Which streaming service works best for music cards

QRSong! works with Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal and Deezer. That sounds like five equivalent options and it is not, so this is the comparison I would want if I were choosing.

The differences matter more than they sound, because one of them decides whether the game works at all.

The one feature that decides it: hidden playback

A music guessing game needs the song to start without the title appearing. That is not a preference, it is the game.

Spotify and Apple Music are the full experience: the complete song plays, nothing on screen, and the release year comes straight from the service.

Tidal and Deezer hide the track too, on a thirty second preview rather than the whole song. For guessing a year that is plenty, and in practice most rounds are decided in the first fifteen seconds anyway.

YouTube Music is the one with a real caveat. It has no hidden playback: after a countdown the link opens in the YouTube Music app with the title on screen. Your cards still play, but somebody has to hold the phone and keep it turned away. It works as a fallback, not as a first choice.

Why the years differ

Where the table says "AI assisted", it means the service does not reliably supply an original release year, so the missing ones are filled in and checked rather than taken on trust.

This matters because a timeline game is only playable if the years are right, and streaming metadata is routinely wrong in a specific way: it reports the version you are playing rather than the original. A remaster puts a 1975 song in 2011. On Spotify and Apple Music there is more to work with; on the others more of the work is ours.

What this means in practice

Choosing a service for a new deck: Spotify or Apple Music if you have either. Tidal or Deezer without hesitation if that is what you pay for. YouTube Music if it is what you have, knowing the title will be visible.

You can switch later. The service is a setting in the app, not a property of your cards. Connect a different account and the same deck plays through it.

Your guests do not need your service. Playback runs on whoever is scanning, through their own account. One person hosts, everyone else just plays.

Building the deck and playing it are separate. You can paste a playlist link from any of the five, and play the resulting cards on any of the five. They do not have to match.

If you already own cards

The free app reads Hitster cards and selected other music cards as well as ours, so a retail deck you already own plays on any of these services. If you bought one that only supports Spotify and you do not have Spotify, this is the way round it.

Full details are on the supported platforms page, and the app is free on iPhone and Android.