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Oh man, Grooveshark has been taken down while I was on holiday. :( I listened to it every day at work for this last year or so.
I get Simfy Africa via the Afrihost Plus thing but it's such a bad streaming platform compared to Grooveshark.
So now I'm looking for an alternative. Do you guys have any suggestions?
I'm currently going through these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...music_services
http://www.reddit.com/r/grooveshark/...mping_ship_to/
www.rdio.co.za is fantastic... They have an awesome feature apparently similar to what made one of the US ones huge, I think Pandora, where it picks up what you listen to and plays similar music, Iv found so many amazing artists I would never have found because of it!
There is a monthly subscription fee, but a nice long full trial... If you gona be using it every day its really worth it... There is also a phone app that stores songs offline which is pretty awesome...
Thanks [MENTION=13244]Tom[/MENTION], I'll go have a look. :)
At Grooveshark I used to listen to this one broadcast and by Googling I was able to find him again. He is now at Spotify which is not available in South Africa but luckily he is broadcasting to last.fm. So at the moment I'm listening through there.
It actually annoys me so much that Spotify STILL hasn't launched in SA... They were supposed to launch in 2013... Now there are all sorts of cool things like PS4 compatibility that we cant use...Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitude
Glad you came right though ;-)
Looks like Grooveshark (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) is back? - http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/5/855...streaming-site
It's still got a long way to go but it will be great if they can bring the Grooveshark features back. The sad thing is that I would easily have paid for Grooveshark legal version. I just loved their platform.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jan
The main ones i've experimented with , that are all legal in SA and all that , is Rdio , Deezer and Simfy . They all cost the same (R60 p/m for the premium subs / R25 p/m for web only etc). Interestingly the SA price is cheaper than the USA/UK subs for the same service (it's $10 vs. R60).
Rdio got a great interface/web site and not using flash (so you don't need an app to get this working on devices like your Xbox, just browser) , but i've had all kinds of issues on my phone with the app , it seems to be finicky when you don't have a fast connection (despite going into offline mode) . It also does not have an offline mode on the desktop (only mobile). What i like most of Rdio is their Pandora like "stations" where you pick a song and it will play songs that are similar based on users likes/dislikes . Simfy/Deezer have similar attempts at this, but theirs are more pre-configured radio stations based on a specific artist , so it's not dynamic like the Rdio one.
Deezer is which i'm using now, great app , it's fast and work well on my sucky MTN Edge like connection i usually get on my phone. The website is flash based, which is fine on most PCs, but not on any other devices that doesn't have app support. Deezer on the other hand DOES have offline mode on desktop (so you can download the songs and not stream the whole time). Deezer also seem to have alot of real people employed that are creating playlists/news/reviews that are very active. So while their "discovery" features aren't as good as Rdio, their real time content / promos / news are miles ahead, every day i actually see new artists to listen to. Deezer does seem to know that "because you liked this artist, this new album from this similar artist is worth a listen" ...so i get alot of that.
Simfy, i get it free with my Afrihost stuff, and i'm still not using it. It's app and its websites are totally out of sync in terms of features. The website seriously lacks features and you are forced to use their out-of-browser app on desktop to get more features. Their mobile app vs. desktop app also seems to be different, so half the time i was looking for their "radio stations" and sometimes i found it, sometimes i didn't based on which device i am on.
All 3 seems to have very similar music collections / limits . Usually if you don't find Rammstein on one, you will not find on any of the others either, simply because Rammstein decided to not make themselves available to legal streaming (and yes, Rammstein specifically are d!cks about this, ironically you can find solo/spin-off stuff from members of the band on there though).
For now i'm still very much split between Rdio and Deezer . Deezer covers the most bases, but i am contemplating turning on the R20 p/m Rdio sub so i can play directly on my Xbox One (until someone adds an actual app).
Also note, so far Deezer seems to have the most devs and most device support. There's a deezer app on the Samsung SmartHub even, and they did have an Xbox App which they removed due it not being up to standards.
Unfortunately I can't rep you diabolus but great write-up!
Also using deezer at the moment. Used rdio and simfy before. Simfy wasn't great. Rdio was okay. I love deezer. Can't remember what I dislike about rdio...
Don't worry, I got this...Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitude
That was indeed a very good summary of the various platforms
I see that Simfy is also shutting down. Don't know how that will affect Simfy Africa.
If you want to use a bypass, Pandora is pretty cool. I haven't used it in a bit but it's still going and the variety is massive.
Well i guess if you are going the VPN/Proxy/Fake USA citizen route, you might as well go for the platinum standard in streaming : SpotifyQuote:
Originally Posted by Mephisto_Helix
Pandora is nice if you're exploring music , but it gets problematic if you are trying to create very specific playlists and have them available offline for your car/work/jogging etc etc etc.
In the end though, while Spotify is great, all the hoops you end up jumping through while paying $10 p/month , it's just not worth it compared to paying R60 p/month for Deezer/Rdio .
Thanks, will have a look.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mephisto_Helix
Simfy Africa replied and said that it's Simfy Germany that's closing down and Simfy Africa is going strong. So that's good.
If I'm online I'm continuously looking for new music so it works for that yep .......Quote:
Originally Posted by diabolus
That said, this is the functionality that Rdio also have, it's "algorithm" is not as complex as Pandora, but it functions exactly the same way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mephisto_Helix
You pick a song and it will randomly pick songs that are either similar artists / similar sounding / other people also like . You then click thumbs-up / down to indicate whether you like a suggested song and that will then adjust the next song being recommended etc. Rdio also got a setting in terms of how exploratory you are feeling (i.e exploring within same artist -> same genre etc).
And this is primarily why i'm stuck between Deezer and Rdio. Deezer doesn't have that, theirs are more a curated fixed playlist effect made by people or recommendations. So in a way Deezer's model will give you a fairly accurate set of songs (i.e. if you like Linkin Park, you will get a good selection of songs from similar artists), but it might also end up giving you exactly the same set of songs/artists every time ,where Rdio will be more random (but not necessarily accurate).
With Rdio you might end up listening to a Metallica song and it will recommend an Enya song next, simply because alot of Metallica fans seems to listen to Enya too ;-). Pandora of course works alot differently, i believe they actually go into the actual music theory/sound/speed/etc to determine recommendations.
https://soundcloud.com/
Don't know if it's got all the functionality that you'd want, but at least it could help.
I ended up with a mix of Simfy and last.fm.
Simfy has some problems but I'm extremely impressed with their support. I let them know that they really need more depressive black metal bands and they sent me a playlist with some depressive suicidal black metal. Awesome stuff!
However I searched for some of the bands listed earlier and they didn't appear. I'm glad I found them now though.
And for everything that Simfy doesn't have, I have last.fm for which I will also now use to keep track of my songs which I mostly lost because of Grooveshark. Luckily Simfy scrobbles to last.fm so that helps a lot should I want to jump ship in the future.
Deezer and rdio are both good but since I'm getting Simfy for free I decided to stay with them.
I was about to post something about how awesome Spotify is, but Tapatalk conked out and forced me to open up my browser on my PC (which has been gathering dust for weeks now). But then it hit me - [MENTION=20]Solitude[/MENTION] is a BM fan?! Then I went to his blog link and eventually ended up on his Facebook page and realized he likes one of the best Australian metal bands to grace this planet - Jayson Sherlock is just an incredible individual!
\m/ \m/
Haha stalker deluxe! :p I didn't even realise that there are other people who know of Paramaecium! I haven't updated my Facebook music likes in a very long time though. Have discovered so many great bands over the last couple of years. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by FarligOpptreden
Being a fan of doom you should most certainly enjoy Virgin Black then, right? Probably the most epic band EVER. Their Requiem albums are insanely good, just sad that Pianissimo hasn't landed yet (and probably never will).Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitude
Strange, I've never heard of Virgin Black. Will go listen now. Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by FarligOpptreden