Use Apple Music and Spotify to Build One Good App
So I tried to upgrade to Apple Music.
I was fed up with Spotify and its thousands of little problems, and I missed iTunes. (Actually I skipped Winamp, but that’s not an option.) ITunes is less like a spreadsheet. It handles device booting better. It works great with Siri and my Apple TV. Plus, it has all the music I have, including all the weird little hybrid apps and SoundCloud downloads that Spotify can’t give me.
But Apple Music is lonely. Sometimes I want to see what my friends are listening to. And whenever someone shares an album or playlist on the Internet, they are not exactly linking to Apple Music. Plus, I don’t know how to get Apple to warn me about new music from my favorite artists.
So from time to time I open up Spotify. And I hate audio ads, so I keep paying for Premium. I thought I hated juggling with two apps. But so far it’s actually pretty cute! I can afford to spend ten dollars a month. And I have several options for moving playlists back and forth, such as Move to Apple , StAMP, and SongShift .
So now I’m looking for other ways to combine the two competing mediocrities into one pretty good solution. For instance:
- Instapaper and Pocket contain carefully curated and “top rated” article lists to save. (Instapaper forces you to log in.) I use Instapaper, but I check Pocket Trending Lists from time to time and save everything to Insta.
- Since the iPhone sucks right now , you might be left with a Mac and Android. You can sync them pretty smoothly .
- Apple TV doesn’t have a Spotify app, but you can stream music to Apple TV from your phone or laptop using Spotify’s built-in Airplay feature.
Combining two competitors is always a little awkward. But it seems to me – and it will sound pathetic – a little thrilling not to be locked in one ecosystem. We all do this sometimes; we run Gmail on our iPhones or iTunes on Windows, or post our tweets to Facebook. And while all these companies would like to lock us up, we should try to turn them against each other more often. Because none of these companies can do everything right.