Tidal is great for selection and quality, but not usability like Spotify where I can control it from any device. Tidal works on my receiver and Amazon devices.
Like many home/IoT services, Spotify uses mDNS to enumerate and announce its peers when they are L3 local but they are also controllable remotely by dialing-home to their API albeit with a slightly longer delay. Spotify is hilarious when playing from the Everywhere group (all devices) where desktops, tablets, phones, the thermostat, stereo receiver, and Amazon Echo devices all insist on playing out of time like a crowd of teenagers singing a song.
On a slight tangent, mDNS had turned into an absolute nightmare for me. I must have tried 5 different FOSS Raspberry Pi streaming OSs, none of which did the Spotify cast integration actually work on, until I finally figured out it's because it's using mDNS and my router (despite being purchased in 2023 for $200) didn't support mDNS. There's also a bunch of other services (like Home Assistant) that just assume you have working mDNS and point everything to <appname>.local
I finally figured out where the service file was, and changed it to IP, and now it works.
Like many home/IoT services, Spotify uses mDNS to enumerate and announce its peers when they are L3 local but they are also controllable remotely by dialing-home to their API albeit with a slightly longer delay. Spotify is hilarious when playing from the Everywhere group (all devices) where desktops, tablets, phones, the thermostat, stereo receiver, and Amazon Echo devices all insist on playing out of time like a crowd of teenagers singing a song.