How to Choose Between Spotify and Apple Music
Apple Music and Spotify are two of the most popular streaming services in the world; most of us already have our favorites. Price isn’t the only thing that decides the Apple Music vs Spotify debate: you may want better audio quality, recommendations, support for your preferred platforms, and more. But which service is better? It depends on what you are looking for.
Apple Music vs Spotify: Pricing
If you’re on a very tight budget and just can’t afford to pay for a music streaming service, Spotify’s ad-supported free tier allows you to listen without paying a penny. Apple Music offers a three-month free trial, but once that’s done, you’ll have to pay. It’s worth noting that there are no ads in any version of Apple Music.
Spotify Premium has four plans: Premium Individual for $10.99 per month, Premium Duo (for two accounts) for $14.99 per month, Premium Family for $16.99 per month (up to six accounts), and Premium Student for $5.99 per month (students only). ). Apple Music costs the same as Spotify without the “Duo” option: $5.99 per month for the student plan, $10.99 per month for the Individual plan, and $16.99 per month for the family plan. Student plan includes free access to Apple TV+; Spotify’s equivalent plan allows you to access Hulu’s ad-supported plans.
If you’re part of the Apple ecosystem, you can get the Apple One package at a deep discount. Apple One Individual costs $19.95 per month for four services – Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and iCloud (50 GB). Apple’s One Family plan offers all of this with 200GB of iCloud storage for $25.95 per month for up to six people. The Premier plan includes all of the above for up to six people, plus Apple News and Apple Fitness for $37.95 per month.
Apple Music offers better sound quality
If you want better audio quality, Apple Music is a better option than Spotify. Apple Music lets you listen to lossless audio files at no additional cost. Using the right wired audio equipment, you will be able to hear the difference in sound quality. Spotify doesn’t yet allow lossless audio playback.
To be clear, the audio quality on both services is pretty good—most people won’t feel like they’re listening to low-quality audio. Especially if you’re using a pair of cheap headphones, there’s no point in trying to choose one service over others based on sound quality. This only matters for those who have high-quality audio equipment and want to use Apple Music to stream songs.
Apple Music has another advantage – Spatial Audio, which is a form of virtual surround sound and creates a more immersive listening experience.
Both services have an extensive music library.
Spotify and Apple Music offer you over 100 million songs. Most people will find everything they need on any of these services, but some niche artists or genres may be better represented on any of these services. You should take advantage of Spotify’s free tier or Apple Music free trial to make sure your favorite artists are available.
Playlists and recommendations
Music streaming services live and die by their recommendation algorithms. While Spotify initially had a huge lead in this area, Apple Music is slowly catching up. For now, Spotify’s algorithm is still better at recommending music, but Apple Music has plenty of great human-made playlists that may appeal more to some people. This is a very subjective discussion that fluctuates one way or another depending on the genres you prefer. That’s why it’s best to try these services and see if the recommended playlists work for you.
User interface and app experience
The Apple Music apps are good on Apple platforms, but they’re mediocre on other devices. The service has a web player, an Android app, a Windows app, and is also available on other platforms, but its functionality remains unsatisfactory on most of them. If you’re tied to the Apple ecosystem, you’ll love Apple Music, but if you prefer cross-platform, Spotify is a better option.
Unique Features
There are several interesting features that can help you choose Apple Music or Spotify. Apple Music Sing lets you view song lyrics in a karaoke-style user interface and sync them with the currently playing song. This makes it easy to follow the lyrics, especially on larger screen devices like Apple TV. This experience is much better than Spotify’s lyrics sync feature .
On the other hand, Spotify Connect makes it much easier to control music playback on other devices. Spotify also supports collaborative playlists, a feature that is still in beta on Apple Music. For collaboration , Spotify Blend automatically creates a playlist based on your and your friends’ tastes, and Spotify Jam makes it super easy to create party playlists .
Non-musical functions
Spotify includes podcasts and audiobooks in its service, which has become a controversial addition. Some people want this in their music app, while others don’t mind listening to other forms of audio on Spotify. However, almost everyone is annoyed by the fact that Spotify plays ads in podcasts, even for premium subscribers. The service offers several hours of audiobook listening for free, and if you want more, an additional fee applies.
Sharing and social networks
As much as Apple Music may try to catch up, Spotify is the service with the best sharing and social networking capabilities. His year-end roundup, Spotify Wrapped , is easy to post on social media, and you also have convenient options to share any song on Instagram Stories. Apple Music Replay’s sharing options are fairly limited, and you’ll still have to open the site in a browser to even scroll through the year-end roundup. While you can share lyrics to Instagram via Apple Music, overall Apple’s social media game has nothing in common with Spotify’s game.