Apple Music vs. Spotify Buyer's Guide

[JamesMay82]

You should compare this to the benefits of owning your music either via CDs or digital purchases.

Retailers are massively struggling and people are losing their jobs. physical media is dying off thanks to these streamers.

We need to support our local businesses and in turn artists.

 

[hagar]

Guess I’ve been missing out by staying with Apple Music. It’s absolutely true music discovery is horrible.

And integration in Apple’s ecosystem is not that great either. Because I can’t be bothered with creating playlists myself, I just want AM to play my downloaded music with CarPlay. Shuffled. Which it can’t do using Siri.

Download music, disable “Mobile Data” for the Music app and ask Siri to play the music on your phone. It’s impossible. She will say something is wrong with Apple Music. Nice.

 

[contacos]

You should compare this to the benefits of owning your music either via CDs or digital purchases.

Retailers are massively struggling and people are losing their jobs. physical media is dying off thanks to these streamers.

We need to support our local businesses and in turn artists.

Sadly I don’t have the attention span to listen to a whole album anymore. 5 songs in and hearing the same voice starts to „annoy“ me unless it’s an artist I truly love since my childhood and I am afraid this is also the reason why many artist release individual 2:20 min songs nowadays because it „needs“ to go viral

 

[timber]

I don't use either but for an Apple crowd to have so many Spotify users it means they must be doing something right.

 

[krell100]

Apple Music
+Lossless and high-rez at no extra charge
-Terrible desktop app
-Several second delay when you hit play or skip a track
-Search is borked
-No real discovery system
-Airplay is substandard

Spotify
+Reasonable apps across platforms
+Amazing discovery system
+Recommendations are great
+Spotify connect is seamless
-No lossless or hi-rez
-Artist pay is terrible

 

[one more]

You missed some facts.

Apple Music does have audiobooks. Maybe not as many (?) but it does have them. In my experience mainly für Kids. But enough that there are dedicated apps for that.

Also, very important in my eyes, Spotify also doesn’t offer Siri / HomePod integration. Out of spite.

Oh, and Spotify pays its artists less.

Audiobooks on AM is a joke and we can ask Siri to play anything on Spotify.

Low artist royalties is an issue for Spotify, however, so I also wish they could find a way to pay starting up and thus less known artists more.

 

[IceStormNG]

The only thing Spotify is missing for their library is a songs tab, but they maliciously removed that as people were using it to keep all their songs downloaded to avoid using data and extra battery (how dare they!).

Jokes on them. I just made an "All Songs" Playlist with all songs in it and downloaded that anyways
Yeah, some little extra work, but makes it easier to keep all music offline just to be sure.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

I can't find any recent subscriber numbers but has Apple Music reached 100 million yet? Last I can find was Eddy Cue claiming 60 million in 2019.

 

[one more]

I wonder how many switchers we will see since Spotify isn’t available on the Vision Pro.

Are you implying that the early Vision Pro adopters had to sell all of their other tech gear able to play Spotify to finance the miraculous spacial device? 😋

 

[AeroEd]

Neither, I use YouTube music that’s part of my YouTube premium subscription. The library is unmatched by any other music streaming service. And it’s not even close.

 

[IceStormNG]

Spotify has a toggle you can enable that shows unavailable songs, so if this happens you'll still have the songs and albums in your library but they'll be greyed out.

Yeah. I saw that. Apple music also keeps the tracks in your list, but they're greyed out and marked as "not available anymore". Usually, you can then also not find them on the iTunes Store anymore, so have to look elsewhere.
Funnily, if you then add the track, it matches the song, so they still have it.
Music Licensing is sometimes a real pain for the users that just want to listen to music.

 

[ginkobiloba]

Apple Music. or even any other streaming service rather than Spotify.
because:
- Spotify is constantly trying to screw artists as much as possible.
- Pays artists half of what Apple does.
- Now wants to pay indie artists even less so that it’ll give more to the established ones
- is constantly trying to gaslight artists into considering the inexistent pay as free promotion ( while Daniel Ek is now one of the richest people in the UK )
- Has been caught multiple times creating playlists filled with fake artists and AI generated music to avoid paying any royalties to real artists.
- Is funneling the billions of revenues fromnSpotify into funding an AI-controlled military weapons startup.

so, if you think the suscription money you’re paying Spotify should go straight to Daniel Ek’s bank account as well as his AI military weapons startup rather than to the artists you’re listening to, Spotify is the one you should subscribe to.

 

[boss.king]

Guess I’ve been missing out by staying with Apple Music. It’s absolutely true music discovery is horrible.

The discovery thing is my main gripe with Apple Music. What good is access to everything on earth if finding the good stuff is a pain.

 

[Coizu]

No "library;" add songs to a playlist of liked tracks instead

How am I supposed to trust a review/comparison where the very first point is already flat out wrong? Just yesterday I scrolled through the list of saved/liked albums (that are not playlists). How is that not a library?

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

How am I supposed to trust a review/comparison where the very first point is already flat out wrong? Just yesterday I scrolled through the list of saved/liked albums (that are not playlists). How is that not a library?

The Spotify app even calls it 'your library'

 

[cgs1xx]

Spotify:
gorgeous apps & equalizer, not linked to your apple ID

Apple Music:
drab app, no real equalizer options, linked to your Apple ID so each time you log out your library is reset!

Both:
way too much emphasis on random curated content

 

[cgs1xx]

How am I supposed to trust a review/comparison where the very first point is already flat out wrong? Just yesterday I scrolled through the list of saved/liked albums (that are not playlists). How is that not a library?

Spotify won’t let you add some album tracks to your library. It’s the whole album or nothing.

 

[sdz]

- Spotify music discovery actually suggests good stuff

Their Recommendation Engine is FAR superior than anything on the market. Apple has NO CLUE what my taste is.

 

[Mikrobenjaeger]

My killer argument for using Spotify are the kids listening to audiobooks. Spotify has everything for them included. Apart from that, the app is hazzle-free and just works. As a real Apple-afficionado since > 30 yrs. the fight between Apple Music and Spotify bothers me. I can't buy any HomePod, because kids->audiobooks->Spotify. It's all Sonos at home now.

 

[LiE_]

Spotify connect is a killer feature. It's disappointing that I can be playing Apple Music on a device and I open the app on my phone and it's unaware (unless you use a HomePod and take control on your phone). Often I play music on my Nest Audio in my home gym using Apple Music and I have no way to control it except via voice and that is ropey.

 

[robertosh]

Strange article and comparison. Interesting timing also, (spotify not available for AVP ?)
I add a third fancy option: Buy CD's! with the benefit that it's your own property forever.
And you help a little bit more the artist (I guess).

 

[beatrixwillius]

The comparison missed the most important point: the Music app was made by children on crack. I have never used such a terrible and stupid app before. I didn't even made it to the end of the free trial.

 

[MysteriousStain]

Way back in the day Apple really knew how to make software. I edited home movies in iMovie, organised and edited my photos in Aperture and even iTunes made sense. All without ever looking up how to use these applications. Then some genius decided it was crazy to have intuitive software and made it all convoluted and arcane.

Apple Music is convoluted and seems to actively hate its users. I was on it for a year, it was like wrestling a crocodile each day to get it to play stuff I liked and not keep inserting stuff that didn’t even fit the genre I was listening to. When I switched to Spotify it was like wandering out of the desert into an oasis. Spotify, within minutes, knew what I liked and served up playlists that I loved. Never will I use AM again.

 

[iGeek2019]

I get Apple Music included on my SIMO tariff so that’s my “go to” - haven’t used Spotify in a while but their music suggestions were/are better than Apple Music… one track kept popping up on the Get Up/Favourites playlists despite ‘suggesting less’ and skipping it.

Taken a while but it’s not reared its ugly head for the past few weeks 🤞🏽

 

[one more]

FWIW, I have been using Spotify Premium for about 10 years, with 3 last years as a family plan. I decided to switch from it due to their poor remuneration to artists scheme, so moved my family to Apple Music just over a year ago. I quite like it, another family member wishes I stayed with Spotify, the third family member is somewhat neutral and the forth does not care for music herself, as we DJ for her.

What I like about AM:
1) ability to quickly toggle the new (iOS 17.2) music filter if need to play something “odd”;
2) the sound is better in its lossless mode;
3) I actually quite like AM more “spacious” UI, compared to Spotify.

What I liked about Spotify:
1) Wider device and platform support;
2) Better sharing;
3) Ability to switch seamlessly between different devices, so I can start playing something on my iPad and switch over to iPhone at the same spot.

Another worthy contender is Tidal, which actually offers an excellent sound in its HiFi mode and gave me some great suggestions (I literally liked almost every track after entering just three artists in). I just found them lucking with non-English contents (lyrics, etc.) and the app itself looked very sombre compared to AM & Spotify.