Music streaming
Music streaming has stopped being about music: users pay, yet the service decides what they hear and in what order, loses their libraries, and breaks working habits with every forced redesign. Trust is not about sound quality or catalog size — it is the feeling that the app does exactly what you told it to do.
Three findings
Control: play exactly what I chose
The hottest pain point in the category is an app that sabotages a direct command. You tap a track and something "recommended" plays instead; you liked a remix and it gets swapped for the original; you built a queue and one accidental tap erases it. This is not an algorithm complaint — it is about a listener's basic right to agency. A service that never overrides a selection and never forces shuffle captures the most furious segment in the market.
The algorithm ignores the song you actually picked58
You tap a specific track and the service plays "recommended songs you might like" instead — or dumps you straight into forced shuffle. It is the defining humiliation of both free and paid listeners.
Worst app ever like why tf u keep playing songs I dont like when I choose a specific song and ur like " we're playing some recommended songs u may like"
i cant play the SONGS IN ORDER. when i click on to playlists, the only thing i can choose is a short clip of the song
worst music app I have ever experienced, you literally can't choose the song you want even after watching the ad, it just goes to shuffle mode from the get go
Ads and paywalls on basic actions push listeners straight to a competitor38
Ads after every two songs — sometimes two or three back-to-back — plus paywalls on seeking, repeat, song selection, and lyrics. Listeners name exactly which competitor they are switching to.
everything is behind a pay wall yes theirs some features but you have to pay for everything especially if you want to shuffle songs
having x2 30 second adverts after every 3.5/4 minute song is unsuitable listening. used to be every 5/10 songs. most now is every song.
too many commercials. commercials after every two songs! worse than the radio!!
Leaving Spotify on ethical grounds — then disappointed by the replacement30
A whole wave of users is migrating from Spotify over fair artist pay and distaste for certain ad campaigns — Deezer and Tidal are catching this demand as a ready-made segment. But the new home greets them with bugs, broken search, and a clunky interface, and some migrants regret switching.
Sooo much better than Spotify...Mostly because there are no ads for ICE recruitment.
I switched from Spotify because Tidal pays artists more fairly. Overall, I'm happy, but it is frustrating as hell to use with Android Auto.
I moved from Spotify because I don't want to support genocide and I know Tidal pays their artists the most. But holy, this mobile app sucks.
Stations and recommendations mash genres into a muddy blend24
Radio and algorithms inject completely unrelated genres — rap bleeding into a country station, Sam Smith surfacing on a classic-guitar channel — and there is no way to build a clean single-genre stream.
Carlos Santana & Stevie Ray Vaughn are in the top 5 guitarists ever. But you pull Sam Smith, Michael Jackson, Teddy Swims, Post Malone & Jelly Roll to all my channels. Totally not in the same class/genre.
The DJ keeps playing Latin music despite me never listening to it and skipping it when it puts it on. This has been a problem for months now.
Recommendations often don't reflect my musical taste or are just recycling of previous music that I've listened too.
AI-generated music is flooding feeds — listeners want a block button22
Mixes, stations, and artist pages are filling up with AI-generated tracks uploaded under real artists' names. Users are explicitly asking for an "AI-made" label, a report button, and a way to block it permanently.
It's become impossible to comfortably use the mix function or any playlists without having AI slop shoved down my earholes. I have to check every new artist and they are A L L AI.
please add labels for AI-generated tracks/artists and a permanent option to block them from recommendations. I love discovering new music, but I want to focus on human-made art.
Would be good if there were a way to report or block AI slop uploaded on another artist's name. Anybody seems to be able to upload anything with any name they want
Hi-Fi audio and fairer artist pay are the only reason niche services keep loyal users20
Tidal and Deezer hold on to audiophile subscribers through real lossless audio and more honest artist royalties — that is the sole reason users put up with the bugs. But the promised lossless quality sometimes silently degrades to lossy, and on some devices there is no output path to an external DAC.
Tidal is real to what it says and so far from my experience, all their tracks are truly lossless audio
all my downloaded loseless and hi res FLAC files have suddenly become low quality losey AAC. I can get that for free on spotify so it's time to ditch Tidal
Sound is amazing. Such an improvement from Spotify. (we moved because of the artists payments).
Two more key findings — with the breakdown and direct review quotes.
7 opportunities
Ideas users ask for themselves — each backed by proven demand.
Each idea: the market gap, exactly what to build, the core features and how to monetize — backed by review quotes.
10 apps
Spotify dominates on catalog breadth and recommendation quality, but squeezes money through paywalls on basic actions and alienates users with unwanted redesigns, bleeding a segment that is leaving for both ethical and UX reasons. Niche players Tidal and Deezer catch those defectors with real Hi-Fi and fairer artist royalties, but consistently fail on playback reliability, casting, and search. Pandora, Napster, and Anghami are destroying their own loyal paying bases through crashes, AI-pivot decisions, and a shrinking catalog — that is where the largest pool of orphaned paying listeners sits right now.
How the niche leaders work: what users love, where they fall short and what they demand — verbatim from reviews.