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Apple Music Now Has 36 Million Subscribers, Could Eclipse Spotify in United States This Year
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You're reaching quite a bit to try and distinguish them to justify your choice. Let me help you out with three objective things that really matter to most people. (Discovery is a subjective thing and people aren't able to distinguish 256 vs 320 bit rates, and Apple uses a compression format, AAC, that many prefer versus the Oog Vorbis format of Spotify.)
1) Apple Music has more music,over 40 million songs, and more exclusives. Spotify 30 million or so, few exclusives. Ouch right there.
2) Radio stations are a real weak point for Spotify. In contrast, Apple has much more than Beats 1, a fact that most people don't know, they have classic rock, jazz, Top 40 hits. There are also non-music stations such as BBC News and ESPN. The pain for Spotify grows.
3) Apple Music is cheaper. Yep, Spotify is glad that most people don't realize it, but Apple Music is only $8.25 a month when you subscribe on an annual basis. Yep, Spotify is now sweating bullets.
Spotify is fine. But know that you are making some tradeoffs by using it over Apple Music.
And don't forget that both Apple Music and Spotify will now have to pay the artists 44% more money.
That is because you use Spotify giving them more info for the algorithms. You need to engage the service. Or just make your own playlists.
In 2022 they will have to pay songwriter rights-holders 44% more (i.e. based on the same amount of service revenue) than they did in 2017. The increase is phased in over the next 5 years.
But that is, by far, the smaller part of the rights-holders payments that Apple Music and Spotify have to pay. It's dwarfed by what they have to pay to recording rights-holders. And that portion isn't increasing, at least not as a result of the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board. It's more likely that it will decrease a little over the next five years such that, in effect, the increase in payments to songwriter rights-holders will come out of payments to recording rights-holders.
Spotify's discovery algorithms work by suggesting songs by other users whose track selections overlap yours. So, to oversimplify, if you listened to songs A, B, and C, and another user listened to songs B, C, and D, Spotify will likely put D in your discovery playlists.
Apple, by contrast, believes in discovery by curation, which in my experience results in suggestions that are way more general than Spotify's.
I've never tried Spotify, but I always hear good things about their recommendation algos. Which, I must say, absolutely SUCK in Apple Music. "Chill Mix" and "New Music" both are absolutely dismal. Hopefully they work on that, although if one looks at their AI track record with Siri, it doesn't look very promising.
You mean the problems you have with the service? Are you a current subscriber experiencing these problems or are you reading about them?
Never experienced this problem.
As an Apple Music user, I am not put off by something that I have never experienced.
Streaming to my Apple Watch, support on my HomePod, integration with my iTunes Macth content, more music, and a much lower price. I am happy with Apple Music, Spotify would have to greatly exceed my current experience to get me to consider them. I have nothing against them, and I am happy that there is competition, but they offer me nothing that matters to me.
I guess I am in a minority when it comes to listening to music. I love Tidal because they are the only ones with lossless FLAC. Also, I know what music I want to listen to and I search for it and find it and play it. At home, I play it through Heos on my Denon receiver, controlled through the Heos app on my iPhone. At work, I use the Tidal App to play to my Fidelio X2 headphones. Quality is number one requirement for me and so I am sticking with Tidal for now.
I subscribe to both services, and I can tell you that Apple Music overindexes one-off plays, while Spotify requires you to play a track or artist multiple times before getting digested into your profile. For this reason and another reason I described in my last post, Spotify has a more nuanced understanding of users' music preferences.
You can use the remote app on Apple Watch to control iTunes/Apple Music on your Mac from your watch.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205549
Hype Apple Music all you want but IMHO Spotify is the way to go. I never could gravitate to the Apple Music Platform and having bought numerous Apple and Beats devices I never even once subscribed to the FREE 3 month trial of Apple Music. Zero interest.
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I'm probably of of the only people here that doesn't use Apple Music, and only has a free Spotify account on their computer - that I only open once a month or so. I've been buying my music for years, and iTunes + iPod (I have a bunch of older iPods that get used daily, and in rotation when I'm feeling adventurous - they still turn heads!) is always going to be the best option for me. iOS Music App's interface has become atrocious over the past few iOS versions, and recently hasn't been ordering things the way they are sorted and listed in iTunes to my iPhone on iOS 11.
Regardless, I'm still discovering new music all the time, without the need for a money sucking subscription I'd barely use, and an interface that I can't stand to use.
Regardless, I'm still discovering new music all the time, without the need for a money sucking subscription I'd barely use, and an interface that I can't stand to use.
I'm probably of of the only people here that doesn't use Apple Music, and only has a free Spotify account on their computer - that I only open once a month or so. I've been buying my music for years, and iTunes + iPod (I have a bunch of older iPods that get used daily, and in rotation when I'm feeling adventurous - they still turn heads!) is always going to be the best option for me. iOS Music App's interface has become atrocious over the past few iOS versions, and recently hasn't been ordering things the way they are sorted and listed in iTunes to my iPhone on iOS 11.
Regardless, I'm still discovering new music all the time, without the need for a money sucking subscription I'd barely use, and an interface that I can't stand to use.
I'm actually the same as you. I still buy my music, and I still manually load songs onto my iPhone.
As it is right now, I use up about 3 GB per month of data for random things. When I'm at work, I actually listen to Soundcloud more than anything. I do use free Spotify weekly on Fridays to discover new songs, but that's about it. I've tried Apple music briefly and was unimpressed. The playlist feature was really bad for me. I prefer Pandora/Spotify over it.
Let me tell you what people who love music care about. They care about finding great new music that they love. That is a MUCH, MUCH better experience on Spotify. Apple doesn't even hold a candle. That alone is enough to seal the deal for me. I won't try Apple Music again unless they catch up in that regard (and it may never happen, considering Spotify uses proprietary algorithms they purchased -- and which, again, are freaking amazing at finding music you'll love).
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Spotify Connect allows you to control the music, no matter which device it's playing on, and no matter which device you're using to control it. Listening to Spotify on your phone but working at your Mac? Just press the skip forward button on your Mac and go to the next song. Looking at your phone but playing music through Spotify on your iPad? Doesn't matter. Open the Spotify app and do whatever you want to change the music.
UI is just too clunky still. I really wish Apple had just released a separate Apple Music Streaming app or something
I like the Apple Music integration with my personal library and playlists. For me, that's what makes the difference, right now, anyway.
But you know what I really miss? The old iTunes music store, back when it was full of great artist bios and you could see recommendations for similar music and playlists created by others that included the songs you were listening to. That was great for music discovery, but at some point they got rid of most of that to make iTunes more sanitary, and Apple Music still isn't ideal for discovering music.
But you know what I really miss? The old iTunes music store, back when it was full of great artist bios and you could see recommendations for similar music and playlists created by others that included the songs you were listening to. That was great for music discovery, but at some point they got rid of most of that to make iTunes more sanitary, and Apple Music still isn't ideal for discovering music.
I never really cared about playlists since I prefer listening to albums so Spotify's playlist don't really attract me to their service. What I love about Apple Music is the metadata editing it allows. I like that I can change an album's artwork, song title (If it's incorrect or whatever) etc. and it syncs with your iCloud Music Library. I also like the fact that I can import music that isn't available on Apple Music or iTunes and have it sync with the cloud as well. Plus, sometimes I like to look at the lyrics and I hate Spotify's Genius thing getting in the way of the lyrics a lot of the times. For me, all of those are the real dealbreaker of why I chose Apple Music over Spotify.
Apple Music was the first and only music service we ever subscribed to. We don't know what we're missing, if anything, with Spotify, but we love Apple Music. The integration into all our devices is excellent and all the music we want to hear is there. The one thing I wish Apple would change is Beats 1. Ease up on the constant, non-stop rap, or introduce a Beats 2 with actual pop music that I can enjoy. Because I loathe rap. Love Apple Music though.
You can get Spotify’s recommendations even as a free user. They have two AMAZING weekly playlists, “Release Radar” which is a playlist curated on your favorite artists that you have saved in albums or that you stream, people or bands you may have forgotten to check in on, all new or upcoming releasing artists you may like are curated there.
And then “Discover Weekly” which is a list of music curated off of Spotify’s algorithms and I am always finding new stuff that I actually like and save. 4 new to me artists this week that I ended up saving and going through their discography.
There are many other great mood playlists and genre playlists as well as user-created and searchable playlists available through search (and all of this for free users). To me Spotify offers a much better experience and value for the money, so I give them my $10 instead.
How does Apple push it too hard? For over a year I did not use Apple Music (Used Spotify instead) I never heard a damn thing from Apple. The music app only had the songs I did purchase. Once I got a offer from EE to use Apple Music for free for 6 month, I ditched Spotify and man.... have they not bombarded me with emails from Spotify to get back? Now actually considering staying with Apple Music. For me there is not that much difference (apart from the dark theme I like on Spotify)
Btw, Spotify does let you listen for free, so I guess they have been pushing much harder since they started.
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