My Take On Apple Music vs Spotify

Introduction
I always preferred to obtain my music in a physical form, CDs or vinyl rather than MP3s, and so I was slow to adopt streaming music. Pandora was always fantastic for a quick randomized playlist suited to the type of artist or song I was in the mood for. But my own library was so extensive that I really had no need for a service like Spotify because I already owned all the songs I wanted. And if I didn’t have an album, I would buy it. But I did dabble in Spotify and Amazon Prime occasionally for those one hit wonder pop songs whose albums I had no desire to own (see Kelly Clarkson).

Then Apple Music was introduced with a free 3-month trial.  I figured I would try it out for several reasons: it offered seamless integration with my own music library and playlists, it was free, it was Apple. I’ve very much enjoyed it over the past month, prompting me to think I maybe should have tried streaming earlier. Spotify itself has gained a healthy share of passionate followers over the years, so I figured I should give it a fair chance as well. What are the pros and cons of each? Are they enough to make someone make the switch?

 

Library

This is probably the hardest to evaluate. I dread the day when competing services start snapping up exclusives like the gaming or streaming video industries, but unfortunately it’s already begun. That being said, it’s hard to say who is at fault: is it Apple for luring Dre and Taylor Swift with more money, or is it Spotify for not paying artists appropriately? So far I’ve come across one song that Spotify has that Apple doesn’t, and either way, whoever has Taylor Swift is the one who will take the crown.

 

Playlists

Curated playlists are offered by both services, but in much different ways. Both offer curated mood or genre-based playlists. Apple Music provides only staff and publication-curated playlists. For example, if you were in a mood for a specific artist such as Radiohead, you could find well-defined playlists such as ‘Intro to Radiohead’, ‘Radiohead: Deep Cuts’, ‘Radiohead Remixes’, ‘Radiohead: Influences’, ‘Inspired by Radiohead.’ Search for Moby Grape and playlists such as ‘San Francisco Rock’ and ‘Best of Bay Area Classic Rock’ pop up. The results are incredibly accurate.

Spotify takes a different approach by offering predominantly user-created playlists. The downside of this is that they are unregulated and often inaccurate. Search Radiohead, and you get a three playlists titled ‘Radiohead’ with no indication of what they are besides playlists with Radiohead songs. Search for 90’s hits and the top search result is a ’90s’ playlist that includes Led Zeppelin. Search Moby Grape and there are no playlists.

Playlist Accuracy – Apple Music only features professionally curated playlists, from their staff and noted publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. Spotify includes user created playlists; in searching for a 90’s hits playlist, Spotify’s top entry is a user’s playlist that includes Led Zeppelin.

Playlist Selection – Say you want to listen to a Radiohead playlist. Apple Music offers a wide variety of well-defined options. With Spotify, you can’t be sure what you’ll get.

Search Accuracy – Search for playlists featuring Spoon, and Spotify gives you a ‘Spooning’ playlist as the first entry. In fact, only one of the first 20 playlist results have a single Spoon song.

Interface

For me, one of the most important factors is how well the app is designed. How efficiently can I get through my music? How quickly can I find a specific new song or album? How well does it present suggested playlists? Overall, I found Apple Music to be more efficient at finding what I want. The Universal Search feature shown on all pages is the key, as is voice control with Siri which I will discuss later. Also, the menu remains static, fixed to the bottom of the screen so you can quickly get to suggestions, Radio stations, or your own library. However, Playlists needs it own spot in the menu, instead Connect which is useless (you can accomplish this by disabling Connect: Settings>General>Restrictions>Apple Music Connect off)

Spotify is held back by hidden menus and large inefficient block photos, however it does allow you to sort playlists by Title, Date, etc. Both services fail miserably in how they display Radio stations (i.e. Pandora stations).

Universal Search – From anywhere in the Apple Music app, you can access universal search from the magnifying glass icon in the top right. Important menu options always remain at the bottom of the screen. However, I find ‘Connect’ useless and wish I could replace it with ‘Playlists.’

Hidden Menus – Search, as well as all other features, must be accessed through the Menu button in the top left. The Menu is only accessible from the home page: if you are within a playlist or on the Currently Playing page, you have to back out to find new songs, playlists or features.

Playlist Presentation – Spotify sticks to a black, monochrome scheme with large photo blocks. Apple Music adopts a rotating color scheme often matching the album artwork, with list-style organization.

Song List – Besides the obvious differences in Spotify’s minimalism, Apple Music features an alphabetical scroll bar to the right. This allows you to jump to specific letters, instead of having to scroll endlessly to find your song.

Radio Playlists – Both Apple Music and Spotify are horridly clueless here. Functionally, Radio for both operate like Pandora (Music Genome Project may make better song selections, who knows?) But Apple lists previous playlists by Date (??), and Spotify sticks to their huge photo blocks made worse with horizontal scrolling! Come on, it’s not that hard folks.

Features

A lot of people never use voice control like Siri, but you would be amazed how you can use it to control Apple Music.  It’s an unheralded feature, much like Siri in general. But it allows you to, again, find the music you want accurately and efficiently. No such feature exists for Spotify.

Voice Control – Siri is the fastest way to get to the songs or playlists you want.

Spotify has more social networking capabilities, which is certainly a plus. Find your friends, see what they are listening to and what playlists they like. Apple Music has no profile pages at this point, but does allow sharing of playlists if you send them manually.

Profiles – Dan Chang enjoys slowjams.

Spotify also has a web app in addition to their desktop app, so that you can play music from a browser. Apple Music does not, and must be played on your computer through iTunes.

 

Reliability 

The Spotify app crashes almost every time I open it, so that’s not a good start. But after the initial crash it seems to run alright. Apple has been running smoothly, however it has had some well documented hiccups (see Jim Dalrymple’s post). Fortunately, I have not run into the larger of these issues with iTunes Match and corrupted libraries, which were possibly related to user error. (I certainly had my share of frustration in the early days of iTunes Match, enough that it prompted me to cancel my subscription. But I’ve since renewed and they’ve managed to fix those early bugs.)

 

Integration 

Smooth integration of my iTunes Library with songs from my streaming service was an important factor, given how large my own library is. With iTunes Match, this has largely been hassle free. Spotify can scan your iTunes Library, but the integration is nowhere near as smooth. Of course, not everyone buys music these days so this feature can be of limited use to most.

 

Pricing 

Both essentially offer 3 month trials, Apple Music for free, Spotify for $0.99. Thereafter, both are $9.99/month. The difference is with family plans: Apple Music for up to 6 people is $14.99/month. Spotify is an extra $5 for each additional member, i.e. $14.99/month for 2, $19.99 for 3, up to $29.99 for 5 total members.

 

Availability 

Currently on iOS, PC, Mac. Coming to Android this fall.