Play vs Echo
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Play
Wirelessly stream high-fidelity audio throughout your home using Wi-Fi. Control music from various sources, including streaming services, radio, and your device's library. Easily set up and manage multiple speakers for a whole-home listening experience.
- Whole-home wireless audio
- Wi-Fi streaming
- Multiple music sources
- Speaker group management
- Volume control
- DLNA server support
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Breakthrough DTS Play-Fi(R) technology powers simple, great-sounding whole-home wireless audio systems for smartphones and tablets. You can stream your favorite tunes over Wi-Fi right from the Play-Fi app to speakers from DTS Play-Fi product partners. It's a huge step up from Bluetooth - the audio quality and reliability are outstanding, and you can enjoy music from your phone in one room, or all your rooms. The "Hi-Fi over Wi-Fi" listening experience is just a touch away, thanks to this handy app. Choose a speaker, choose a song, and your favorite tunes are streaming all through the house. The app offers built-in streaming options: stream from worldwide music services; use AM/FM and Internet radio, connect to DLNA servers, or play anything from your device's music library, including your iTunes playlists. The app automatically organizes and indexes the music for you. The app also handles set-up for your speakers, and gives you full control of volume and speaker selection. Choose one, set up speaker groups, or stream to all of them at once. Manage speaker groups for Spotify Connect, too. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have a Play-Fi product from Polk Audio, Definitive Technology or Phorus, please search for and download the custom Play-Fi app for your audio brand. Please also note that the Play-Fi app is companion software to audio products enabled with Play-Fi technology. It is not intended as a stand-alone audio player.
Echo
Explore the listening habits of millions of Deezer users in real-time. Discover new music by following profiles and experiencing synchronized listening sessions with others. It enhances Deezer's functionality by providing unlimited history and detailed timestamps.
- Browse listening history of millions
- Synchronized real-time listening
- Discover music through user profiles
- Unlimited listening history storage
- Timestamps for each song
- Save favorite profiles
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Browse the listening history of millions of Deezer users. Search for a profile, play a song, and voilà: you're listening to the same music as your friends - at the very same time as them, thanks to real-time history refresh (OK, _almost_ at the same time: actually there's a few minutes delay ^^) With Echo, every Deezer user becomes their own radio station! In Echo you can follow people you know, of course... but also many others, millions of others. Soon you'll see that human beings are much better curators than algorithms. You'll be glad to discover that many users have a very sophisticated musical taste, quite close to yours. Add them to your favorites! Here lies the beauty and poetry of Echo: now you're connected to an unknown user sharing the same musical universe as yours... without any possibility to contact them to tell them how much you love their setlist... That's life! Echo respects anonymity. Search for profiles having city or country names, and you'll be transported to a Brazilian beach, a Moscow cab or a Japanese elevator. Another way to use Echo is to search for names of restaurants or stores; since many places have their own Deezer account, in two clicks you'll enjoy the atmosphere of a Corsican bakery or a Hamburg pizzeria! Note that everything you'll find in Echo is already available in the Deezer app or in their API. Echo "just" makes it easier to navigate the listening histories, and at the same time provides a few pleasant extra features: ** timestamps for each song. ** "status" information: the green dot under profile pictures tells which users are currently listening to music. ** save your favorite profiles. ** real-time refresh of listening history: when a user is active, the new songs they are listening to appear almost immediately in their Echo history. ** select the play direction: either forward (in the future) or backward (in the past). ** synchronized listening: launch the last song of an active user's playlist and experience simultaneous listening: Echo player will play the user's next songs as they appear. ** unlimited history: OK this one is very cool. In the Deezer app, the listening history is limited to the last 100 songs. In Echo too... but only the first time you visit a given history. The next times you'll visit it, the new songs will be added to the previous ones, and the whole thing will be saved on the phone, with no size limit. This way you'll be able to retrieve which song you were listening to last year at the same date (for me it was "I'm sorry", by Brenda Lee). KNOWN ISSUES * For now, the only way to connect to Deezer in Echo is by login + password. The social logins (Facebook, Google, Apple) are not available yet... We are working on it! (and it's not easy!) * Sometimes, duplicates can appear in histories you visit the most: the same song seems to have been played twice at a few minutes interval, while in reality it was played only once. This bug is related to some specificities of the Deezer webservices; we workarounded it as we could but it can still happen that a duplicate song slips through the net. NOTA BENE Echo is a companion app for Deezer. Echo requires a Deezer account to be used. Echo is NOT developed by Deezer.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Echo at 5.0 against Play's 4.5. Echo also leads on ads (none vs shown) and monetization model (free vs ad-supported). Play's advantage is ratings volume (3.5K vs 1) and device support (4 vs 2). On price, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Echo holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Play has 3.5K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
| Parameter | Play | Echo |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (3.5K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 25.4% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 3.5K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 285 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | DTS, Inc. | Herve Berenger |
Customer experience
Play
Echo
Bugs and requests
Play
Reported bugs
5 issues- Drops connections frequently
- Fails to recognize devices
- Resets music playback unexpectedly
- Issues with volume control and balancing
- Incompatible with recent firmware/software updates
Requested features
5 requests- Add support for Apple Music
- Improve Spotify integration
- Implement gapless playback
- Provide better interface and navigation
- Add search functionality for local music libraries
Echo
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Play
No in-app purchases
Echo
No in-app purchases









