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Apple Music vs. Spotify Compared

RickInHouston said:
Why does uploading your own tracks matter if you can a cess them anyway?

Not being mean, just wondering.
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1. That particular tracks might not be available on Apple Music, so on top of 50 mills songs Apple offers, you may slot in your own special tracks on it. No more missing tracks!!

2. You can access them anywhere as long you have internet, and sync between all your devices. Find it in Library section, then stream or download. No local network needed once it’s uploaded

3. 100k songs limit instead of 10k on Spotify
 
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They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I use Apple Music and enjoy how well it works with my AirPods and my Sonos. I hate that I dislike albums and Apple Music keeps recommending them. So much for the lauded human element Cupertino bragged about when they launched it.
 
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Biggest difference and reason I don’t have Spotify is still no offline music on the Apple Watch.
 
house13um said:
MacRumors is known for close-mindedness, I suppose.
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How is it close minded when it comparss both services fairly with their own pros and cons? If you already own many Apple products, use Apple Music. It’s that simple.

Macrumors even discuss about few notable android phones like the new Galaxy S10. That’s pretty much not close minded.
 
I’ve been happy with Apple Music and it’s integration with all my Apple gear. I like how it integrates with my existing library also. I prefer Spotify’s music discovery and dark theme though.
 
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BasicGreatGuy said:
For my musical preference and ecosystem. Apple suits me well. It also helps buying the discounted iTunes cards off eBay which, brings the yearly cost well below $100 a year.
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If you’re using Apple Music family for $15 a month. You can share your sub up to 6 family members and reduce the annual cost even further.

But yeah you need to find adult family members who’s responsible, able to pay and you can trust mutually. $15 by 6 is $2.5/person/month so you dont have to look for gift card rebates.

Even 3 paying adults on a family plan is already very cheap
 
magicschoolbus said:
Spotify’s discovery just blows AM out of the water, and the AM UI sucks. AM needs to be a standalone app.
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On iOS device, Music is a lightweight, standalone app.

On computer though, you’d need iTunes and I concur it’s a bloated mess that needs to die.
 
Unfortunately, Apple Music uses the lossy AAC format. I have had the the experience of my hi fi ALAC files being uploaded and converted into the inferior format and then having those added to my devices. This is a major annoyance. I would be happy to pay more to be able to listen to seamlessly exclusively listen to and store lossless audio files.
 
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Deacon-Blues said:
Apple's big advantage could have been Beats One, an international live radio station with a truly massive built in audience. Unfortunately they squandered their big opportunity by playing nothing but rap (which is not music) and bizarre euroelectronica music. What a shame.
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No kidding. “Beats One” radio station was horrible. I kept asking myself if this is what people want or ....? I felt like Apple was somehow trying too hard to be cool or something. I mean - monotonous crap music is what Beats One was - I stopped even trying to listen to it long ago. Silly stuff.

Also what happened to all this human curated stuff? I am not getting good recommendations based on my taste. I feel it is a ratings payola game - music “business” vs music appreciation.

I have to dig so hard to get obvious songs to play and I have even had Apple Music swap in newer versions of songs that I didn’t want to hear. You try hitting up your fave band and find that Apple Music is shoving the latest Albums down your throat when you really wanted to listen to older classics. Try “Pink Floyd” out and you’ll be hit up with all the latest albums. I find it difficult to find old stuff, and it should not be difficult. Clearly they want people to listen to latest tracks and it feels like trickery.
 
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RickInHouston said:
Why does uploading your own tracks matter if you can a cess them anyway?

Not being mean, just wondering.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of kids radio dramas that I grew up with that my kids enjoy. There are too many to keep on a device, and so being able to have them all uploaded and available in Apple Music is a good system for us.
 
It’s a shame Apple and Spotify are yet to offer a higher quality lossless streaming option. It’s something they can charge a premium for, although I’d rather they don’t. I’m very happy with TIDAL, but Spotify has a larger library. As an audiophile I understand this is a niche part of the market, however, with today’s high speed internet connections there is less need for hefty compression formats. However a lossless option for Apple Music would lost behind the poor audio quality of the iTunes app and the truly awful headphone lightening ‘adapter’ that Apple sells / includes with its iPhones.
 
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ipedro said:
Did you read the article? That would be an important thing to do before suggesting points that are in fact already in the article:
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I did read the article! I just went through it again to see where I missed it - and it is in the bullet points near the very end. I stand corrected!
 
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Spotify has a clunkier UI. It’s lack of integration with existing music libraries makes it a failure for me
 
snawaey said:
I think apple can edge Spotify and tidal if they start streaming in lossless quality (Hi-Fi)
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jeremiah256 said:
I'd guess the vast majority of global music consumption is done using either headphones or speakers that would not take advantage of the higher quality.
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Bingo.

The market for very expensive — top tier expensive — headphones and speakers is absolutely minuscule when compared to the people who listen to music on their earbuds, Bluetooth speaker, Amazon Alexa, car radio etc. Like under 0.00001%. This is why Tidal hasn’t found a market and this is why most people don’t care about lossless audio.
 
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magicschoolbus said:
Spotify’s discovery just blows AM out of the water, and the AM UI sucks. AM needs to be a standalone app.
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I would prefer that Apple Music be standalone too. It would solve some lingering questions about application preference options when you switch iTunes libraries (use option-open to pick one) and when you don't use Apple Music at all in some of them.

That wish-list item is funny when I think about it, because I was actually unhappy when Apple subtracted the app store from iTunes. :rolleyes: inconsistency is a sign of genius, I hope. :D

Apple Music's presence in a library is handled better in current iTunes than it was in earlier versions. There was something weird before, about being unsure whether iCloud music library had just started trying to feed itself a zillion GB of my owned music (with my own preferred metadata tags, so a bunch of no-matches) after I launched any regular iTunes library, one that had no associations to Apple Music.

As far as the iOS Music app goes.. well let me not get into that. No wonder if Siri seems to ignore me sometimes. Sometimes what I say is pretty rude. I'll say this: it would be nice if AM were a separate iOS app. I have multiple mobile devices and some of them are never pointing at Apple Music, and some of them are usually offline. Needless to say it's disappointing when I think I'm just going to play some track from my own library that's been iTunes-transferred onto the device, and it turns out that according to the device in hand, first I have to download it (or choose to stream it) and in fact that's why the gear is nagging me to connect to the net. How many times some iPhone or iPod touch nearly got thrown out a window is a secret number and a feature of the iOS app Music in my house. That said, it too is better than it used to be. Maybe I'm just more of a curmudgeon than I used to be.
 
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vcboard said:
It's not the first time he's wrong. And in any case, it was almost 12 years ago, which considered very long in technology realm.
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Steve was also a master of “sell what you have.” He would even dis a competing product/idea only to introduce it years later as the best invention ever.

As far as AM v Spotify... I’ve used them both (and have in the past subbed to XM Satellite, Sirius XM Satellite and Streaming, Pandora, and Slacker). All the services have pros and cons, and none is perfect.

AM has come a long way from its origins as Beats Music and iTunes Radio (and formerly MOG). I expect it will continue to evolve.
 
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lec0rsaire said:
Apple’s got a really compelling product for those in the ecosystem as well as offering a great deal in iTunes Match for $25/yr which I’m a huge fan of. I like to “own” my music!

That said Spotify is like Netflix. They were the first and they will be really hard to knock off. Apple has a huge advantage in the amount of Apple devices in use around the world. Apple Music has an advantage over Spotify in that it’s a part of the OS while Spotify must be downloaded. Yes you can now delete it but chances are most users won’t be doing that.
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The best of both worlds is to have Spotify for streaming and the playlists, and keep iTunes with iTunes Match for your old legacy mp3 collection. I find that Spotify poorly manages the legacy libraries, while Apple Music has bad playlists and algorithms. Apple Music tries to combine everything into one, and the result is a convoluted mess.

Best to keep them separate and get the advantages of each.
 
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