Which music player app has crossfade?
Crossfade is a feature in music streaming apps that enables a smooth transition between songs by overlapping the endings and beginnings of tracks. Rather than an abrupt stop when one song ends, crossfade blends the two songs together for a continuous listening experience. This avoids silence or jarring gaps between tracks, creating a seamless flow. Crossfade is popular with many listeners who enjoy uninterrupted music playlists.
For DJs and many music fans, crossfade mimics the experience of mixing tracks together as you would hear in a club or on the radio. Instead of each song stopping and starting, they blend together artfully. Crossfade offers a more professional sound, avoiding the “choppy” effect of songs starting and stopping suddenly. This feature has become a staple in both digital music apps and physical DJ equipment.
Spotify
Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services, with over 380 million active users as of 2022 (https://www.remodelormove.com/does-apple-music-have-crossfade-on-ios/). The service offers access to over 82 million tracks that can be streamed on demand. One of Spotify’s standout features is its crossfade capability between tracks.
With crossfade enabled, users can seamlessly transition between songs on playlists and albums. There is no abrupt stop when one track ends and another begins. Instead, Spotify blends the end of one song into the beginning of the next track for a smooth listening experience (https://www.remodelormove.com/does-apple-music-have-crossfade-on-ios/).
The crossfade feature works on both Spotify’s mobile app and desktop app. Users can customize the crossfade duration to their liking, choosing between durations like 1 second, 2 seconds, 6 seconds, or 12 seconds. This allows listeners to fine-tune the transitions to their preference.
Overall, the crossfade capability provides a seamless listening flow between songs and helps playlists or albums feel more cohesive. It’s an advantageous feature that Spotify offers its users compared to some other streaming services.
Apple Music
Apple Music gained the ability to crossfade between songs in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina in 2019. The crossfade feature allows you to blend the ends and beginnings of songs together for a seamless transition. To enable crossfade in Apple Music, go to Settings > Music and turn on the “Crossfade” option. You can adjust the crossfade duration anywhere from 1 to 12 seconds. Many Apple Music users find the crossfade feature useful, especially for playlists and albums, as it smooths the gaps between tracks.https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleMusic/comments/16mtuoz/everyone_using_crossfade_now_opinions/
However, some users have reported bugs and issues with Apple Music’s crossfade feature not working properly, especially after updating to iOS 16 and macOS Ventura. There are mixed reviews on the ideal crossfade duration setting, with some preferring shorter 1-3 second crossfades while others think the longer 6-12 second crossfades sound more natural. Overall, when working correctly, the crossfade option is a welcome addition to Apple Music for creating seamless playback.https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/crossfade-between-songs-apple-music/
YouTube Music
Unfortunately, YouTube Music itself does not have a built-in crossfade feature. Songs will end and begin abruptly with no transition when playing a playlist or queue (https://www.drmare.com/youtube-music/crossfade-youtube-music.html; https://youtubedownload.minitool.com/youtube/crossfade-youtube-music.html). This can be jarring for listeners who are used to seamless transitions between songs. YouTube Music does not currently offer any settings or options within the app to enable crossfading.
Some users have requested and suggested adding crossfade capabilities to YouTube Music on various forums and social media sites, but Google has not yet implemented the feature (https://www.audfree.com/youtube-music/crossfade-youtube-music.html). As of now, the only workaround is to use a third party tool or app to manually crossfade songs downloaded from YouTube Music.
Overall, the lack of a built-in crossfade is a disadvantage for YouTube Music compared to other streaming services like Spotify that offer this capability. It limits the ability to create seamless listening experiences within playlists and queues. Hopefully crossfading is a feature that YouTube Music will add in the future to improve the user experience.
Amazon Music
Amazon Music allows users to enable crossfade between songs in the desktop app and mobile app settings. When enabled, crossfade creates smooth transitions between tracks by overlapping the end of one song and the beginning of the next. The crossfade feature on Amazon Music lets you choose between fade times of 1-12 seconds.
According to the Amazon Music support site, crossfade can be enabled in the desktop app under Settings > Playback by toggling “Crossfade songs” on and adjusting the fade duration. On mobile devices, the crossfade option is located in Settings > Music Playback.
Enabling crossfade creates seamless playback between songs and albums. This allows listeners to experience less interruption between tracks for a more continuous listening experience. With customizable fade times, Amazon Music gives users control over the crossfade transition to suit their preferences.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202100890
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a popular music and audio streaming platform that allows users to upload, share, and promote original audio content. However, SoundCloud does not have native crossfade capability between tracks (1). This means when listening to music on SoundCloud, tracks will abruptly stop and start instead of smoothly transitioning. While some users have attempted to create crossfaded mixes by manually overlapping tracks in editing software before uploading, this is time-consuming and not an integrated feature (2). Overall, if seamless crossfading between songs is a priority, SoundCloud may not be the best music streaming option currently available.
Pandora
Pandora is one of the music streaming apps that offers crossfading between songs. When enabled, crossfade causes the end of one track to overlap with the beginning of the next track for a seamless transition. Pandora introduced crossfading capabilities in 2011 to replicate the experience listeners were used to from radio stations. With crossfading enabled, the currently playing song fades out while the next song fades in for the last few seconds of the tracks.1 This allows a smooth flow from song to song without abrupt stops and starts. Pandora’s crossfade feature can help mimic the experience of listening to curated playlists on the radio.
Tidal
Tidal has an adjustable crossfade feature that allows users to smoothly transition between songs. According to Audfree, Tidal crossfade enables “you to seamlessly transition from the conclusion of one music to the beginning of the next.” Users can adjust the crossfade duration from 0 to 12 seconds on both desktop and mobile apps.
Per Audkit, Tidal’s crossfade feature “allows one song to smoothly transition into the next by overlapping the end of one track with the beginning of the next.” This creates a continuous playback experience between songs.
Google Play Music
Google Play Music was Google’s music streaming service that offered access to millions of songs. It launched in 2011 and was discontinued in 2020, being replaced by YouTube Music.
While Google Play Music had many features that made it competitive with other services like Spotify and Apple Music, crossfade was notably absent from the platform. As discussed on Reddit in 2017, Google Play Music did not offer the ability to crossfade between songs at the time https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/61gemm/google_play_music_crossfade/. Crossfading allows a smooth transition between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, preventing gaps of silence.
Google Play Music was discontinued in 2020 without ever adding a crossfade feature. The lack of crossfade was seen by many users as a drawback compared to competitors. When Google Play Music shut down, its replacement YouTube Music also launched without crossfade capabilities initially. However, YouTube Music has since added crossfading in an update.
Conclusions
In overview, the major music streaming apps that offer crossfade capability between songs are Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal. YouTube Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, and Google Play Music currently do not have crossfade functionality.
For listeners who consider crossfade an important feature when enjoying their playlists, Spotify and Apple Music are excellent choices, as they are two of the most fully-featured and popular music streaming services overall. Tidal and Amazon Music also provide crossfading, but have smaller music catalogs and user bases compared to Spotify and Apple.
YouTube Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, and Google Play Music are otherwise very capable apps, but lack crossfade. So listeners who consider seamless transitions between songs essential may want to avoid those platforms.
In summary, Spotify and Apple Music have emerged as the leaders in supporting crossfade, while maintaining huge song catalogs and strong user bases. For music fans who rely on crossfading between tracks, those two services provide the best overall package and experience.