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Apple Music or Spotify

Apple Music or Spotify

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    118
TheSkywalker77

TheSkywalker77

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Sep 9, 2017
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Since a lot of people who use Apple are on this forum I’m wondering if you guys use Apple Music or Spotify. Keep in mind it has to be Spotify Premium as that’s the paid version of Spotify and Apple Music is paid.

I’m on the 3 month free trial of Apple Music right now but I still prefer Spotify over Apple Music.
 
How about Tidal?
When I had iOS I used Apple Music for the ease of use and to have everything intergrated. Now I use Tidal.
 
Dodgeman said:
How about Tidal?
When I had iOS I used Apple Music for the ease of use and to have everything intergrated. Now I use Tidal.
Click to expand...
Never heard of Tidal. Also I chose Apple Music and Spotify since that's a classic debate.
 
I like and use Apple Music - plus I have the Family Plan - so everyone
in my family can access and use the service.

I dislike Spotify and think for the most part they are unethical.
Apple Music takes a little bit better care of the musicians that
allow them to have a service.
 
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Tibits said:
I tried both and went with Spotify despite being heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. For me the ability to find new music and suggested playlists is far superior on Spotify. Sounds quality was a wash.
Click to expand...

I might need to give spotify a better look.
 
The biggest reason I use Apple Music is the integration with your iTunes library. I have tons of albums that aren’t available on Apple Music or Spotify (live albums, rarities, etc.) and I like to have these in my library. With Apple Music they all just get put into my iCloud account and my copies get mixed with those from Apple Music. With Spotify I had two separate libraries and was extremely annoyed by that
 
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Spotify is going to get huge App update next week so it's worth to check it out before deciding in my opinion.
 
I subscribe to Apple Music and find it to be a more seamless experience if you have a predominately Apple ecosystem. Quality is decent and on the iPhone Apple Music handles spotty LTE far better than Spotify in my experience, and that’s inportant to me as I live in a rural area.

My biggest complaint about Apple Music is its song suggestions and music finding algorithms and what not. This is something that will vary greatly from person to person. But Apple seldom suggests a song that I end up caring for and created stations from songs/artists go all over the place. Spotify does this a bit better, but my favorite for finding new music is a service called Slacker Radio.

As far as interface, creating a library, and general experience goes, I think Apple Music does it far better than Spotify.
 
apppen1 said:
Spotify is going to get huge App update next week so it's worth to check it out before deciding in my opinion.
Click to expand...

What is the update supposed to bring??

Anyhow I downloaded Spotify hoping I could pay with Paypal like I do through Tidal but did not see Paypal as an option.
Has anyone else noticed this?
I use to have Apple Music and I enjoyed it but when I switched device models I went to Tidal due to Spotify being a bit messy and not having exclusives like Tidal. Either way I still have music on Apple Music but refuse to use it on a Samsung.
 
As someone who ran into Spotify's song limit quite quickly when I attempted to transfer my collection over from iTunes/Apple Music, it's really not a service I would recommend to album-oriented people who have a lot of different artists they listen to.

I also prefer Apple Music because it lives in iTunes, where I also have my podcasts and radio stations stored, as well as albums that aren't available through either service (of which, I have many, since neither service has a very good selection of videogame OST's :( ). The Spotify application does an appalling job of handling locally-stored music collections in my opinion, and they have only just recently started to add a smattering of podcasts to their service.

All of that being said, Spotify is probably perfectly fine for the vast majority of listeners out there, and their music-discovery features are on par with, if not better than, those on offer in Apple Music.
 
I’ve been using Spotify for awhile but their premium service let me download playlists or songs I often use offline + Hulu combo makes it slightly cheaper with my credit card promo 50% cash back on Spotify!
 
Banglazed said:
I’ve been using Spotify for awhile but their premium service let me download playlists or songs I often use offline + Hulu combo makes it slightly cheaper with my credit card promo 50% cash back on Spotify!
Click to expand...

What credit card promo do you have?
 
I've used the paid versions of Spotify, Google Play Music and Apple Music. I've liked them all pretty much equally. I'm currently using Apple Music due to the tight integration with all of my Apple stuff. Specifically CarPlay, HomePod and Apple Watch is where Apple Music has a distinct advantage for me over the others.
 
Have been using Apple Music since the beginning of the service in Denmark due to integration with the ecosystem.
There is however features and stuff I would like to see improved, especially on discovering new music and the degree to which you can define your taste and preferences. If apple started expanding on their genres this would help as I see a lot of mislabeled artist, especially if they belong to a niche genre.
Would also be nice to see apple make a dedicated music app for macOS and retire iTunes.
 
This debate has been hashed out hundreds of times on this forum. Not sure why we need yet another thread on this.

In sum, the following are the pros and cons of each:

Spotify:
Pros -
- The best playlists for both what you already like and for music discovery.
- Clean mobile app.
- Very wide cross-platform operation on every OS and Spotify Connect.​
Cons -
- Fewer exclusives.
- Sound quality isn't as good.
- No Apple Watch app, no AppleTV app.​

Apple Music:
Pros -
- Better sound quality, especially if using AAC-compatible bluetooth headphones or speakers.
- Exclusives and radio (if you're into the genre's they target).
- Full integration into Apple ecosystem (HomePod, Apple Watch, AppleTV).​
Cons -
- Bad playlists for music discovery, and narrow range of genre-specific playlists.
- Clumsy mobile app with giant text, unpredictable behavior with syncing and offline downloads.
- Family plan requires all members to share an App Store credit card.​
 
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I like Spotify UI better (tho dark mode for AM is coming) and I enjoy the playlists already available by other users more. Discover weekly is nice too, tho it misses the mark a lot I still get a few gems a month from that. I feel my playlists are safer there too, my playlists disappeared on AM when doing a save and syncing/unsyncing a while back but that’s never happened on Spotify. Also better switching across some platforms like going from phone to laptop and vice verse.

Having said that, AM has some decent exclusives within Kpop and other genres, dark mode is coming, slightly better sound quality, a discounted yearly subscription, they take care of artists better, and some other stuff. Both have their pros and cons, hard choice for some i’m sure.
 
TheSkywalker77 said:
Since a lot of people who use Apple are on this forum I’m wondering if you guys use Apple Music or Spotify. Keep in mind it has to be Spotify Premium as that’s the paid version of Spotify and Apple Music is paid.

I’m on the 3 month of Apple Music free right now but I still prefer Spotify over Apple Music.
Click to expand...
Apple music. The main reason I chose it is that I can play music with Siri. This is convenient, and Spotify, Google Play Music and Tidal don't seem to be able to do this. Although Apple music is generally considered not as good as Spotify, I like it.
 
I prefer Apple Music but they’re both great services. One annoyance when I last used Spotify was that removing downloaded music didn’t result in iOS recognising the freed-up storage space. I read at the time that this was a recognised restriction. Something to do with permissions. A mild irritation only. In the end I chose Apple Music because it integrated better with the audio system in the car I had at the time (Spotify music just didn’t work at all through the car’s own controls).
 
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