General Discussion

Both, Spotify for when I just kind of want to have some music in the background and I’m not really in the mood for anything in particular (I don’t have premium so I’m stuck with listening on shuffle, which is actually helpful when I’m indecisive on what to listen to!) YouTube for when I want to listen to a specific song. Also bandcamp sometimes, typically when I want to listen to full albums!

I generally use spotify because its more gentle on my data bandwith than youtube. However I will use youtube to listen to things I can't find on spotify (which is a lot lol, spotify can be kinda limited...). But I try to only listen to youtube videos on wifi because seriously it does use a lot of data lol.

youtube. adblock.

if adblock worked on spotify then yeah, i'd like it better. but spotify ads are horrendously intrusive, and they happen so often. i'll take slightly lower sound quality over ads any day

Youtube premium is my go to always. For a few reasons. Well, not really few.

1. I detest ads with sound, all those repetitive ones pushing things I will never use, trying to appeal to a younger audience and failing so terribly I get secondhand embarrassment, bland, unoriginal, always the same vibe, and that are all the same thing over and over despite all being "different" ads, breaking the groove I have going and set with my music. Youtube with ads is just as bad if not worse, and I cannot stand attempting to listen to or watch anything from devices I'm logged out of.
2. Spotify/Pandora just do not have nearly enough of the music I listen to for them to be worth it. I feel those platforms are mainly for lyrical songs, whole albums, and things on charts/radio stations. I have tons of one off songs from artists that I just like that one specific one, so I make my own playlists with those one hit wonders. Most of it doesn't have lyrics. Spotify just isn't going to have a fan made remaster of a specific song for a game on the n64 that I never played and never will, but I love that one specific track. Everything I listen to is available on youtube.
3. I don't want pre-made playlists of things "similar to" those songs. I don't want the rest of the album. I don't want their other albums. Just the one song. Youtube tries recommending their other stuff but after a couple days it figures it out and just adds the one song to My Mix.
4. From what I remember of Spotify, if you don't pay for it, you can't skip songs, and can't make your own playlists. This is abysmal to me, I frequently skip songs even in playlists I make myself of my favorites, if it's not giving me the right groove, I'll go to the next one. If I can't do that, it's just going to make me stop listening to music if I have to individually select each song I want to listen to in my lengthy playlists and also have to endure a hundred ads about irrelevant nonsense. And anytime I've tried a playlist on Spotify it...doesn't play the songs in the playlist, it goes with things similar to the starting song. That defeats the purpose of the playlist.
5. Youtube generally suggests songs that I actually do end up liking even though it's still fairly hit or miss. It keeps up with the absolute uncanny valley that is my music taste, and I've found a few tracks that I was like "oooh yes I'll keep that for my collection of nonsense"
6. Quality of the audio is vital to me. If it is compressed and has that weird effect on it, I can't listen to it. If I can't change the quality setting I'm out. If the ads have a better sound quality...that's gotta be the worst.
7. Youtube has 10hr long videos that don't stop after 20 minutes.
8. Nobody knows what I am listening to which is good because I keep various songs on loop for weeks at a time and I'm sure it could be concerning to some people that I basically have always been the winner for "see how long you can stand to listen to this!" challenges, like the Nyan cat website that tracks how long youve been listening. A long time, Nyan cat. A long time.
9. MUSIC VIDEOS!! Siamés has some of the best animated music videos I'll ever see, and while most of my music doesn't have videos attached, the ones that do generally are very well done so I'm glad to have them available.
10. Idk if the other sites allow it but looping songs even though it was part of an earlier reason, if looping isn't allowed on the others it gets its own reason. There's a couple versions of Big Shot that I had on loop for what adds up to...months of time. Quite a few days of my life where I listened to that all day, for the entire 24 hours, and I loved it.
11. Youtube has way more than just music I listen to, it has a huge chunk of the things I watch on it already so I can go from tunes to funny ha ha stuff to educational videos about very specific fixations I have.

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An unofficial reason: I started using youtube back in like, 2007, and Spotify showed up in *checks notes* oh, 2008. But didn’t get to its popularity until 2011ish...so I had already settled in to how youtube functions, and now my brain just kind of expects music and most videos to function that way.

Youtube Red over Spotify premium.

1. idk if Spotify changed this but why tf would they not allow 2FA?? I was always getting hacked, why would you not make 2FA an option?

2. all music. not just what's available on the platform (although technically yes, but taking a stab at spotify here). everything that has ever been uploaded to youtube ever. ever. ever. all of it.

3. videos, shorts, music, podcasts, shows, and movies. $15/month. I don't subscribe to anything else.

Depends on the song I want to play, since some aren't on Spotify, but I think most of the time I'm on that one.
To be fair, I wouldn't recommend the mobile version without premium, it is such a pain, like, why can't you skip a song you don't like nor repeat the ones I like? Why are you getting some random annoying song in between your playlist? Why so many ads? Everything I mentioned isn't a problem on PC (ads are a lot less intrusive there too)
I only used it from time to time on my PC to create playlists for my characters bc it's fun (and I find it a lot easier than YouTube since Spotify starts recommending similar songs), and sometimes I want to listen to one of my OC's specific playlists without a reason, just I'm in the mood for it. But now that I got premium, I've been using it a lot more, and it's especially handy for me, since I tend to travel a lot with my family on weekends and I don't always have data (or good signal)

i have like, 4 different things on my phone that can play music (local files player, spotify, soundcloud, bandcamp), plus i use youtube via browser on it

i actively peruse spotify more than youtube, but even my spotify use is rather spotty mostly for spite reasons i guess (def spite reasons that id not wanna pay full for premium, thankfully a friend lets me be on their family plan, along w a couple of their actual family members, for free lol, but if they were to jump ship for like apple music or sth id have to come along which i wouldnt mind hehe) + i have a decent amount of what i listen to as local files anyway

tldr: dual-wield and some more

spoofy