a Spotify guy, I find it much better than Pandora (in terms of my control over what I’m listening to). I play it through my home entertainment setup. For a while I would just Bluetooth directly to the speakers and play from my phone (no Apple TV app for some reason), but now I can run the Spotify app on my XBone.

[Skinypupy]

I’m Spotify as well. I never just sit down and listen to random music, I always find something specific that I want to listen to and put it on. Spotify works much better for that purpose.

Plus, Pandora’s judgement on recommendations within different metal genres is laughably bad.

[Drazzil]

I’m Spotify as well. I never just sit down and listen to random music, I always find something specific that I want to listen to and put it on. Spotify works much better for that purpose.

Plus, Pandora’s judgement on recommendations within different metal genres is laughably bad.

Pandora sucks now. When left to its own devices it will play the same stuff [prolly cause the royalty costs are low] no matter what sort of stuff you put it to. I loves me some Spotify. I subscribed to spotify to get rid of the ads. Now I don't listen as much, but still heartily recommend.

[LawBeefaroni]

I use Napster (used to be Rhapsody). Downloads for offline play, full albums, create playlists, new releases day of, etc. Not a fan of random playlists.

I pay $15/quarter via a grandfathered plan but even at $10/month I'd keep it.

[gbasden]

For your question about speakers, I'm using the Sonos Connect:Amp


You can plug your speakers directly into it, then stream directly to the Sonos and play through them.

[Daehawk]

I use iHeartRadio

[RunningMn9]

I use Napster (used to be Rhapsody). Downloads for offline play, full albums, create playlists, new releases day of, etc. Not a fan of random playlists.

That’s the other reason I use Spotify. It offers all of that. I rarely use the random playlists.

[Lorini]

I use Google Play Music with Google Home as the speaker. Google Play Music includes YouTube premium. It’s great to be able to tell Google Home what I want to hear and have it play it.

[Jaymann]

It's funny that Pandora keeps saying we'll be right back after this ad, but then no ad. Guess they can't handle ad blockers.

[Holman]

Thanks for the advices! I'll look into everything.

Another question: if we have a Pandora or Spotify account, is it tied to a single owner, or can a family share it on different devices? Can I use it to play music at home while my wife and her phone are at work?

[$iljanus]

Thanks for the advices! I'll look into everything.

Another question: if we have a Pandora or Spotify account, is it tied to a single owner, or can a family share it on different devices? Can I use it to play music at home while my wife and her phone are at work?

Spotify has a family subscription for multiple users. I'm really happy with my Spotify subscription but I'm not on the family plan. From their website it's $14.99/mo if you want multiple users and while supplies last they're including a Google Home Mini speaker to sweeten the deal.

[Jeff V]

I had ripped all of my CDs to MP3 years ago; I have 25,000 tracks on the Google cloud available to pull down at any time. I don't really buy music anymore, when I do i buy it from Amazon so it's always available to pull down from their cloud. Hardware-wise my phone handles it all - if the music needs to be shared with other people I use a bluetooth speaker or Chromecast to the TV.

That describes maybe 1% of my music consumption. If I'm with others in the car I'll listen to the radio. At home, it is mostly Youtube. Not only is Youtube pretty straight forward, but it helps discover related things (ie, recent concert videos or material by similar artists) you'll not likely find otherwise.

[Zaxxon]

I'll ignore the service question, as that's a pretty personal choice, and they functionally largely work the same once you have picked one. For the speakers, I highly recommend the Google Home lineup. The Home Max is supposedly very good quality (I don't have one), the 'regular' Home is decent, and the Home Minis are not great in audio quality but they are incredibly cheap (~$25 if you get them on sale, as they are for Black Friday).

Our house has a Home, a Home Hub (which is kind of like a regular Home with a screen--it's better quality than the Minis), and four Minis. We've got the Home and Hub in our larger areas since the quality is better and they carry farther. The Minis fill out smaller rooms and the edges of large rooms.

You can group them into speaker groups, so we've got one for all our speakers, and another for the open area speakers. Makes it super simple to fill the whole house with music. You can cast to them from virtually any audio app, or just yell at them to have Google make the connection to your service of choice. Google's also right up there with Alexa in terms of compatibility to virtually every smart home product out there, so you get that as a bonus.

For Black Friday, Google is selling the Home and Home Hub for $50 off, and the Minis for $24 off. So for, say, $307, you could grab a Hub, 2 Homes, and 2 Minis. It won't knock the socks off of any audiophiles, but it's extremely passable for the cost. Add extra Minis for $25 each if you need more than that.

Whatever you choose, good luck!

[gameoverman]

I have general suggestions, based on what I've learned helping family and friends choose their audio gear.
1. Be honest with yourself about your needs. No mistake is sadder and more easily avoided than buying something that doesn't do what you want, and the only reason that happened is you didn't really THINK about your needs. Telling yourself you don't want or need something won't mean you save money because you can buy the cheaper thing. It wastes money because you will buy the cheaper thing then later need to buy the thing you really needed.
2. Convenience and quality rarely show up together. The more convenient your gear is to setup and use, the crappier the sound quality will be. However, depending on what you decide in step 1, sound quality might not be a priority.
3. Your source of audio will have a large impact on everything. The greatest speakers in the world are a waste of money if the files someone will play through their system are MP3s dating from their time using Napster.
4. If you do get a decent quality set of speakers and play music files of varying quality through them, you will hear the difference and it will be annoying. Old MP3s, newly acquired high quality files, streaming music...all this can and will sound radically different. You might find yourself listening to only one type of source if for no other reason than to avoid hearing those differences.
5. This is kind of related to 1. How good is your hearing? If it's not as good as it used to be, worrying about sound quality is a waste of time, you won't hear the difference.

[Holman]

This is all great advice, and I'm glad I posted.

As it happens, we just inherited an excellent set of speakers from our downsizing in-laws, but of course they are the kind that would be connected to pre-wireless component stereo system. I hope they can still be useful to us.

[hitbyambulance]

imo biggest mistake is people getting rid of their decent sound playback equipment in favor of newer, shittier-sounding technology. so many people i know have gone from hi-fi systems (receiver, floorstanding speakers, CD audio) to modern shiny garbage (soundbar attached to smart TV', monophonic Bluetooth speaker to phone, all streaming compressed lossy audio). there are many ways of integrating streaming audio, but trashing good stereo equipment merely because it's 'old' drives me insane.

i'd recommend either a computer handling all the streaming audio and get a (perhaps wireless) receiver with the audio out plugged into an open set of inputs on your receiver. or a small music server box plugged directly into the receiver, ala XBMC, if your TV/media player/game console doesn't handle what you need. you'd still be able to use your system for what you've been using it for originally and it will be really cheap. if this is too obvious an answer, let me know.

[Zaxxon]

To be clear, o think most people should do both. I still have a nice 'main" system with 'real' speakers attached to my TV, receiver, Switch, etc. And then I have a $300 set of Google speakers for smart home control and whole-home streaming.

[Enough]

imo biggest mistake is people getting rid of their decent sound playback equipment in favor of newer, shittier-sounding technology. so many people i know have gone from hi-fi systems (receiver, floorstanding speakers, CD audio) to modern shiny garbage (soundbar attached to smart TV', monophonic Bluetooth speaker to phone, all streaming compressed lossy audio). there are many ways of integrating streaming audio, but trashing good stereo equipment merely because it's 'old' drives me insane.

i'd recommend either a computer handling all the streaming audio and get a (perhaps wireless) receiver with the audio out plugged into an open set of inputs on your receiver. or a small music server box plugged directly into the receiver, ala XBMC, if your TV/media player/game console doesn't handle what you need. you'd still be able to use your system for what you've been using it for originally and it will be really cheap. if this is too obvious an answer, let me know.

I pretty much agree with this. I took all of our ancient but fairly nice audio stuff and just bought a Chromecast Audio unit for each audio source I wanted to smartify. Now I can do whole house casting to said ancient devices from my phone or PC and they work just like a Google Home except they don't have a microphone to take commands. I just read that normal Chromecasts now have this functionality so you might want to research and if you are connected to a home theater setup connected to your TV you could get a normal Chromecast and be able to do both video and audio. When I did this the only way was Chromecast Audio pucks (they look like cute little LPs!). But it's amazing to have all house music that is perfectly coordinated from room to room with no echoes.

Bonus tip: a little-known feature of Google Home Minis is that they can connect via bluetooth to any bluetooth device. As others have pointed out the minis are not awful but certainly will not be winning any audio quality contests. So if you have a nice bluetooth speaker that bests their quality you can go in the settings for the Mini in the Home app and tell it to use bluetooth and play on that device. I do that with one of ours all the time and then can take the bluetooth speaker outside and it becomes part of the group. Neat!

[Enough]

To be clear, o think most people should do both. I still have a nice 'main" system with 'real' speakers attached to my TV, receiver, Switch, etc. And then I have a $300 set of Google speakers for smart home control and whole-home streaming.

You might consider throwing a $35-$35 Chromecast Audio on the main system (or maybe normal Chromecasts work for this now based on the article I thought I saw mentioned above) and then you can enjoy high-quality streaming on that system when you want.

[Enough]

One more tip: I now have three Home Minis and didn't pay for one of them, it's amazing how many promotions just give them away with some purchase these days.

[Daehawk]

imo biggest mistake is people getting rid of their decent sound playback equipment in favor of newer, shittier-sounding technology. so many people i know have gone from hi-fi systems (receiver, floorstanding speakers, CD audio) to modern shiny garbage (soundbar attached to smart TV', monophonic Bluetooth speaker to phone, all streaming compressed lossy audio). there are many ways of integrating streaming audio, but trashing good stereo equipment merely because it's 'old' drives me insane

The stuff from the 1980s and 1990s cant be beat in hardware today.

[Zaxxon]

To be clear, o think most people should do both. I still have a nice 'main" system with 'real' speakers attached to my TV, receiver, Switch, etc. And then I have a $300 set of Google speakers for smart home control and whole-home streaming.

You might consider throwing a $35-$35 Chromecast Audio on the main system (or maybe normal Chromecasts work for this now based on the article I thought I saw mentioned above) and then you can enjoy high-quality streaming on that system when you want.

Have a normal Chromecast and a Roku on it. Love them both.

[Paingod]

I've bought my wife a couple wireless Sonos units, and she constantly streams Pandora through them 16 hours a day. She can have music playing in her workshop and the office or kitchen and have her music follow her everywhere. The speakers just sit on the counter and she can move them quickly if she wants to. They were $200 each.

Sounds good to me, but I'm not an audiophile. She loves it, and she's a music junkie.

[RunningMn9]

The stuff from the 1980s and 1990s cant be beat in hardware today.

Don't be absurd. You just have to pay for it.

[YellowKing]

I've got an Echo (the big one, not the Dot) and use Amazon Music. Because

A) I'm not an audiophile
B) I'm too lazy to extract myself from the Amazon ecosystem

However, for what we need it for, it's great. Namely, turning on some songs while cooking or cleaning the house. Plus the kids love to be able to shout at it in their indecipherable kid grammar and have it still somehow understand what they want.

Actual Alexa exchange:

My son: "Alexa, play........play that song...Alexa play that song that has.....play that song that has where it's raining... Alexa, play that song where it's tacos and it's raining.

Alexa: <With an undercurrent of smugness> "Playing "Raining Tacos" by Parry Gripp."

[Jaymann]

I've got an Echo (the big one, not the Dot) and use Amazon Music. Because

A) I'm not an audiophile
B) I'm too lazy to extract myself from the Amazon ecosystem

However, for what we need it for, it's great. Namely, turning on some songs while cooking or cleaning the house. Plus the kids love to be able to shout at it in their indecipherable kid grammar and have it still somehow understand what they want.

Actual Alexa exchange:

My son: "Alexa, play........play that song...Alexa play that song that has.....play that song that has where it's raining... Alexa, play that song where it's tacos and it's raining.

Alexa: <With an undercurrent of smugness> "Playing "Raining Tacos" by Parry Gripp."

I hate smug machines. I would probably request a lot of, "Play Fuck You and the Silicon You Rode in on."

[Enough]

To be clear, o think most people should do both. I still have a nice 'main" system with 'real' speakers attached to my TV, receiver, Switch, etc. And then I have a $300 set of Google speakers for smart home control and whole-home streaming.

You might consider throwing a $35-$35 Chromecast Audio on the main system (or maybe normal Chromecasts work for this now based on the article I thought I saw mentioned above) and then you can enjoy high-quality streaming on that system when you want.

Have a normal Chromecast and a Roku on it. Love them both.

I did happily not imagine the article about how Chromecasts can now be used to play music in sync across multiple rooms and devices like Chromecast Audio used to exclusively be able to do. I just saw this article confirming that on Verge. Had this happened earlier I could have avoided buying two the Chromecast Audios that I use with systems connected to tvs by Chromecasts. Alas.

[Zaxxon]

To be clear, o think most people should do both. I still have a nice 'main" system with 'real' speakers attached to my TV, receiver, Switch, etc. And then I have a $300 set of Google speakers for smart home control and whole-home streaming.

You might consider throwing a $35-$35 Chromecast Audio on the main system (or maybe normal Chromecasts work for this now based on the article I thought I saw mentioned above) and then you can enjoy high-quality streaming on that system when you want.

Have a normal Chromecast and a Roku on it. Love them both.

I did happily not imagine the article about how Chromecasts can now be used to play music in sync across multiple rooms and devices like Chromecast Audio used to exclusively be able to do. I just saw this article confirming that on Verge. Had this happened earlier I could have avoided buying two the Chromecast Audios that I use with systems connected to tvs by Chromecasts. Alas.

It's even better since I got a Harmony Hub, which also integrates with the Google Home stuff.

"HEY GOOGLE, TURN ON THE CHROMECAST!" <TV, receiver, and Chromecast pop on> "NOW PLAY <artist/playlist/station name> ON ALL MY SPEAKERS" <the magic happens>