One of our Tipsters was telling us how her younger sister had come home this week aglow with excitement. “It’s so cool!” young sister exclaimed. “I’ve just bought a record player. It can play albums!” She apparently then spent an afternoon at a discery in Soho buying “old school” albums.
Another Tipster with a background in radio was telling us about the 
excitement the industry felt when Dire Straits made the then momentous decision to issue their latest album (‘Brothers in Arms’, one of my all time favourites) on the brand new CD format. Then came iTunes, then music players and now today we don’t need to buy anything other than a streaming subscription. A what? Well, you no longer have to upload your entire music collection to every device you own. You can sign up to a music streaming service, where the music is played to all your devices over the internet. And in many cases it will cost you nothing.
If you decide to sign up, the good news is that you’re spoilt for choice. Whether you go for Apple Music or Spotify, you’re guaranteed to find a huge catalogue of music, a host of playlists to help you discover something new to listen to and offline playback so you’re not eating into that mobile data package on your phone.
But which one stands out from the rest and will give you the best overall music streaming experience?
We’ve been using –
over the past few months here at Tipster Towers to cover the leading contenders.
Our informed Tipster tip is… try them all! That might sound like a bit of a cop out, but they all have at least a 30 day free trial. Apple Music has a three month trial.
Amazon music is included if you have an Amazon Prime membership and you can play it through your Alexa/ Echo device too. There’s not that much to choose between them all, for general use, although Spotify has a free version that runs ads. If you want the full service they all cost around £10 per month although there are higher quality options of around £20 per month.
They all sound great. Having said that, the most exacting of audiophiles using the most expensive of headphones or speaker setups should probably only consider Tidal or Deezer’s Elite option. If you own a Sonos, the multi-room speakers are set up to work with both Tidal and Deezer’s high quality services, as well as with Spotify and the others at their standard quality.
My personal favourite is Spotify, but it really comes down to which one you like the look of and how easy you find it to navigate. As always, please get in touch if you need a Tipster’s Touch to tickle your tech.
Fingertips Blog 