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).
Preservation: my library and offline cache must not vanish
Listeners spend years building playlists and downloading tracks — then lose everything: catalogs shrink with licensing changes, AI pivots erase libraries, "downloaded" files require a network, and subscriptions are impossible to cancel. This is a breach of the fundamental contract: I paid for access and ownership. A guaranteed, portable, genuinely offline, non-disappearing archive is the bedrock of trust that every major player is currently destroying.
"Downloaded" is a lie: offline tracks won't play without internet34
People pay specifically for offline access, download a playlist, then see "you are offline" or an endless spinner on the plane or commute — the downloaded files keep reaching for the network anyway.
Offline listening is a lie. Simple concept, if the song is downloaded, then it doesn't need to connect to the internet to play, full stop. It's insane how bad this is.
I work remotely without signal for weeks at a time & pay for service I don't get.
I subscribed for premium,money deducted yet I can't access the app offline and keep asking me for a premium subscription
The catalog is shrinking: favorite albums disappear without warning26
Songs and entire albums from major artists vanish from the library — licensing changes or ownership shifts — while playlists quietly hollow out over the years with no notification.
The music library is shrinking every day. Many of my favorite albums (Taylor Swift, The Neighbourhood, etc.) are suddenly unavailable.
I used to have thousands of songs across various playlists, but it dropped to maybe 200 tops. Not worth anything anymore
I thought it was an issue that will be fixed soon but instead more and more albums are unavailable which is very upsetting.
Canceling a subscription is impossible — charges continue after cancellation16
There is no cancel button, or it leads only to a payment-method change screen. Users keep getting billed for months after canceling, with no way to reach a human in support.
My actual subscription page shows only Change payment method. So the published instructions do not match the live account flow for your account.
I canceled my account in May 10th 2026. I was billed for the service on June 1st 2026. I reached out to Google play store and they told me my request for refund was denied.
I canceled my Napster subscription (originally Rhapsody) last fall. However, I am still being billed as Rhapsody. There is no way to speak with anybody connected to Napster.
Reliability: play without failure wherever I listen
People listen to music in the car, on speakers, and on the road without signal — and that is precisely where services fall apart: network errors after every song, casting and Android Auto dropping out, background crashes draining the battery, forced redesigns that break muscle memory. Playback reliability and stability on external devices is an underrated moat: audiophiles will tolerate a thinner catalog, but not a track cutting out mid-song.
Music cuts out mid-track: "network error" after every song47
Even on strong Wi-Fi a track stalls after a minute or throws a "network issue" banner after every song — the only fix is force-quitting and relaunching the app.
after everytime a song plays, I get "we've encountered a network issue. please check your connection and try again. (1:2:2000) doesnt matter if im on wifi or not. same issue. everytime. after every song
it's fine if I listen to radio talk however when I play music it stops playing the music after 1 minute no matter what I do and it tells me it's still playing
it still always stops playing after a few songs and says there was an error. It would be really nice if the music I'm playing to listen to would continue to play without needing to get back into the app and clear the error message every 20 minutes
A redesign broke habits that worked for years41
The widget, artist page, queue, and lyrics view were rebuilt without asking — and came out worse. Familiar gestures vanished, and there is no way to go back to the old version.
My listening time fell from 1,300 to 600 minutes because I end up bypassing the widget entirely and going straight to the app. The biggest annoyance? The old widget constantly nags me to switch to the new one
instead of swiping to see the lyrics you have to press a button on the top of the screen now, the album cover covers the lyrics and cant be moved. nonsensical changes. put it back.
New update absolutely suck, the UI changed so its more like Spotify now (just as basic) and the "Related" and "Up Next" buttons have been removed. WHY WHY would you do this
Casting, Android Auto, and speaker connections keep dropping33
In the car and on speakers the service endlessly reconnects, loses the link, or simply stops appearing as an available app — yet those are precisely the places people listen most.
tidal connect doesn't work at all and no this issue is not at my end. forums are full with this complaint.
Music suddenly starts playing on both, speaker and phone but you can only control one. Flow is a joke, constantly drifting far off my music to genres I don't like.
love the app. use to listen on android auto however it no longer appears as an app. please fix.
Constant crashes and background battery drain29
The phone itself suggests putting the app into deep sleep because it keeps crashing in the background. It drains the battery, quits when you switch apps, and sometimes launches itself uninvited.
keep getting a notification to put Pandora in deep sleep because it keeps crashing in the background.
App constantly crashes when I try to play music, not even getting through a whole song before crash. why do I bother paying yall a subscription fee
It's gotten worse with the update. Even with stable internet connection, the music suddenly pauses.
It forgets where you left off: every session starts from scratch14
Open the app in the morning and it resumes a track from a search you ran a week ago instead of the playlist you left yesterday. In the car there is no auto-resume and no way to continue from the same spot.
Every day it resumes a song from a search I did over a week ago, as opposed to the playlist I had left it on yesterday.
every other major music app allows me to continue listening to what I had been playing, an hour ago, a day ago, or even a week ago. if tidal goes dormant in the background I lose whatever I was listening to.
it has a nasty habit of defaulting to autoplay even when it is switched off. I despise autoplay so I find this very annoying.
Search can't find even an exact track title12
Type the full song name and artist and get "nothing found" — or a wall of irrelevant covers. Search breaks whenever the catalog hasn't finished loading, and there are no useful filters.
the search function is lacking, and metadata needs attention. Even when searching with song title and artist included, I often can't find what I'm looking for. Spotify is genuinely better on this front.
its search engine is incredibly frustrating and outdated, lacking smart features like popularity ranking or personalized recommendations and forcing users to scroll past irrelevant unofficial covers even when typing an exact song title
The search functionality is appalling. Unable to find the podcast you want and the latest version. Cant understand why u cant apply simple search filters such as podcast only and sort by newest
Two more findings — with the breakdown and review quotes.
7 opportunities
Ideas users ask for themselves — each backed by proven demand.