Spotify vs Apple Music: What You Should Know Before Deciding

 

Spotify vs Apple Music: What You Should Know Before Deciding

When looking at the world of music in today’s world, choosing the right platform for you can be tricky. Both Apple Music and Spotify offer unique features to listeners including a large music library, genre specific playlists, great audio quality and premium subscriptions. Your choice of streaming service will determine what kind of listener you are and whether you’d want to purchase their premium subscriptions. But what are the differences between the two? In this article I will break down the differences between Apple Music and Spotify and point out where one platform outshines the other.

                                                       Image by Getty Images on Unsplash

Music Library

While the size of the music library compared to each other is relatively the same, Apple Music tends to have early access to music and album releases from major artists, with this early access, it allows users to essentially save albums that certain artists will release early only on Apple Music. While Spotify on the other hand has exclusive podcasts that are only on their platform including various true crime podcasts, comedy podcasts like Bad Friends and probably the most popular, The Joe Rogan Experience, which are not available on Apple Music. Although Apple Music provides a more substantial collection of older albums and artists, this distinction is usually not noticed for the average user, users may not even notice a difference in availability between the two platforms. With both platforms claiming to have “100+ million” songs, making a choice here is based on what kind of listener you are, based on music library alone the two platforms are nearly identical, the only difference being Spotify’s exclusive podcasts and Apple Music’s early access to certain albums and their collection of older albums and artists.

         

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Pricing and Premium Subscriptions

Spotify has a few options for pricing tiers, including an ad-supported free version for all users. The premium subscription will provide you with features like offline listening, no ads and unlimited skips. This subscription is $9.99 per individual with Spotify providing different plans for family, duo and business accounts and giving students a discount. Students can subscribe for $5.99 and are offered 3 months free of charge for new subscribers. Apple Music’s subscriptions are simple; they also include a free version although it is only for one month. Their individual subscription charges $10.99 and comes with similar features to Spotify. Students are offered the same discount at $5.99 that may also include discounts on other Apple products with the purchase of Apple Music. Both platforms offer different plans that users can pick from depending on their preferences. Spotify stands out with its option for free lifetime listening with ads, but Apple Music also shines with its compatibility with other Apple products. The choice between the two will likely depend on what devices you’re on and your budget. Both provide a quality listening experience, it just comes down to which features you like the most

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Audio Quality

Audio quality is a major component for some music listeners when choosing their platform and with Spotify they offer different audio settings depending on the tier of subscription. Premium subscribers can listen at up to 256kbps while free users are limited to 128 kbps. Apple Music provides a higher base level of audio quality, providing their users with 256 kbps as the standard. Furthermore, Apple Music includes lossless and spatial audio, providing an overall better and immersive listening experience.

                                            
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Playlists and Music Discovery

Spotify is known for their ability to provide their users with playlists that cater to their musical preferences, Spotify will recognize your listening patterns and what kind of music you enjoy, using this they generate playlists for you like their “Discover Weekly”.  This playlist will take the music you’ve listened to in the past week and will create a playlist for you with music from similar genres and artists. This feature is a great for users to help expand their musical taste. Additionally, these playlists are created weekly ensuring listeners have a constant ability to explore new music. Apple Music also has playlists like Spotify’s like the “New Music Mix” but it is not as advanced as Spotify’s, although its ability to adapt and cater to your musical preferences overtime is improved through user interaction.

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Conclusion       

When deciding between Spotify and Apple Music, you should consider the devices you have, what you want to listen to, and if you’d prefer music discovery over audio quality. Spotify includes music discovery with constant recommendations and customized playlists while Apple Music provides an overall better listening experience with their higher audio quality, exclusive and early album releases, and easy compatibility with other Apple products.

 

 

Works Cited

“About Lossless Audio in Apple Music.” Apple Support, support.apple.com/en-us/118295.

Spotify. “Audio Quality.” Spotify, support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/.