The online music service offer is huge nowadays. You have Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud Pro, Google Play Music and so on. I decided to use both Apple Music and Spotify for a while.
Choosing services
Since my posts aren’t sponsored, I was on a budget and didn’t want to spend too much money on the comparison. I already had a Apple Music subscription while Spotify was having a promotion which allowed me to use it for 3 months for only € 9,99. Both being among the largest providers, it seemed fair to compare them.
Searching for music
Both services deliver a nice and intuitive way of searching for music. When searching in Apple Music however, I get artists, tracks albums and podcasts. Whereas with Spotify you’ll get an artist and tracks but have to do a deeper search to find albums, podcasts, playlists …
Music suggestions
Both providers have music suggestions. Apple Music has both “Favourites mix” and radio stations based on an artist or a track. Whereas Spotify has a wider range of mixes prepared for you. They offer a “Daily mix”, “Weekly mix”, radio stations based on artists and tracks, but they offer a “Best of” based on artists as well, which plays tracks from a certain artist, or tracks in which he has collaborated.
Radio stations on Spotify do work much better than on Apple Music. With a wider variety of music and artists than Apple Music delivers.
Playing the music
With Apple everything comes out of the box on your devices (if they’re Apple devices of course) but I would expect a better sync between devices. Your playlists and library are synced of course, but if you’re listening on your MacBook and turn on your Apple TV, the Music app has no idea where you left off.
Spotify on the other hand does a great job on that, but streaming music to my Apple TV is a bit buggy. I couldn’t determine if it’s an OS bug or a problem with Spotify. I guess an Apple TV app wouldn’t harm them that much. As for now I’m using my PS4 to stream music to my sound system when listening to Spotify.
Another feature I love about Spotify is the ability to crossfade music up to 12 seconds. With Apple this can only be done in iTunes, but since I mostly use my phone to listen to music, it’s a feature I’m really missing on my phone.
Managing playlists
Both services support a nice way to create playlists. An easy and intuitive way to keep your favourite tracks in one place. Spotify is better though since they alert you when adding a duplicate track to your playlist. Rumors are Apple will do the same from iOS 13 on.
Another rumour is that Apple will show you lyrics when available, in some sort of a karaoke style whereas Spotify already has a feature called Canvas which plays some sort of animation. Both a bit overkill if you ask me.
Conclusion
As for now I prefer Spotify over Apple Music. That might have to do with he fact that artists and labels are creating all sorts of playlists on Spotify, but not on Apple Music. In the end it really depends on your personal preference.