What's the best music streaming service?

None of them. Buy music, don't rent access to it.

If you're talking about artists under labels, the real way to support them is go to their shows. They get very few proceeds from music purchases.
- Shut the fuck up Ticketmaster
that would be so expensive no? to buy thousands of songs? and I'd have to buy an album/ track to listen, what if I don't end up liking it?
- Most artists put their stuff up on YouTube anyways so you can give it a listen before you decide to buy. And I think buying each track makes you appreciate the music more but also makes you more critical because you want to get your money's worth.
  
  Regarding it being expensive, considering that with the money you spend on Spotify you can buy an album each month, I don't think it's too bad
Please be realistic, who does that in this day and age?

I only know two sides (in the bigger scheme) people who rent it and people who pirate it.

In all kinds of tech media that exists the disc music are the ones that amazes me the most because they still have their spot in certain stores.
- I do have a few friends who love collecting vinyl. They're reasonably established in their careers, really seem to love rooting around record shops whenever we travel and have amazing collections that take up a chunk of their living space...
  
  But basically, I agree with you. Those collector friends are definitely the very rare exceptions.
- I buy all my mysic on iTunes, and have done so for a long time, it makes my music library more focused and I have no worry if loosing access if I can't pay rent.
- I pirate music, but I also purchase most things I end up enjoying as long as it’s reasonably available
- Heaps of people still buy music, sales still account for around half of music revenue.
- Had half a dozen CDs arrive from eBay in the last month. CDs are the shit.
Unless the artist self published it, even buying physical media doesn't give the actual artist much. If you want to support the actual artist, you go to live shows (with tickets bought at the door and not through Ticketmaster) as well as buying the merch they sell at those events. More of those sales go to the bands. Sometimes even 100% of it.
Do both. Spotify to gain access, buying it to maintain access in perpetuity. I have about 60 or so vinyl albums that I would like my kids to hear in 10 years or so, and I'm hopeful they'll say hey vinyl, cool (it won't happen). But at the end of the day, I've picked out a number of albums that I want to carry into the future with me, and some of those I discovered through my Spotify subscription.

Keeping a local library on your phone and computer.

No need to worry about if a streaming service changes anything, not pepetual bulls just to listen to music

I generally do this for all my media, but I will never do this for music, there's just such a huge lack of discoverability. Are you just never seeking out new music on the fly?
- This brings me to an interesting phenomenom with me, I tend to dislike contemporary music, but about 10 years later or so I wtart to really enjoy it.
  
  Then I start listening to music on YT, start playing the same song over and over, and start checking out other songs by the artist, and create a playlist on yt where I can listen to those songs over and over, then I start getting ready to buy the songs on iTunes.
  
  Right now, the latest songs I bought on iTunes was from the Red Alert soundtrack from Frank Klepacki, Blue by Eiffel 65, Walk On Water by Milk Inc, two songs from SkyMarshall Arts, a few songs from the Shock Treatment soundtrack, some Scooter songs, and a song from Gina G.
  
  I go through phases where I listen to a particular genere/artist constantly and will then buy a few songs here and there that interest me, in 2022 I was dealing with double flat feet, double heel spurs, a bad knee and more crap, I would drag myself home from the busstop crying from the pain that each step caused, and I just blasted Sabaton constantly, I got energy and was able to keep working both in the office and on getting better.
  
  And when I got better, I started listening to more Eurodance and fun music, so I bought plenty of Dr. Bombay and Dr. Macdoo, and as I bought my first car this summer I got into classical music set to a disco beat and bought Hooked on classics 1, 2 and 3 as well as Hooked on Themes.
  
  So while I don't constantly look for new music, I am not shy of buying it when I find it.
- Personally I use a combination of a large library of mp3s plus I listen to SiriusXM in the car to discover new artists. I also like to go through the backlogs of artists I find I like, and also dig into their earlier/later works
I do love PlexAmp, I need a much bigger storage capacity on my phone these days because of all the bangers.
- That's fair, I have about 720 songs bought on my iPhone, and plenty more downloaded from remix64.com in VLC

I think Apple Music and Tidal pay the most per stream, but Tidal has a smaller library than Spotify. It might be different now so not sure.

Anecdotal, I've not actually had a lot of instances (if any) of Spotify having something but Tidal not, usually find albums that I'm interested in from band camp no problem and if it's missing its missing on both. Sound quality is noticeably higher which is the reason I tend to prefer, the app has gotten better in my experience

I have all my digital copies on my NAS with jellyfin to stream them as well, sometimes it's just easier to stream off tidal or Spotify though

I strongly recommend Apple Music. It has one of the largest libraries and pays better than YouTube, Amazon, or Spotify.

Apple Music is also platform agnostic; there’s even a browser version now. Also, you can download music and choose the quality. It’s far less “algorithm-y,” which I prefer.

Tidal and Qobuz do pay out more, but have much smaller libraries. I don’t personally like them much. The apps feel subpar.

YouTube and Amazon are straight up bad experiences for me. If this was back in 2013, I’d actually have recommended Google Play Music. RIP.

I like Qobuz. I find it really good quality through my home hifi and I can purchase from their site too. There is a bundle where you get discounts on the purchase with the sub. Music is really important to me so this is the only thing I sub too.

One of the big benefits for me is that it offers gapless playback. Also I find it the "best" quality and for context I am streaming through a Cambridge CXN V2 into a Musical Fidelity M6si and into a pair of Kef ls50's with a couple of REL subs.

Revanced YouTube music

Innertune is nice too.

Napster pays the most to the owners of the recording as far as I recall

I’ve been trying it because I wanted to support the artists more than Spotify, but the app is… not very good in my experience. :(
- Same here. The app is so ass and the recommendations are straight garbage too.

does bandcamp suit you?

Youtube music after you uploaded your personal library there, it was how I used play music before.

I love Tidal + Plex. I already had a Plex server set up, but the integration with tidal is great. Good music quality, pays the artists well, and no gaps in the library that aren't also there in the other services. When you add Plex you can then fill in those gaps with your own music files.

I've recently started hosting my music on Jellyfin and using the symfonium app for android. Symfonium is pretty nice and handles offline files well, plus it has a ton of hosting options including Plex, even some experimental options like dropbox

Navidrome

Deezer

Airsonic or plexamp