Personally all I want out of a subscription based music service is excellent quality, constantly updated/created, thematically consistent, human curated playlists. I don’t really care if it’s super popular or fringe stuff, but I do want it to be as “good” as the other stuff on the playlist, and I want a human who also cares about the music to be making that decision. Sometimes the playlists in Apple Music scratch this itch, but it would be amazing if they were constantly updated.
Deezer has human curated playlists updated frequently, which has been my main way of discovering new artists these days. For example, the prog metal playlist as been updated 5 days ago. [0] There are lots of those playlists..
I've got a Tidal subscription, and I've played with creating a few of my own playlists for the explicit purpose of sharing with others (as opposed to personal use). They're nothing special, but I at least try to put in some research while constructing them to bound them at a narrow time-frame/genre for accurate historical purposes.
I have no idea if anyone is listening to them, though, because there doesn't seem to be any feedback system for the community playlists. That would be a useful addition, IMO. If TIDAL doesn't want to pay dedicated staff to curate playlists, they could at least make some way for the member-created playlists to get featured or gain reputation.
