How to Choose Between Spotify and Apple Music

Apple Music and Spotify: Which streaming music service is better?

Which one of the two most popular streaming music services in the world, Apple Music and Spotify, do you prefer? Users have endless debates about which service is better, and for many, the ultimate deciding factor is often the price and recommendation algorithms. However, there are many other considerations in the battle between Apple Music and Spotify - such as sound quality, sharing features, support for your preferred platform, and more. Which service is better? It depends on your needs.

Price comparison

If you are on a tight budget and unable to pay for music streaming services, Spotify’s ad-supported free tier allows you to listen to music without paying. Apple Music offers a free three-month trial, but after the trial period is over, you have to pay. It is worth noting, however, that Apple Music has no ads.

Spotify Premium comes in four packages: $11.99 per month for Personal Premium, $16.99 per month for Two (two accounts), $19.99 per month for Family Premium (up to six accounts), and $19.99 per month for Student Premium $5.99 (students only). Apple Music is the same price as Spotify, but there is no "two-person" option: $5.99 per month for the student package, $10.99 per month for the individual package, and $16.99 per month for the family package. The Student Plan includes free access to Apple TV; Spotify’s equivalent package gives you access to Hulu’s ad-supported package.

If you are completely immersed in the Apple ecosystem, you can get the Apple One bundle for a huge discount. Apple One’s personal version is $19.95 per month and includes four services – Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV, and iCloud (50GB). Apple One Home Edition offers all of these services, as well as 200GB of iCloud storage for $25.95 per month and can be used by up to six people. The premium version includes all of the above services, as well as Apple News and Apple Fitness for $37.95 per month and is available for up to six people.

Both services offer offers for savvy users, but Apple Music’s promotions usually give you more content for free (assuming you’re not just using Spotify’s ad support layer). Spotify Premium comes with a lot of discounts, and the best offer is a three-month free trial. But for example, while Apple Music’s free trial is usually limited to three months, at the time of writing, new users can get six months of Apple Music for just one-time payment of $2.99.

Sound quality

If you are pursuing the best sound quality, Apple Music is better than Spotify. Apple Music allows you to listen to lossless audio files for free. With the right cable audio device, you will be able to hear the difference in sound quality. Spotify does not currently allow playback of lossless audio files.

To be clear, both services have pretty good sound quality – most people don’t think they are listening to inferior audio. Especially if you are using cheap headphones, it doesn't make sense to choose a service based on the sound quality. This is only important for people with high-end audio devices rather than low-quality or Bluetooth headsets. However, Apple also provides lossless audio when certain AirPods are paired with Apple Vision Pro headphones, as this bypasses Bluetooth. "The AirPods 4, the AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation, and the AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C charging case provide ultra-low latency lossless audio when paired with Apple Vision Pro."

Apple Music also has advantages in spatial audio, a virtual surround sound that can create a more immersive listening experience.

Music Library

Spotify and Apple Music both have over 100 million songs. Most people will find everything they need in both services, but some niche artists or genres may perform better in both services. For example, Apple Music has an app dedicated to classical music.

Playlists and Recommendations

The success or failure of streaming music services depends on their recommendation algorithms. While Spotify initially had a huge advantage in this area, Apple Music has been slowly catching up. Currently, Spotify's algorithm is still better at recommending music, but Apple Music has many excellent hand-curated playlists that may be more appealing to some. This is a highly subjective debate, and the result depends on the genre you like. So it's best to try both services and see if the playlists and recommendations are right for you.

User interface and application experience

Apple Music's app performs well on the Apple platform, but it's mediocre on other devices. The service has a web player, an Android app, a Windows app, and it can also be used on other platforms, but the experience on these platforms is still below the standard. Based on my experience and other users' experience, Apple Music can be slow, has high latency and easily crashed when used outside Apple's own devices. If you are a user of the Apple ecosystem, you will be happy with Apple Music, but if you prefer cross-platform use, Spotify is a better choice.

Unique Features

Both Apple Music and Spotify offer unique features that may help you lean into one of them. Apple Music Sing allows you to view song lyrics in a karaoke-style user interface and sync them with the currently playing song. This makes following the lyrics easier, especially on large-screen devices like Apple TV. Experience is much more powerful than Spotify's sync lyrics. Apple Music also offers an excellent accessibility feature on your iPhone – Music Haptics. It uses iPhone's Taptic Engine to create tactile vibrations for your songs, from almost unaware of long echoes, depending on the part of the song playing. It enhances the listening experience for everyone, especially to help those facing hearing impairments.

Spotify Connect, on the other hand, makes it easier to control music playback on other devices. Spotify also supports collaborative playlists – a feature that is still in beta in Apple Music. For collaboration, Spotify Blend automatically curates playlists based on your and your friends’ tastes, while Spotify Jam makes it very easy to create party playlists.

Non-music function

Spotify includes podcasts and audiobooks in its services, which is a highly controversial addition. Some people want their music app to include only music, while others don't mind listening to other forms of audio in Spotify. However, almost everyone is annoyed that Spotify will play ads on podcasts even for power users. The service also offers several hours of free audiobook listening, but if you want more, you will be charged an extra fee.

Share and social media

Although Apple Music is struggling to catch up, Spotify's service has better sharing and social media options. Its annual summary – Spotify Wrapped – is easy to post to social media, and you can easily share any song to Instagram Stories. The sharing options for Apple Music Replay are quite limited, but you can load summary in the Music app itself and see a monthly review of your favorite songs.

While you can share lyrics to Instagram via Apple Music, Apple's social media strategy is not as good as Spotify.

The above is the detailed content of How to Choose Between Spotify and Apple Music. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!