Apple Music Reportedly Surpasses Spotify Subscriber Count in the U.S.

[GaryMumford]

Weirdly I can't skip tracks on Spotify on my steering wheel, but I can with Apple Music

On my 2013 BMW Mini, When using Spotify, The controls on the steering wheel and dash work perfectly (via the 'official' USB to Lightning adapter), and yet on my sons 2018 BMW Mini (that does not require a USB lighting adapter), he can only skip tracks via the dash as the steering wheel controls don't work. Seems like this is more of a BMW thing rather that Spotify!

 

[Actor Man]

I would perhaps sign up and get on that subscription if iTunes wasn't so annoying.

It is impossible to search through iTunes music without a gigantic hassle. If you aren't buying into the modern dreck they are pushing, they stifle your ability to find anything unless you have a precise-laser-focus-trigger-phrase search. They won't even RECOMMEND within a genre unless it is new and dumpy. Hidden gems of the past are paved over by popularity and corporate junk.

How many times can I listen to Pink or U2 or (hip, modern, boring, suburban-bland band) before I barf? About once. Maybe less.

Apple has a massive problem in archiving and displaying and presenting of music. Your money masters might lead around the noobs by a nose ring, but I want something fresh from the days of great music and hifi production. Apple Music doesn't help me.

And gramps, here, hates the loudness war, too. Someone, please, stop with compression and let me turn up the volume to hear nuance.

 

[Enclavean]

I call B.S. I’ve never met an actual person in the real world who uses Apple Music instead of Spotify.
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Spotify has a great iPad interface.

Spotify is also widely known to have the most complete music library.

And, once again, I call B.S. I’ve never met an actual person in the real world who uses Apple Music instead of Spotify.

World does not orbit you.
Of all my friends about 90% use Apple Music, the remaining 10% use Spotify’s free tier.

In fact just looking at my instagram feed everytime someone screenshots a song its almost always from Apple Music/iTunes.

 

[doomfront]

You can also 'go to radio' on a song on Apple Music as well. I had Apple Music since it first came out and I have to say i'm very impressed. I listen to a lot of kpop and they have every album imaginable, its super impressive. They're also the first to have all the new kpop albums and American albums as well. I think the way Apple Music algorithm works is you have to listen to the music for a while before you get the best recommendations. Honestly, the albums and songs recommended to me now are exactly what I would listen to, all of them. I think the people that have been disappointed with AM are those that didn't give the platform time to learn their favorites and all that. AM has some really good playlists too especially the workout ones. They have a promo for free 3 months so really try it out and add as many songs you like and set up your profile as detailed as you can and see if you still don't get better recommendations.

AM does have a huge library, only can think of a couple times where they didn't have an album I wanted to listen to other than ones that are exclusively on other platforms like Tidal. But with such a large library, you'd think they would be better at recommending new music. I'm constantly recommended songs I already have in my library or the same Top 40 songs over and over. When using Spotify though, I've been able to find a ton of new artists. And the ability to build playlists on Spotify kills Apple Music, built one for a party I had for the 4th of July and the "recommended songs for this playlist" feature was awesome.

Also the "For You" tab on Apple Music didn't change for months for me at one time, and the "New Releases" were never actually new releases. They've fixed the new releases issue, but the "For You" still sucks. Again, it's perfect for organizing music I already own though. I typically find stuff on Spotify and if I like the album, I'll save it on Spotify and then go to Apple Music and save it there too.

 

[2ilent8cho]

Spotify was better for my genre of music (Trance/Dance) , but i cancelled both Apple Music and Spotify, got all the music i like on CD for next to nothing used on eBay, ripped it into iTunes, and pay for iTunes Match. My music is now on my Macs, iPads, Apple TV and iPhone and no monthly subscriptions. Just a small fee once a year. I can also burn my music to CD too for some of my older cars.

 

[Dave245]

Please enlighten us on a few ways that it is better. I've found Spotify way better to discover new music, it's multiplatform and has a better look and feel, although that's personal.

I personally find it much more integrated into my Apple devices better and finding new music is also much better, especially through HomePod it plays songs that match what i like and even playlists are suited to me much more.

 

[Rogifan]

Considering it’s the default music app on every iOS device is this even surprising?
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Zune was ahead of it's time in terms of software. That's why I did not own an iPod. The all you can eat model was a good deal for 15 bucks a month. It launched way back in 2006. If the software had more time to mature, it could have really been something great.I used my 80GB with a subscription until I got an iPhone and switched to Spotify. Now I use Apple Music.

You want simplicity?

View attachment 769290

And people say Apple is bad with too much white space.

 

[Actor Man]

The great thing about Apple Music is that you can try it for three months for free... a test drive. Then every question you have might be answered. And you don't go through the iTunes app, you access Apple Music through the music player. Apple Music is set up on the premise that YOU set the parameters for what you want to listen to. When you set it up for the first time, it asks you to select musical genres and artists... then it curates a daily set of recommendations based on your options. When you find an album or song you like, you can "Love" that song/album, and Apple Music recognizes your choices. It "learns" your specific musical tastes the more you use it.

I could go on... there is so much that is amazing about Apple Music that Spotify just doesn't handle, like HD non-lossy compressed audio. Suffice it to say, when Apple Music came out three years ago, I had 13,500+ songs, selections from albums, cassettes and CD's, in my iTunes library on my computer. Now, three years later, I have over 21,000+ songs... with access to over 45+ million songs through Apple Music.

Attached pic (if it uploads) is my "For You" recommendations for Friday, July 6th.

 

[Abazigal]

Spoken like someone who has never used Spotify to find new music. The discovery on it blows away all other services.

At the time, I was subscribed to Spotify for a while but found that it didn’t have a lot of the kpop and mandopop music that I listen to. Then Apple Music was released and I tried it and it had the tracks I was looking for.

I think the issue here is that you can point out raw numbers, but everyone is going to have their own edge cases where one service works better than the other.

To add on, since I am so heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is also supported on my Apple Watch, Apple TV and Siri.

You are right. I use neither service to discover new music and I am perfectly fine with it. So even if Spotify is supposedly better in this area, it’s irrelevant to me!

 

[DanielDD]

Oh sir, please enlighten us which ways Spotify is better?

Besides “because I said so”.

Spotify is crap until it:

1. Allows me to upload my own music and stream my own files
2. Lyrics
3. Vídeos
4. Human made concise playlists, not 500-plus playlists that are basically a google search
5. Decent navigation, without tiny buttons
6. iPad interface
7. Apple Watch interface
8. A tried and true desktop interface
9. Voice controls, not asking Siri because it’s impossible for them, but any speech recognition, e.g. YouTube has speech recognition, why a paid service can’t pay any cloud service for speech recognition
10. Most of all, Apple Music has more music in it.

11. 3 device limit with Spotify vs. 10 device limit with Apple Music
12. 10,000 song library limit with Spotify vs. 100,000 with Apple Music
13. 3,333 song download limit per device with Spotity; no such limit with Apple Music
14. Spotify’s unsustainable business model as a stand-alone service.

I have found Spotify to be a very good service, however limitations #11-13 are particularly troubling.

15. Apple Music allows meta-data editing (when I used Spotify there were lots of albums I listened to with mismatched song names, wrong album order, strange genre choices. This happens in Apple Music as well, but it takes 30 seconds to make everything tidy and clean)
16. Smart Playlists
17. Spotify lacks several power-user options such as equalizer for each individual song, start and stop time playback, volume adjustment. You can adjust all of these things on iTunes (they sync over iCloud). Further, you get much better library organization tools on the Desktop. How does spotify even compete with this? (see attachment).

 

[TheRedOx]

I will switch to Apple Music in a heartbeat when they make some changes to Family Share. I have the Spotify Family plan and it works great; everybody is happy but, personally, I like Apple Music better.

 

[mdnz]

I personally find it much more integrated into my Apple devices better and finding new music is also much better, especially through HomePod it plays songs that match what i like and even playlists are suited to me much more.

It's obvious it's more integrated in your Apple devices. It would be a complete shocker if it wasn't. If it works for you, more power to you

 

[Tech198]

That's nice. Personally I still prefer Spotify.

lol... And we all thought Spotify was gonna
I guess it just shows everyone would still flock to AM, because that's the "default" with iPhone/iPad & Mac's.

It's obvious it's more integrated in your Apple devices. It would be a complete shocker if it wasn't. If it works for you, more power to you

Personally, I hate when the "integrated" side wins..

It's like running up for a touch-down, then getting disappointed because the other side is more popular..

 

[dugbug]

Please enlighten us on a few ways that it is better. I've found Spotify way better to discover new music, it's multiplatform and has a better look and feel, although that's personal.

Opposite.

 

[DakotaGuy]

Apple has enough cash that purchasing Spotify wouldn’t even put a tiny dent in their balance sheet. They should just purchase it and it would double their customer base in one simple step. Reducing competition in the streaming market would help drive corporate profit. There are too many competitors in this market right now. It drives profit down by forcing everyone to come up with discounts and special offers. Apple would be best to buy out Spotify so they can build a very profitable service for the future.

 

[jml1982]

It was bound to happen.

Apple Music is better than Spotify in every way.

Spotify was busy trying to gain costumers at all costs and relying on inertia (e.g. libraries you can’t export) to keep them in their service.

How is Apple Music better in everyway? Spotify radio from a certain song or artist is far superior, giving a great range of music, where Apple music plays the same songs over and over. And I find it plays the songs I own way more than anything else!!!

Besides this, if I'm playing Spotify on my computer, I can get on the Spotify app on my phone and see what's playing, change the song, and even change if it's playing from my computer or my phone. Apple does not have this. And Apple music doesn't even pick up where you left off, which I love about Spotify.

Apple Music search sucks, streaming music can be very intermittent. This list goes on.

Spotify isn't perfect either, but it's definitely superior.

 

[j1992]

Apple Music is more album/record centric whereas Spotify is more focused on playlists/songs/charts. I largely prefer Apple Music.

 

[Dave245]

It's obvious it's more integrated in your Apple devices. It would be a complete shocker if it wasn't. If it works for you, more power to you

But that's the point, it's an advantage to have Apple Music integrated into the devices, it's very clever of Apple to do their own Music streaming service because are obviously aware of it, and with the high subscriber numbers (and still rising) it's obviously paying off for them.

 

[tkermit]

That was always BS, it was a paid hit by the crap competitor.

No, it wasn't. As a fan of Apple Music, I can tell you from experience that Apple Music had huge issues at launch especially if you weren't a subscriber of iTunes Match already (which, thankfully, I was). Most of them have been fixed since then though and Apple Music now includes all of the functionality that iTunes Match used to provide. If that hadn't happened, I would not be able to recommend using it today.

 

[Tapiture]

Apple has monopoly power over their OS, which is the only reason they’d beat Spotify subscriber count.

 

[OTACORB]

World does not orbit you.
Of all my friends about 90% use Apple Music, the remaining 10% use Spotify’s free tier.

In fact just looking at my instagram feed everytime someone screenshots a song its almost always from Apple Music/iTunes.

In my circle of co-workers, friends and family, I don't know of anyone that actually has a paid Spotify subscription, but I know most of them do have Apple Music. This is not to say they don't sometimes listen to the free version of Spotify. So all this nonsense about I don't know anyone that has Apple Music. Yeah Right!

One thing Apple doesn't make up is how much profit they make, one thing Spotify can't make is profit. IPO is the only thing that has saved them. Amazing with all those supposed subscribers they still can't turn a profit.

 

[DaveOP]

I call B.S. I’ve never met an actual person in the real world who uses Apple Music instead of Spotify.
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Spotify has a great iPad interface.

Spotify is also widely known to have the most complete music library.

And, once again, I call B.S. I’ve never met an actual person in the real world who uses Apple Music instead of Spotify.

I've never met anyone in the real world that uses Spotify, so anecdotal evidence is pretty meaningless here.

 

[OTACORB]

Apple has monopoly power over their OS, which is the only reason they’d beat Spotify subscriber count.

Oh you mean like Google has over the Android phones they sell. So that makes them a monopoly because they put YouTube on all their devices. Ahhh.. LOL

 

[icanhazapple]

The only reason I stick with iTunes is because of iTunes Match. It would be nice though if iTunes had a web interface, making it multi-platform.

 

[gsurf123]

I seem to remember it was just s few months ago that the CEO of Spotify said he was not worried about Apple...