Streaming Archives

Qobuz Review

08/01/2022

History Qobuz was launched in 2008 and has achieved a series of notable firsts. In 2009 it offered the first CD quality download catalogue and in 2011 the first CD quality streaming service. It was the first online music service to adopt 24bit HiRes in its catalogue and in the summer of 2015, it launched HiRes Streaming with its Qobuz Sublime+ subscription. During the past few years Qobuz has positioned itself as a top end […]

Idagio Review

02/01/2022

History Launched in August 2015 the name ‘IDAGIO’ was formed from ‘I’ for tech start-ups, and ‘adagio’, the tempo marking in music that means ‘slowly, leisurely’ according to Till Janczukowicz, the services co-founder. In September 2018 the streamer claimed 250,000 registered users but the number of paying subscribers is unknown. IDAGIO has partnered with all the major classical music labels including Warner Classics and Deutsche Grammophon to provide classical music enthusiasts with access a wide […]

Streaming

Napster Review

30/12/2021

History Napster started out life as a peer to peer file trading service which was shut down for copyright violations. After bankruptcy and several owners it was bought by Rhapsody another streaming and download service in 2011. Rhapsody amalgamated the two services and rebranded as Napster. In August 2020 MelodyVR acquired Rhapsody and the Napster business and in February 2021 changed its name to Napster. The Napster streaming business has two divisions – consumer and […]

Streaming

Apple Music Review

14/12/2021

History Opened in 2015, Apple Music started as a download service using iTunes. Apple migrated its music service into a streaming model but was initially slow to support non-Apple devices. As the company becomes more dependent on services it has had to embrace competitor devices and support for non-Apple products has continued to improve and now most mainstream devices are supported. Apple announced that it had 60 million paid subscribers in June 2019 and revealed […]

Spotify Review

05/12/2021

History Launched in 2008 Spotify has 381 million active users with 172 million paying subscribers (as at Q3 2021) across 184 countries. Spotify has been the leader in the streaming field for some time and despite not having a CD Quality or HiRes service it has produced a service which has near ubiquitous availability across HiFi, mobile, PCs, tablets, smart TVs and speakers and In Car Entertainment (ICE) systems. That and its ease of use […]

Streaming

SoundCloud Review

03/12/2021

History SoundCloud was originally set up in 2008 as an online audio distribution platform that enabled its users to upload, record, promote and share their originally-created sounds. Recently it has split its subscriptions into a ‘listener’ Go channel which targets users who want music streaming and downloading and its ‘creator’ Pro channel which follows its original focus allowing the uploading of content, downloads for fans and reporting of interest in downloads and streamed tracks. A […]

Streaming

YouTube Music Review

02/12/2021

History The original version of YouTube Music was launched in November 2015 together with a premium subscription, YouTube Red, which covered all of the YouTube platform including the Music app. In June 2018, Google (the owners of YouTube) relaunched the service as YouTube Premium which contained YouTube and YouTube Music and a standalone subscription to YouTube Music. YouTube Premium is £11.99/month and £17.99 for a family subscription (up to 6 family members) and YouTube Music […]