iPhone XS Max + Apple Watch 4 LTE + Spotify or Apple Music

[MichaelMidnight]

Hey guys! I recently went towards an iPhone XS Max and an aluminum gold Apple Watch 4 LTE and I'm wondering what's the best final part of this triangle: Apple Music or Spotify? The things that make me cling to Spotify are: it's platform agnostic, seems to have more of the songs I listen to available, and following other people's playlists. But if I got with Apple Music, it'll all be in the Apple Family.

Any thoughts would be helpful!!!

 

[Closingracer]

Apple Music . It’s platform agnostic since you can use it on android and can store songs on the watch unlike google music ( what I use ) or Spotify. Big thing for me but I rather have YouTube music. Otherwise I would switch to Apple Music

 

[0970373]

Apple Music if you want to be able to stream music on your Apple Watch away from your iPhone. Or sync any music to it. You can use Houdini or SongShift to transfer playlists over, even if you've downgraded from a paid to free account. I transfer my Discover & Daily playlists to AM weekly. Best of both worlds.

 

[FranknStein7]

I prefer Spotify but Apple Music is the obvious (erm, only) choice if you want to play music from your Apple Watch.

 

[areskins]

Don’t have an apple watch but can you at least control the music using the AW when listening to spotify? Like if my airpods are connected to the phone then use the watch to play next or pause?

 

[tromboneaholic]

Hey guys! I recently went towards an iPhone XS Max and an aluminum gold Apple Watch 4 LTE and I'm wondering what's the best final part of this triangle: Apple Music or Spotify? The things that make me cling to Spotify are: it's platform agnostic, seems to have more of the songs I listen to available, and following other people's playlists. But if I got with Apple Music, it'll all be in the Apple Family.

Any thoughts would be helpful!!!

I just checked, and Apple Music still offers a free introduction, so why not just try it out and see if you like it?

https://www.apple.com/apple-music/

 

[sputnikBA]

There is no Spotify app for the watch (yet?) if that makes a difference to you.

 

[matrix07]

Hey guys! I recently went towards an iPhone XS Max and an aluminum gold Apple Watch 4 LTE and I'm wondering what's the best final part of this triangle: Apple Music or Spotify? The things that make me cling to Spotify are: it's platform agnostic, seems to have more of the songs I listen to available, and following other people's playlists. But if I got with Apple Music, it'll all be in the Apple Family.

Any thoughts would be helpful!!!

I’m using Apple Music and I’m happy as a lark. You have LTE watch so definitely Apple Music unless you want to torture yourself by not having millions and millions of songs on your wrist for whatever reason. These two services are basically a big warehouse for songs, don’t over complicate them.
2 days ago I ran out of podcasts to listen to while on a run so I just selected some music on Apple Music and the run continued. As easy as a breeze.
And if you’re a music collector before you’ll be more happy with Apple Music since you can actually upload all your songs to it unlike Spotify. I have all of my bootlegged albums with me because of this.

 

[tromboneaholic]

These two services are basically a big warehouse for songs, don’t over complicate them.

This was my reasoning as well. With the pricing being similar, Apple Music makes more sense for me since it's easier to use on my Apple devices.

 

[iBought]

Apple Music if you want to be able to stream music on your Apple Watch away from your iPhone. Or sync any music to it. You can use Houdini or SongShift to transfer playlists over, even if you've downgraded from a paid to free account. I transfer my Discover & Daily playlists to AM weekly. Best of both worlds.

Perfect way to do it. I have songshift. When you transfer discover weekly over, is there a way to copy over the existing playlist? That’s one thing I am still trying to figure out.

Some people in this thread say that these are simply data warehouses, but I disagree. Spotify has such better music discovery algorithms that I would use over AM if it streamed on the Apple Watch. I also much prefer how Spotify has continuous play and also now has that on artist radio. For me, if I am really digging an artist and that genre (I like a lot of more underground/indie than pop) to be able to quickly make it a radio station has enabled me to find a lot of other artists I never would have discovered.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Apple Music is great on the Apple Watch.

 

[matrix07]

Some people in this thread say that these are simply data warehouses, but I disagree. Spotify has such better music discovery algorithms that I would use over AM if it streamed on the Apple Watch. I also much prefer how Spotify has continuous play and also now has that on artist radio. For me, if I am really digging an artist and that genre (I like a lot of more underground/indie than pop) to be able to quickly make it a radio station has enabled me to find a lot of other artists I never would have discovered.

I disagree. This is just an urban legend. For example I am using Apple Music more extensively than Spotify and AM algorithm for me is WAY better than Spotify. Last week I just kept on loving songs in Chill Mixes AM gave me and ended up loving almost every songs in there. I couldn’t count how many artists I discovered from AM.
What you’re using more they will know more. Spotify is not Google that have your data so much they have a big advantage. It’s just a service, just as Apple Music. On the contrary Apple itself is bigger so much in time their machine learning, which will compete with Google, will definitely ends up leapfrog anything Spotify has, unless they are bought by bigger player like Google or Amazon (which then I would have nothing to do with it for privacy reasons).
For radio station, what you said is exactly what Jim Darymple said of Apple Music’s (He said the best he got is from Pandora and he never got satisfactory results with Spotify and right now Apple Music results is very close to Pandora. I suspect that because he used to use Pandora more extensively). Even if he’s Apple fan boy he also criticized Apple Music very harshly multiple times the 1st year AM launched so it’s not that he would go out of his way to praise Apple Music where there’re nothing to praise.

 

[yoomy]

The only issue issue with Apple Music on Android is the inability to stream the music to home speakers via airplay. With spotify you get spotify connect which works on Android and iOS.

 

[iBought]

I disagree. This is just an urban legend. For example I am using Apple Music more extensively than Spotify and AM algorithm for me is WAY better than Spotify. Last week I just kept on loving songs in Chill Mixes AM gave me and ended up loving almost every songs in there. I couldn’t count how many artists I discovered from AM.
What you’re using more they will know more. Spotify is not Google that have your data so much they have a big advantage. It’s just a service, just as Apple Music. On the contrary Apple itself is bigger so much in time their machine learning, which will compete with Google, will definitely ends up leapfrog anything Spotify has, unless they are bought by bigger player like Google or Amazon (which then I would have nothing to do with it for privacy reasons).
For radio station, what you said is exactly what Jim Darymple said of Apple Music’s (He said the best he got is from Pandora and he never got satisfactory results with Spotify and right now Apple Music results is very close to Pandora. I suspect that because he used to use Pandora more extensively). Even if he’s Apple fan boy he also criticized Apple Music very harshly multiple times the 1st year AM launched so it’s not that he would go out of his way to praise Apple Music where there’re nothing to praise.

I disagree so far. I have used AM 80% the past 2 months, so let’s see. As for an Urban Legend - uhh, no. I started on Spotify as a beta user due to my prior career in the music business. Their music discover algorithm is something they take a ton of pride in and simply have improved on quicker than AM has.

For example. Can you take an artist you like in AM, make a radio station out of it and have endless play of that station?

You are saying that is the radio station app. I guess I need to mess with that more - but why does there need to be two apps? I can do all of those things in Spotify, yet the Apple Watch has two apps for some reason. Why is that?

Where is AM’s discover weekly playlist? I am not sure why they don’t have that if what I am saying is “urban legend”. Discover Weekly is one of Spotifys most powerful features. I would imagine Apple should easily have crafted an answer to that by now.

 

[0970373]

I disagree so far. I have used AM 80% the past 2 months, so let’s see. As for an Urban Legend - uhh, no. I started on Spotify as a beta user due to my prior career in the music business. Their music discover algorithm is something they take a ton of pride in and simply have improved on quicker than AM has.

For example. Can you take an artist you like in AM, make a radio station out of it and have endless play of that station?

You are saying that is the radio station app. I guess I need to mess with that more - but why does there need to be two apps? I can do all of those things in Spotify, yet the Apple Watch has two apps for some reason. Why is that?

Where is AM’s discover weekly playlist? I am not sure why they don’t have that if what I am saying is “urban legend”. Discover Weekly is one of Spotifys most powerful features. I would imagine Apple should easily have crafted an answer to that by now.

Just to address some of your questions about Apple Music:

AM has 4 specialty weekly mixes: Favorites (Most like Discover), Friends (what your friends are listening to), Chill (based on the music that you've loved but a more relaxing vibe) and the New Music mix. The favorites mix, is based on songs you've loved and I really like it. It's not a Discovery play list in the way Spotify is but I just transfer those over with Houdini. And I've found that when I transfer Smart Playlists from Apple to Spotify for it to feed off of, more songs are missing from Spotify and when I go the other way.

Yes, you can totally create a Radio station based on an Artist or song or playlist that plays for eternity. It's quite good.

iTunes/Music App (on iOS) has Apple Music, your entire library & Radio - it's all in one place. The Watch has a separate app for Radio - assuming so that it's not a bulky app that might slow down on the watch. Who knows. I'm not bothered by it at all. Spotify has no Watch or ATV apps.

Also, I had a lot of trouble syncing my personal library in Spotify form my MBP to my iPhone. Spotify's tech support just sucks. They gave up on me and were like sorry you can't listen to your stuff! Apple Music's upload & matching functions have MUCH improved since launch. Night and day. I do prefer Spotify's dark UI. AM really needs to work on font sizes as well. Nothing needs to be this bright or big, Apple. Nothing.

They also need to allow the continuation of playing whatever it is from one device to the next. Easy to lose your place or forget which playlist you're listening to. Spotify Connect is awesome and I miss it.

Lastly, I'm not really sure why people get so defensive about either. I'm totally cool w/ you liking Spotify more than AM. it's a great product that has been around for a long time. It's ok to like both also as they provide some differences. They are not the same product because they have different goals for their respective companies.

 

[tromboneaholic]

For example. Can you take an artist you like in AM, make a radio station out of it and have endless play of that station?

I did exactly that with Irakere. I created a station, and it's my go to for music now. I'm amazed at how Apple Music is able to find new Afro Cuban Jazz music for me to play that I haven't heard before. They seem to market to Hip Hop and younger people, but as a musician I'm impressed they connect Irakere with Dizzy, Arturo, Paquito, and Stevie Wonder.

 

[iBought]

Just to address some of your questions about Apple Music:

AM has 4 specialty weekly mixes: Favorites (Most like Discover), Friends (what your friends are listening to), Chill (based on the music that you've loved but a more relaxing vibe) and the New Music mix. The favorites mix, is based on songs you've loved and I really like it. It's not a Discovery play list in the way Spotify is but I just transfer those over with Houdini. And I've found that when I transfer Smart Playlists from Apple to Spotify for it to feed off of, more songs are missing from Spotify and when I go the other way.

Yes, you can totally create a Radio station based on an Artist or song or playlist that plays for eternity. It's quite good.

iTunes/Music App (on iOS) has Apple Music, your entire library & Radio - it's all in one place. The Watch has a separate app for Radio - assuming so that it's not a bulky app that might slow down on the watch. Who knows. I'm not bothered by it at all. Spotify has no Watch or ATV apps.

Also, I had a lot of trouble syncing my personal library in Spotify form my MBP to my iPhone. Spotify's tech support just sucks. They gave up on me and were like sorry you can't listen to your stuff! Apple Music's upload & matching functions have MUCH improved since launch. Night and day. I do prefer Spotify's dark UI. AM really needs to work on font sizes as well. Nothing needs to be this bright or big, Apple. Nothing.

They also need to allow the continuation of playing whatever it is from one device to the next. Easy to lose your place or forget which playlist you're listening to. Spotify Connect is awesome and I miss it.

Lastly, I'm not really sure why people get so defensive about either. I'm totally cool w/ you liking Spotify more than AM. it's a great product that has been around for a long time. It's ok to like both also as they provide some differences. They are not the same product because they have different goals for their respective companies.

Thanks this is REAL helpful. I am not a Spotify only guy. I am happy to use AM if it does what I want. That is no problem at all for me. End of the day, AW works with AM only so thats what I am using now.

I need to check out favorites again. I have Chill and New Music. Both are pretty good, but I guess I need to work my playlists harder because it feeds me a little more pop than I actually listen to. I may make some radio stations and let them play while I sleep to train the AI better.

Agree on the playlist part. It seems like it starts over and does not just stay where I was before. That is an odd one. Spotify is great with that. A mild annoyance, but little things like that matter.
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I did exactly that with Irakere. I created a station, and it's my go to for music now. I'm amazed at how Apple Music is able to find new Afro Cuban Jazz music for me to play that I haven't heard before. They seem to market to Hip Hop and younger people, but as a musician I'm impressed they connect Irakere with Dizzy, Arturo, Parquito, and Stevie Wonder.

That’s good to hear. I am the same way. I listen to a lot of Jazz and Fusion and than underground Dance and Modern Funk/Boogie. Just tricky stuff sometimes to find new artists on unless I really figure out the platform.

 

[iBought]

I see an issue. I don't have a favorites playlist. Is there a way to make that happen? I only have "chill" and "new music" that I can find.

I have easily listened to 100s of songs on AM by now.

 

[Closingracer]

Don’t have an apple watch but can you at least control the music using the AW when listening to spotify? Like if my airpods are connected to the phone then use the watch to play next or pause?

Playback controls work

 

[0970373]

I see an issue. I don't have a favorites playlist. Is there a way to make that happen? I only have "chill" and "new music" that I can find.

I have easily listened to 100s of songs on AM by now.

But are you giving them some "love" or adding songs to your library (not the same as downloading)? You have to train AM the same way way one would have to train Spotify. Take a couple of playlists you listen to often and like all the songs in them. Then find your favorite albums and "love" those as well.

Granted, this is an area Apple needs to work on as well. I really should just be able to double or triple tap a song on my iPhone or Watch to love/dislike something. And the option seems to have disappeared from the Watch app.

Listen. Love. Repeat.

 

[iBought]

But are you giving them some "love" or adding songs to your library (not the same as downloading)? You have to train AM the same way way one would have to train Spotify. Take a couple of playlists you listen to often and like all the songs in them. Then find your favorite albums and "love" those as well.

Granted, this is an area Apple needs to work on as well. I really should just be able to double or triple tap a song on my iPhone or Watch to love/dislike something. And the option seems to have disappeared from the Watch app.

Listen. Love. Repeat.

Ok I just did that with like 30 songs. I had no idea. I guess it may be better to like entire records?

Spotify just goes off what I listen to. But I kind of dig this if it means that I have more control over a favorites list. I listen to a lot of jazz when I sleep but I don't want it dominating my favorite list. So this could be better for me.

 

[0970373]

Ok I just did that with like 30 songs. I had no idea. I guess it may be better to like entire records?

Spotify just goes off what I listen to. But I kind of dig this if it means that I have more control over a favorites list. I listen to a lot of jazz when I sleep but I don't want it dominating my favorite list. So this could be better for me.

Spotify also takes into account loving songs, less in your face about it though. They are definitely lean towards "passive listening." I think for both, simply playing isn't enough to refine playlists and recs for you though. In Spotify, it's adding songs by "favoriting" them AND not skipping. Apple Music give more control. You can automatically add songs you add to a playlist to your library or you can do it manually. But favoriting them is what does the trick. Is should be using your years of iTunes listening as well.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music - Jazz, rare groove, 70s funk, Bossa Nova. Love pop music too though. I find that Apple rotates my Favorites well between genres. It's always a nice surprise on Mondays! But yeah, my lists were full of pop & hip hop for a while and I had to really listen to things like X Ray Spex, Minnie Riperton, Bernie Maupin, LOTS of Fela Kuti, etc to train it. I found that obscure and eclectic work well. Everyone likes Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" but let me throw in Minnie Riperton's "Come to My Garden" or Ramsey Lewis "Mother Nature's Son"* and let's see what happens...

You should totally listen to the albums above BTW.

* instrumental covers of Beatles songs arranged by Charles Stepney!

 

[matrix07]

Ok I just did that with like 30 songs. I had no idea. I guess it may be better to like entire records?

Spotify just goes off what I listen to. But I kind of dig this if it means that I have more control over a favorites list. I listen to a lot of jazz when I sleep but I don't want it dominating my favorite list. So this could be better for me.

Yeah.. basically what I said, what you using more will know more about you. Some people believe Apple Music algorithm for them is great and Spotify is not so great. Many believe contrary. In the end it’s the proof that what you using more will have more of your data and serve you better. Nothing’s complicated than that. There is no magic recipe under hood. This kind of algorithm is not that complicated (unless you’re Google) and is no secret in tech world. The more important part is you just have to use it properly and give it time to understand you. The first two months I’m listening to Spotify they didn’t serve me well too.
The thing about Apple Music is the 1st year it launched the app had problems all over the place. That gave it a bad name but they’ve come a long way since.

 

[iBought]

Spotify also takes into account loving songs, less in your face about it though. They are definitely lean towards "passive listening." I think for both, simply playing isn't enough to refine playlists and recs for you though. In Spotify, it's adding songs by "favoriting" them AND not skipping. Apple Music give more control. You can automatically add songs you add to a playlist to your library or you can do it manually. But favoriting them is what does the trick. Is should be using your years of iTunes listening as well.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music - Jazz, rare groove, 70s funk, Bossa Nova. Love pop music too though. I find that Apple rotates my Favorites well between genres. It's always a nice surprise on Mondays! But yeah, my lists were full of pop & hip hop for a while and I had to really listen to things like X Ray Spex, Minnie Riperton, Bernie Maupin, LOTS of Fela Kuti, etc to train it. I found that obscure and eclectic work well. Everyone likes Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" but let me throw in Minnie Riperton's "Come to My Garden" or Ramsey Lewis "Mother Nature's Son"* and let's see what happens...

You should totally listen to the albums above BTW.

* instrumental covers of Beatles songs arranged by Charles Stepney!

Will do. Check out Yusseff Kamaal. I think you will dig them as well.

 

[tromboneaholic]

Ok I just did that with like 30 songs. I had no idea. I guess it may be better to like entire records?

Spotify just goes off what I listen to. But I kind of dig this if it means that I have more control over a favorites list. I listen to a lot of jazz when I sleep but I don't want it dominating my favorite list. So this could be better for me.

On Apple Music you will want to "love" and "dislike" songs (you can do albums too, but I usually just rate the songs as they play).

Even if you don't rate the song, Apple Music will consider whether you played it all the way through or skipped.

Eventually you can tell Siri, "Play something I will like" and she will start your personal radio station going.

Then you can tell her "Play more like this" if she finds a genre you really want to hear more of.

Also, "Never play this song again" is useful if you hate it.

As the songs are playing you can say "hey siri I love this song" or "hey siri I dislike this song" to rate.