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Add to SafariWhen comparing Spotify vs DeaDBeeF, the Slant community recommends DeaDBeeF for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” DeaDBeeF is ranked 2nd while Spotify is ranked 32nd. The most important reason people chose DeaDBeeF is:
DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Huge collection of music and fast access to newly released songs
Spotify has over 20 million songs and arguably the largest collection out of its competitors and usually has the fastest access to new music.
The Spotify desktop client allows local music files to be imported with the option of syncing with a mobile device which largely mitigates the issue of missing artists.
Pro Related artists
Helps to find new authors based on your previous picks
Pro Curated playlists
Public playlists on Spotify created by other people are great for finding new music.
Pro Client's functionality can be extended via third-party apps
Spotify desktop client allows for third-party apps. They extend the functionality of Spotify and many of them offer new ways of discovering music. Noteworthy apps include Moodagent, Last.fm, Swarm.fm, ShareMyPlaylists, The Hype Machine, We Are Hunted, Shuffler.fm.
Pro Has a free version
A free, ad-supported account allows streaming from an extensive library of music.
Pro Weekly Discover playlist uses a great algorithm
A playlist generated by Spotify based on your listening habits and released every Monday. The algorithm used by this playlist is great and stands out from its competitors.
Pro A lot of plugins
DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options.
Pro Lightweight
DeadBeef uses few system resources, making it great for low end systems and for those requiring a media player that uses as few resources as possible.
Pro Extremely customizable
DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones.
Pro Uses GTK2 or GTK3
Users are able to choose a GTK2 or GTK3 build of the application to use within DeaDBeeF.
Pro ALSA plugin allows bit-perfect pipeline to DAC
Pro Supports single-album CUE files
Pro Smooth and easy
Pro Offers a ReplayGain scanner out-of-the-box
Cons
Con Free account have lots of ads
If you hate commercials, you would buy Premium or go on using something else.
Con Discovery is terrible
The discovery algorithm is poor and does not learn fast enough. Not obvious how to train it.
Con Poor audio quality
There's a high range of bitrates and most of vary from average to bad.
Con shuffle mode doesn't play an entire huge playlist (over 25 days)
Con GTK-App
So there is basically no integration into non-GTK desktops.
Con Terrible GUI
stop reinventing (ugly) guis. play music and get out of my way.
Con Fails when opening a CUE file
Doesn't work even after 30 minutes of tweaking. Not as good as Audacious.
Con Ubuntu's sound menu buttons don't work
DeaDBeeF shows up in the sound menu; however, clicking the next/previous buttons doesn't do anything.
Con Not as many options as other players
When it comes to options DeaDBeef may not have as many as other more prominent music playing applications.
Con Clunky
I've seen people showing lyrics - but I can't figure out how to make that work.
It's very difficult to use the 'design' function (unlike Guayadeque) to re-arrange and design the interface beyond something like a music list and artwork...
