Music apps leave me wanting.

While I collect albums both physically (Vinyl + CD) and digitally (from Bandcamp), there are still missing pieces that streaming services provide: discovering new music, sharing playlists and seeing what friends are playing so that I can try their recommendations. They're a valuable part of my listening habits, but none of them feel like 'the one'. I've been flip-flopping between Spotify and Apple Music for a while now, and over the last twelve months, I've added Tidal and Qobuz to that indecision, as well as a whole host of third-party apps built with Apple's MusicKit framework.

Then there are the apps for playing my own digital collection. Normally this has been played through Plex or it's music-focussed, mobile app sibling, Plexamp. I've also been trying out Doppler and Roon as alternatives.

All this flip-flopping and testing helps me realise what I want from a music app. Ideally, I'd be able to all these things in the one app:

• Scrobble to last.fm reliably without having to 'check on it' periodically
• Play both streamed and my own music library in the same app
• View album art nice and large (called 'Immersive View')
• Organise albums into collections, and order albums by descending release date
• Read more information about the artist and the album
• See what friends are listening to, and make my own recommendations

I'll start with a summary of my experiences in each app. The focus of this will primarily be the MacOS experience, but most of it is applicable to all platforms.

Spotify

I've recently cancelled our family Spotify account, partly due to UI changes that feel a bit chaotic, but mainly due to their long list of unethical choices. It has to be said that despite these, it's still an easy UX experience and I really liked the 'one instance playing on whatever device you want' approach.

In terms of sound quality it's the lowest of the four, even after recently supporting lossless. No Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio, but that's not a huge concern to me, nor is it so much the app itself that's the problem. No streaming service pays artists handsomely, but Spotify is the second lowest. They earn billions off the back of artists who mostly struggle to be paid, and invest that money in military AI rather than back into music industry. They changed their rules to avoid paying royalties, which means 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized, while padding Spotify with AI slop and telling artists they should release more often. They've been platforming some of the worst humans, such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan and run recruitment ads for ICE.

This post by the band Los Campesinos! is a real eye opener. They discuss how streaming royalties compare for their 2024 album All Hell:

If everyone who streamed All Hell on Spotify had done so using Tidal instead, we would have received an extra £31,847.38, which would double the amount we made from streaming of the album in this time period. Or if everyone used Apple Music it would have been £12,331 more.

Spotify then have the brass neck to claim that they've 'made the world value music'. They don't care about music, it's just "content" to them.

Apple Music

I migrated from Spotify to Apple Music. It's not visually noisy, offers lossless & spatial audio, airplay direct from the app, and adds extra content, such DJ mixes, interviews and live shows. Sometimes, I find that minimalism provides a restful break, but it can equally feel a little too spartan at times.

An Apple Music subscription also lets you sync your own music across devices, so it can potentially replace Plex in my equation. In reality, I've found it can be unreliable with imported music, splitting albums up, creating duplicates and missing out tracks. These issues can eventually be manually corrected, and for those bands that aren't on streaming services (I'm looking at you Curve), I can have all my music sources together in one app.

However, I find the UI has a lot of friction points. The biggest one for me is the mode switch between 'Apple Music/Your Library' that I find particularly unnecessary and frustrating. Here’s an example, I started searching for Cowboy Sadness (my favourite and most played album of 2024). It took until 'Cowboy S’ before it appeared in the results, compared to just ‘Cow’ in Spotify. (Incidentally, Spotify brought up Cold Gawd, another band I’ve played a lot, for ‘C’ and ‘Co’.)

This is because of that switch between 'Apple Music' (the streaming service) and 'Library' (your saved albums, be they Apple Music or your own digital files). Pre-selecting 'Library' before searching would show it quicker, but on MacOS, the two components are at opposite sides of the window. They should be together, like on iOS and iPadOS, and not relegated to a small field in the sidebar. The macOS Tahoe version makes the search field larger, and places the 'Apple Music/Library' switch next to, but I don't see a need for a switch at all. In many ways, the iPad version of Apple Music works so much better than the desktop version for me.

In general, Apple Music really needs to chill out with the all the error messages and beachballs:


Also, a word of warning if you're a flip-flopper like me. Apple will wipe all your data after 30 days once you’ve unsubscribed. This didn't used to the be case, but (as I found out) it is now!

Wow, that's quite a bit of negativity for what is my default music app at the moment!

Tidal

I got on very well with Tidal! Good recommendations and a nice, uncluttered UI — not unlike how Spotify used to be before its last redesign. I particularly liked Tidal's immersive view.

I subscribed for about eight months, and found the main drawbacks were:

• It has a 10,000 'item' (albums, playlists, single tracks) limit, and when you reach 9,999 it won't let you add anymore to your collection. This is a real deal breaker for me. Spotify used to have this limit, but is now unlimited, and Apple Music's is 100,000. As far as I can see, Qobuz has no limit.
• I cottoned on to the fantastic (but now defunct) Plex integration feature too late! The ability to combine my own library with a streaming service was wonderful, and it worked perfectly in my experience. It was always so really clear whether an album was mine, or from Tidal - and no awkward switch between the two sources like in Apple Music. Sadly this was removed by Tidal last year.
• I (very) occasionally couldn't find music that was available on Spotify and Apple Music.
• There's no 'What friends are playing", or shared playlists (any that get shared are likely to be Spotify or Apple Music, never Tidal). The ability to follow other users is there, but hidden and very underdeveloped.
• I get the impression that the company is struggling. In the last twelve months, they've removed their high tier plan (which paid artists more), stopped Plex integration, and had mass layoffs. It doesn't inspire me to spend time building a collection there, if it feels like I'm going to have to migrate again.
• Can't 'pre-save' an album when it's announced (Update: you can now!)
• No animated album artwork like Apple Music (Update: now it does!)
• You can't add your own cover image for playlists like you can on Spotify and Apple Music. (Update: you can now!)

Good news for flip-floppers though - Tidal keeps your library if you re-subscribe!

Qobuz

I've got a reasonably good quality stereo, and in my non-scientific comparison test, Qobuz easily sounded the best quality sound of all the streaming services. That could be as much because it was much louder by default, although I'm not an audiophile, and not so concerned about the sound quality of a streaming service. I see it as temporary resource, and my permanent digital and physical library is where any perceived quality really matters to me. I did take this blind test, to see if I could tell the difference between lossless and lossy quality, and even though I got more right than wrong, it still told me "You probably can't tell the difference".

Where Qobuz really shines with it's music magazine and human curated recommendation, very much like Bandcamp Daily. You get the feeling they actually care about music. In a nice touch, it also has a store where you can buy music in high-res formats (FLAC, ALAC etc). I tried the 'Qobuz Sublime' plan, which gives you 'up to' 60% discount on purchases, but it didn't feel worth
the extra monthly cost for the chance up ‘up to’ 60%. While some albums were cheaper, it felt like most had no discount at all, and more expensive than Bandcamp.

There’s a lot to love, but it all feels hampered by the slightly quirky and basic UI, lacking some important features.

• Qobuz generally feels more like a music magazine than an app. There's a general lack of finesse. From the low-res startup animation (seems to be improved now!) to artist biography text that spans the whole window (no matter how wide it is).
• Interactions can be a little basic (for example, I couldn't access a particular action because a hover popup for a different action was covering it). It required quite precise mouse positioning to avoid it.
• The 'download your purchase' experience was a little clunky, with things like digital booklets being a separate download, which also, didn’t work. There is a separate ‘Qobuz Downloader’ app to make the process have even more friction. Why this isn’t a part of the Qobuz I don’t know, and also, it didn’t work either. I just got an ‘error’ with no clue as to what the issue was.
• Emphasis is placed on genres (as in the screenshot above) - with the bright blue dropdown in 'Home', 'Favourites' and when viewing an album. I can't say that I particularly care about browsing music in this way, or need it highlighted to this extent. (It sometimes gets it quite wrong anyway)
• It lacks any kind of 'history' on the Home screen, making it harder to jump back to recent plays that weren't saved to your Favourites. For that matter, there's no sense of the home page being tailored to me. I'm pretty sure everyone sees the same generic homepage, with no personalised recommendations.
• I (very) occasionally couldn't find music that was available on Spotify and Apple Music.
• You can't 'pre-save' albums before their release.
• The complete lack of any social features make it lonely. There is a member forum, but it's separate from the app.
• For some reason, your library is called “Releases” on iOS/iPadOS, ‘Favourites’ on MacOS, but "Albums" on CarPlay! Downloads are called 'Imports' which I also found confusing.
• It's a small thing, but the repetitive yellow 'Hi-Res Audio’ label is distracting and intrusive —

  

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Roon

Roon, is answers some of my needs. It's predominantly a client for your own music files, but you can also combine it with a subscription to either Tidal or in my case, Qobuz. The UI feels quite large and spacious and a real pleasure to use, particularly providing a layer of polish and finesse to Qobuz that the official app is missing. It also adds features missing from Qobuz, such as pre-saving albums before they're released and ordering albums by release date. Just as with Plex's abandoned integration with Tidal, it integrates streaming services with your own library really well, without Apple Music's awkward switching between sources. The source of the music is clear, but you can also disable the small Tidal or Qobuz logos if you prefer.

I was able to setup a Roon server on my Synology NAS as easily as my Plex server, even though the package was third-party. I also appreciated the ability to add music to a 'Listen Later' section, like bookmarking it instead of adding it to your library.

Other than combining your streaming and personal libraries, the feature that most tempted me to stump up $14.99 a month was its audio output. As well as fiddling with tonnes of EQ settings, I can play music losslessly and directly through various speakers while reliably scrobbling at the same time. Airplay is lossy, and prone to dropouts. While Sonos can play sources directly, it doesn't scrobble (not since their 'great redesign'), has a very basic UI, and obviously, only works with Sonos speakers. The choice of endpoints in Roon is so much wider, but after a week, what I thought was a rock solid connection to my Sonos suddenly stopped working.

For that much extra monthly outlay I would expect fewer 'Roon lost control of the audio device' or 'Roon Server is taking longer than usual to start' messages. A few more UI customisation features would be good, such as setting to change fonts or the purple accent colour (Incidentally, this can be achieved unofficially by hacking the colour theme file.

I decided against a Roon subscription, but as I’d selected “too expensive” as a reason, I got a 50% offer for my first year. So I’m going to a longer term trial!

Deezer & Amazon Music

I didn't get very far with either of these. While Deezer works with Last.fm (took a while to find the setting, but it’s there), it only works from the browser tab, not the desktop app. When it did scrobble, there were false matches - didn't even know that was possible! So lack of reliable scrobbling is a non-starter.

The general design of both was 'OK', the brand fonts look a bit immature but their UI’s were clean and intuitive. They lack a lot of features like immersive view, and generally had no standout features to make it worth trialling further.

MusicKit Apps

On top of the main apps, it’s worth noting that MusicKit allows for an ecosystem of apps that are built to work with Apple Music. They're usually a small cost on top of the Apple Music subscription, but provide extra features, or even complete retakes on how a music app should work.

Cider, Marvis Pro, Soor, Cs Music Pro and Albums work like enhanced versions of Apple Music, but Longplay takes a unique direction on sorting. Your library can be ordered and sized by concepts such as 'Brightness' (of the album artwork), 'Addiction' (time spent listening) and 'Negligence' (time since your last listen). There's an early access version of Longplay for MacOS:

I've also written a more in-depth review of Longplay.

MusicKit apps are often designed for iOS and iPadOS, but some allow the app to be installed on Mac, while Cider is only available as an electron app for MacOS (no mobile version).

There's also a category of 'companion' apps, that don't play music as such, but provide some of the extra functionality I'm looking for. Namely, MusicHarbor (information about new releases and gigs), NowPlaying (Music Trivia) and Discographic (A third party Discogs client).

Doppler

I must mention Doppler here as well. If you've got a bunch of your digital files, whatever format they may be in (FLACs and WAVs are good to go!), point Doppler at your folder and you're done. So not a streaming service, but a nice native MacOS experience for playing your own music. Easier to setup than a Plex library, and cheaper than a Plex Pass too. It's a minimal app in some ways (there's no sorting of any kind - everything is alphabetical & ascending and that's it), but it supports Airplay streaming, Apple CarPlay, Last.fm scrobbling and Album Collections!

It uses the full width of the window to display as many albums as possible, something music apps rarely do. On my 27" monitor it's a joy that it makes the most of that monitor size. A native PlexAmp client for MacOS would be great, Until then, Doppler provides some of that experience. It's a moment of calm, where all the music is yours, and nothing is being pushed on to you that you don't want.

If there's a downside to Doppler, it's that the music has to be 'on device'. You can't stream from a home NAS for example. It comes with a ‘Doppler Transfer’ app to make adding music to your iPhone as easy as possible, but it’s still manual. I also can’t order music by release date.

There are a whole host of other music apps out there that I've tried: Audirvana, Chromatix, Crates, DaftMusic, Petrichor, Radiccio and Parachord, to name a few. While these didn't tick enough of my boxes to feature, they're all worth trying out to see if they fit your needs.

Criteria:

These are the key features I’m looking for. Some are supported in some of the apps, but no app does everything:

Scrobble to last.fm

This one's first because it's very important to me. Not having a record of what I've listened to is like going for a 100 mile cycle and not recording the ride on Strava. If you're someone who can easily live without end of year statistics, I genuinely envy you! I wish I could be wired that way.

Apple Music is the only app that doesn’t provide a built-in way to scrobble, so it falls to third-party apps like NepTunes (on MacOS) and Marvis Pro (on iOS) with the last.fm+ add-onn to get this capability. The addon for Marvis is a one-time purchase of £5.99 and well worth it. Unlike other iOS scrobbling solutions, it can scrobble plays of music that hasn't been saved in your library. It also has a 'scrobble log' where you can double check that plays have been recorded.

I did find an instance where Spotify and Tidal don't scrobble — when using their respective 'Connect' features. On Sonos at least, this has been the case since the disastrous new Sonos app was launched last year. It removed last.fm integration and it's not looking like that functionality will ever be restored. Fortunately, NepTunes covers this use case for Spotify too, but no joy with Tidal.

The situation on Apple TV is more complex. Tidal (which has a focus on Music Videos) doesn't send any scrobbles. Unlike Spotify, it seems that each device you install Tidal on has to be individually authorised to connect with last.fm, and there's just no UI to do that in the Tidal app settings on AppleTV. There's no app for Qobuz either, although you can airplay to it.

You can sometimes scrobble from Apple Music on ATV, if you have Marvis Pro on iOS or iPadOS with the Last.fm+ add on. It can take around 24 hours or more before they appear in your scrobble log, but sometimes it doesn't appear at all. A way around this is either using AirPlay from your phone, or an app like OpenScrobbler. I recently looked at other options that listen in automatically, but found they either gave false matches or none at all.

However, whether I used Qobuz directly, or through a third party app like Roon or Wiim, it always scrobbled.

Best fit for reliably scrobbling everywhere: Qobuz (despite not having a Apple TV app)

Ethical Company

In this context, 'ethical' means: pays artists well, rejects AI music and the company behind it care about the artists. This obviously rules out Spotify, but the others are less clear cut. Apple only pays slightly better than Spotify, and have lost points recently for schmoozing with the Trump administration. Tidal started life being owned by Jay-Z and other artists, but is now under Jack Dorsey's Block Inc. Amazon Music pays a higher streaming rate than Apple, but, is Amazon. If you're trying to reduce your reliance on U.S based companies, then that leaves French companies Deezer and Qobuz. Both are proactively purging AI music from their catalogue, but Qobuz wins for paying artists the most, as well as being somewhere to buy Hi-Res digital files with no DRM.

Best moral compass: Qobuz

Combine streaming and own library

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to use two different apps to play streaming services and my own library. Some may prefer that separation, but the shortlived Plex + Tidal feature gave me a taste of how convenient this could be.

This is where Roon really shines, although streaming options are limited to Tidal, Qobuz and KKBOX (which isn’t available in the UK anyway). The two are seamlessly blended, but it’s still clear which is which, and you can still view the libraries separately if you need to. The only downside to Roon is the monthly cost. There is a cheaper option in the form of Audirvana, which doesn’t have quite the polish or feature set of Roon.

As mentioned above, it’s possible to do this in Apple Music too. If you have a subscription, you can add and sync your own audio files. When I rip CDs, I tend to do this in Apple Music anyway, so the files are already there. The downside is that if often messes up metadata, splitting artists and albums, and even showing duplicates where there are none. Then there’s that awkward switch between Apple Music and Your Library again.

Spotify has a ‘local files’ option but it’s so pitifully basic it’s not a contender.

Best fit for combining streaming and local files: Roon

Immersive View

I want to see the album artwork as large as possible! It's often relegated to a small thumbnail, usually leaving a vast amount of unused space next to the track listing:

Obviously this relies on having high resolution files for the cover, but some MacOS apps support an Immersive View: Tidal, Cider, Qobuz and to a lesser extent, PlexAmp. Cider does this particularly well, and can even show Apple Music's animated covers (where they're available, and if you want them)

Apple Music on the iPad has got a version of this. If you put Apple Music on MacOS into full screen you get a similar view but it leaves out the play queue.

Whereas on iOS, some albums get this lovely colour-blended treatment (which is presumably dependant on having a large high-res artwork file). This is essentially what I'm looking for on desktop, but landscape!

I had fun fiddling with the CSS on Tidal's web player, to get an even more honed immersive view. I enjoyed using this, but sadly there seems to be a bug when airplaying from the web app, where it repeats the first couple of seconds of a track a few times.

Best fit for Immersive View: Cider

Collections

This is simply the ability to create a folder of albums, like playlist but for long players. That could be ‘All time favourites’ or ‘Ambient Albums I bought this year’, I just want to be able to group albums together.

Smart collections (with configurable rules like Smart Albums in Photos app) would be even nicer - e.g 'Albums released last year' or even 'what I was listening to 10 years ago today'. This is something Albums app does, which makes it a real shame you can't install it on desktop (Update: the latest release can now be installed on Mac - will test and add my findings to this post).

Doppler, Albums, Longplay, Roon (in the form of tags), Plex and Plexamp all have this feature, but most of the streaming services don't let you do this. It is possible in Apple Music on MacOS however. If you add whole albums to a playlist (you can just drag and drop the album), then choose the 'View → as albums' menu option (instead of 'View as playlist') it becomes a collection! Importantly, the preference to 'view playlist as albums' sticks, so I can switch between different playlists without needing to change the view type each time! Of course, this also opens up the possibility of using Smart Playlists to create the dymanic collections I mentioned earlier. And as it's a playlist, you can add your own artwork to the collection.

The only downside is that it's desktop only - but you can still sort a playlist by album on iOS and iPadOS. This is so close to right functionality, if only it was available on mobile too! Apple Music also allows you to mark an album as a favourite, and then filter to only show favourites when viewing albums.

Best fit for Collections: Apple Music (MacOS) and Albums (iOS/iPadOS)

I want to be able to read more than just lyrics - I like information about the album's creation, and an artist biography (particularly when listening to a new artist).

Spotify does have a 'now playing' view, which gives a small artist bio and tour dates. Apple Music sometimes has background information on the album itself, such as on Lucy Dacus' Home Videos which shows her track by track commentary. Tidal, Qobuz and Roon have all the production credits you could ever want, and sometimes album/artist info too.

In all cases, it's usually a little hidden away, if it's there at all. Companion apps Discographic and NowPlaying (below) have the most information, with the latter being the best presented:

NowPlaying app also scrobbles, and while it's not supported on MacOS yet, it does have an Apple TV app.

Best fit for Album and Artist Info: NowPlaying, but as that’s a separate app, Roon is best for integrated information.

Social Club

Most social features are at the same level — you get a profile page, with public playlists, and that's about it. When I spent some time last year playing with Record Club it made me wonder why no one has built this kind of functionality into streaming apps? Here I can curate create public lists of songs or albums, and send recommendations to others (this leads back to the 'Collections' feature I'd like).

Apple Music shows 'Friends are listening to' on your homepage, and Spotify has 'Friend Activity'.

Tidal has similar basic social features (although it took me a while to find them), and also allows you to display a Favourite Track, Mood Booster, Favourite Artist and albums on your profile:

There are no notifications for any of these social features in these apps, only by visiting someone's profile will you ever see it. Bandcamp emails me when people I follow buy new music, that's the kind of connection I want. Let me choose music I want to share with friends - not just public playlists, but collections of albums and highlighting current favourites (remember this is my jam)? It feels like streaming services are missing a real trick here.

Best fit for social features: Record Club

Ordering albums by release date

Last one! All the main music apps allow you to order albums by 'Recently Added', but I remember albums by the order they were released. Tidal, Roon, Plexamp, Cider, Albums and Marvis all offer this option. Qobuz has this on iOS but on MacOS you can only view an artist's discography in release order. Apple lets you sort by Year which isn't quite there.

Best fit for ordering albums by release date: Take your pick from Tidal, Roon, Plexamp, Cider, Albums and Marvis!

Mockup

So what does all this look like? Based on a mixture of Apple Music and Doppler, with a bit of Cider thrown in, here are sketches of what I have in my head. Don't treat this a serious UX proposal!

• Large artwork - as large as it can be!
• Side panel with tabs for Play Queue, Lyrics and Artist/Album Info, colour blended with the album artwork.
• Collections in the sidebar.
• A 'Now Playing' entry in the sidebar, much like you get in CarPlay. It's easy to go off down other tangents when playing music, and would be nice to have an easy way back to the currently playing.
• Apple's playlists (such as the excellent 'The Crate') and my own are separated with a different icon.

Well done - you've made it to the end! This is one of those posts that will never be truly 'done'. It's been gestating for nearly a year already, and I'll continue to update it in the future.

Updates

• 31/1/26 added 'Ethical' (this feels more important than ever) and 'Combine streaming with own library' criteria
• 27/1/26 to expand the section about Roon after a more in-depth trial
• 22/7/25 to show that Tidal now has animated album artwork, and lets you pre-save upcoming albums/add your own artwork to playlists
• 10/7/25 to add information about Deezer
• 12/2/25 to clarify that Apple Music can scrobble from Apple TV after all, as long as you have Marvis Pro with the last.fm+ add-on.
• 7/2/25 to add how to create Collections in Apple Music (thanks to As Lennart Schoors).