Spotify vs Apple Music: Which Deserves Your Money?
Image Credit: Tom’s Guide
Ever since 1999, when the very first music streaming service, Napster*, entered the scene, music streamers have been battling for market share and the public’s attention. After the rise (and fall) of Napster, the arena of services exploded in 2003 with the iTunes store, Amazon Music’s launch in 2007, Spotify and Soundcloud in 2008, and Youtube Music, Tidal, and Apple Music in 2014. As of now, there are more than 200 music streaming platforms available to you, but only two really stand out among the competition. Both continue to compete for the number one spot; both strive to be the best music streaming service through good value, quality, and user experience. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about Spotify and Apple Music. This article will compare and contrast the two, analyzing their unique features and their flaws, in order to offer a recommendation to music lovers.
Spotify has been around for over 15 years and has become one of the most popular music streaming platforms in the world. Spotify offers premium copyrighted music, in addition to 5 million podcasts from verified record labels and media companies. Spotify is free to use with ads and also offers paid plans that remove ads and provide higher quality streaming, access to special AI features, streaming offline, unlimited skips, and the ability to listen with people in real time. These paid plans start at $10.99 per month and go all the way up to $16.99 for a family plan that allows up to six people to use the same subscription. Spotify DJ is also available on a paid plan and unlocks a whole new way to discover music. Your DJ is a custom-made AI model that talks to you in a human-like way and plays the music you listen to in addition to recommending music it thinks you might like. Finally, Spotify Premium lets you stream audio up to 320 kbps per second.
Then there’s Apple Music, Apple’s streaming service that planned to revolutionize the industry. Since 2014, Apple Music has expanded its music library to more than 100 million tracks available to paying users. Unlike Spotify, there is no free version of Apple Music. Apple gives you the ability to pay for a specific track or playlist through iTunes, and it offers access to the entire Apple Music for $10.99 per month. However, when you buy an audio device from Apple (AirPods, Beats, Homepod, etc.), they present you with a generous 6 months free of Apple Music. Other subscription plans include Family or Apple One, which includes all Apple services under one monthly subscription, starting at $19.95 a month and giving you access to iCloud+, Apple TV+, Apple Music and Apple Arcade. The Premier plan includes every Apple service and lets you add up to 5 people for $37.95/month.
Apple Music offers premium audio listening with features like Dolby Atmos (letting you hear sounds in 3D space) and lossless audio quality, the highest audio quality to date (up to 800-900 kbps). These features are exclusive to Apple Music when compared to Spotify. In addition, Apple Music gives you access to Live Lyrics where lyrics jump and appear on screen to the tempo of the song, and Karaoke mode which blocks out the singer's voice and allows you to have your own concert with your voice. All of these features make Apple Music seem superior to Spotify, seeing as they’re the same starting price. However, one of Apple Music’s flaws is how it sometimes skips a beat when listening with headphones or external speakers, as sometimes Bluetooth can’t keep up with the amount of data being transferred over the air. Another is how spotty Apple Music can be, especially when streaming Lossless audio on cellular networks, even when connected to 5G and 5G Ultrawide networks.
In conclusion, Spotify and Apple Music are the top contenders for the best music streaming platform with their unique features and subscriptions. As of early 2023, Apple Music clocked out at around 88 million global paid subscribers, while Spotify blew that out of the water with 210 million paid subscribers, 44 million of which are in the US alone. While Spotify is leading the music streaming industry with Apple Music following close behind, I personally recommend Apple Music. It has more features than Spotify at the same price point. Additionally, since it’s an Apple product, the ease of use might be higher for people who already own an Apple product.
* Although it was introduced in 2001, Napster was called Rhapsody until 2016. Napster was also the name of a peer-to-peer file sharing service introduced in 1999 and shut down in 2001.