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Apple Music Gets New Transfer Tool to Make Switching From Spotify Easier

Spotify is better than Apple Music in *almost* every respect... except the most important one. Sound quality. Spotify sounds like a muffled longwave radio compared to Apple Music's glorious hi-fidelity sound.

It's the only reason I stick with Apple Music - but while the difference is so huge, it's non-negotiable.
 
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dharushan411 said:
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but on Apple Music I can combine offline MP3s and the streaming songs to make a unified library.

But on Spotify it seems to segregate offline music into its own playlist with Premium songs in another list. Is this still true or has it been improved?
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It creates an "offline playlist", that has the full list of files, but you can add them from there into any other playlist. If on iPhone, you'll need to copy the files over to the device.
 
As much as it's great to have this built in, simple services like tunemymusic does just the same. It would be interesting how many are migrating over from Spotify, I'm sure most iPhones users are using Apple Music as opposed to Spotify, even if they have the ad-awful Free Tier
 
AhRiHmAn said:
I gave it a try again recently , yes the sound quality is good but then I saw some albums split in half God knows why , some with twice the same songs , or songs that I saved a couple of weeks ago from a particular album are now replaced from some compilations....
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Sorry to hear about your experiences, my experience has been very different.

One of my favorite things about AM is its library management that it carried over from iTunes, which allows the user to tag, sort, and create smart playlists from your library. No other streaming service comes close on that front.
 
daabido said:
And here I am, like a Joe Shmuck, just listening and swearing at Siri on my own, when AM's playlist consistently has no idea what I am interested in. Sure, I like Elvis Costello, but not every 10th song.
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Oh, every time I tell it to "play the tipoo list", it gets all the words right an does something entirely random

I have a screenshot of it doing that back to iOS10, it's simply ludicrous and insane how long Siri has had no improvements and seemingly some regressions, and most existing devices won't even get personal context siri which is so late it's going to lap the WWDC25 announcements at this point
 
I'm never going back to Apple Music, certainly not as long as it mixes file-based music library with streaming. I've had too many issues.

Pretty happy with Qobuz, which is slowly but steadily improving its apps, and pays artists more per stream than any other platform.
 
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Fantastic news! So many friends I know want to leave Spotify due to its unethical podcast funding decisions (Rogan) and feel trapped by the lack of reliable transfer options. Tech folks like us put up with the spotty product SongShift was... limited for music heads with huge collections, lists, etc. it failed often, and in the end transferred only a fraction of your Spotify curated items. If Apple can help SongShift actually work reliably, with better reconciliation for metadata issues, then we'll see a lot more people jump into the higher quality world of Apple Music.

I switched 3 years ago and find it better than Spotify and Tidal. The only issue with macOS Music app is that it doesn't switch audio bitrate and sample rate to match each track's recording quality, which means wired high res gear for serious listening are all borked. Please fix this Apple!
 
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Caviar_X said:
Never forgive Apple for ruining my iTunes playlist when Apple Music launched in 2015. I lost a lot of work building my playlists over the years when I signed up then and they’re forever lost. Shame on them. So glad I’m with Spotify now because they’re way better at music discovery and the interface is miles ahead of Apple.
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I agree with you. I had some white labels and now gone forever. I should've backed up. But saying that certain tracks uploaded were incorrect and the interface was a mess. Deleted the app and now am happy with Spotify.
Hopefully Apple won't buy Spotify and ruin it like everything they touch of late.
 
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Caviar_X said:
Never forgive Apple for ruining my iTunes playlist when Apple Music launched in 2015. I lost a lot of work building my playlists over the years when I signed up then and they’re forever lost. Shame on them. So glad I’m with Spotify now because they’re way better at music discovery and the interface is miles ahead of Apple.
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Yep -- I think a lot of us have this sort of story of broken trust and lack of respect of our own content and/or preferences in our setup.

Burn me once ... and you lose me.
 
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paulrudy said:
I'm never going back to Apple Music, certainly not as long as it mixes file-based music library with streaming. I've had too many issues.

Pretty happy with Qobuz, which is slowly but steadily improving its apps, and pays artists more per stream than any other platform.
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I've been using Qobuz this last year also and very much enjoying it.

(I use that and YT Music)
 
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funandblindness said:
Ripping off artists. The GOP of music services.
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Why do you think they're ripping off artists more than Apple Music? Sure, a lot of what they pay goes to other parts of the music industry - but that would apply to other streaming services, music bought in the shop etc as well.

They might pay less per stream, but that would be because Spotify subscribers use the app more than customers of other services on average. What matters for this model would be the total revenue.

I'd argue that splitting the revenue from an individual user rather than the total pool might be a better model, but I'm not aware of any services doing that. Here is an interesting post on the subject.
 
Dave-Z said:
Sure, but where's the option to switch from Apple Music to Spotify?
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Soundiiz ot Tunemymusic can do it - at least as well as the Apple system if the reports so far are anything to go by.

Honestly I've found all the playlist transfer systems I've tried in the past to be very patchy at best.

Multitudes of completely incorrect songs, extended versions being substituted for radio edits and remixes of tracks getting substituted for original versions (or vice versa).

In most cases (not all) the tracks I actually wanted were available on the platform (Spotify to Music).

Spotify is a million times better for discovery/crate digging. AM is really only good for promoting big brand artists.

AM works with my DJ software now though leaving me needing to maintain two accounts :(
 
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Sundaypapers123 said:
Spotify is better than Apple Music in *almost* every respect... except the most important one. Sound quality. Spotify sounds like a muffled longwave radio compared to Apple Music's glorious hi-fidelity sound.

It's the only reason I stick with Apple Music - but while the difference is so huge, it's non-negotiable.
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Don't know if you've tried them lately, but Spotify's been cutting deals with big publishers to push their artists into their personalized playlists, even when they're not really related. The music discovery stuff was previously the best part of it, for me.
 
neotint said:
The only issue with macOS Music app is that it doesn't switch audio bitrate and sample rate to match each track's recording quality, which means wired high res gear for serious listening are all borked. Please fix this Apple!
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If it was the only issue it would be great 😅
 
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Dave-Z said:
Sure, but where's the option to switch from Apple Music to Spotify?
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Apple sued and blocked most of them. When I moved to Spotify, I had to pay for the one I used but that was years ago. Not sure what it's like now.

I thought Spotify blocked all these apps as well? Bet it won't be working for long.
 
MacAddict1978 said:
Apple sued and blocked most of them. When I moved to Spotify, I had to pay for the one I used but that was years ago. Not sure what it's like now.

I thought Spotify blocked all these apps as well? Bet it won't be working for long.
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You can only export playlists you made yourself , not the ones made by Spotify
 
Sundaypapers123 said:
Spotify is better than Apple Music in *almost* every respect... except the most important one. Sound quality. Spotify sounds like a muffled longwave radio compared to Apple Music's glorious hi-fidelity sound.

It's the only reason I stick with Apple Music - but while the difference is so huge, it's non-negotiable.
Click to expand...
Unless you're using surround sound (Dolby Atmos and a system that supports that), any difference is in the gray area between "impossible to hear" or "tiny"

Now, I admit to have spent far too much on audio equipment - and I like seeing "lossless" when playing AM - it's not like the difference is huge or comparing Spotify to "muffled longwave radio" is anything but hyperbole.
 
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Sundaypapers123 said:
Spotify is better than Apple Music in *almost* every respect... except the most important one. Sound quality. Spotify sounds like a muffled longwave radio compared to Apple Music's glorious hi-fidelity sound.

It's the only reason I stick with Apple Music - but while the difference is so huge, it's non-negotiable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, same for me. I tolerate the desktop app because I can get CD quality with my wired headphones.


paulrudy said:
I'm never going back to Apple Music, certainly not as long as it mixes file-based music library with streaming. I've had too many issues.

Pretty happy with Qobuz, which is slowly but steadily improving its apps, and pays artists more per stream than any other platform.
Click to expand...


Yeah. I really think they should've spun iTunes off a separate utility for library management and built Apple Music as a pure streaming app.
 
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