In other words, you can use Apple Music to listen to things that aren't actually available on it or any other streaming service.
Turn on the iCloud Music Library feature and you can sync any music you've put in iTunes on Mac or PC to all your Apple Music-enabled devices at once. Credit: Epic GamesĪpple Music's iCloud integration is one department in which Spotify lags behind. The Fortnite rap industry is thriving on both services. This really does feel like splitting hairs, but I think Discover Weekly gives Spotify an edge over Apple in this regard. It's totally fine, but just not as good as what Spotify does.īoth services let you browse by genre and mood, with themed playlists centered around holidays and whatnot popping up in both apps from time to time. Apple Music also brings weekly new music and old favorites playlists, but it feels barebones by comparison. There's also "Release Radar," another regularly updated playlist that feeds you new music from artists you like.Īside from that, the app will generate several "Daily Mix" playlists made up of things you've listened to before. Every week, Spotify will build a playlist of music you may not have heard but you might like, based on what you've been listening to. Spotify's "Discover Weekly" playlist is one of the service's flagship features. Both Apple Music and Spotify Premium can help you out here, but I think one service is a bit better than the other. One of the things that makes streaming services novel is the ease and quickness with which a user can discover new music on them. As such, it's hard to crown a champion based on a bullet-point features list. You'll be fed a bunch of hand-crafted and mathematically generated playlists up front before you most likely just go back to listening to the playlists you made again and again. On the surface, using both Spotify Premium and Apple Music is a remarkably similar experience.
Both services have radio features as well as algorithmic music recommendation, which we'll get into later. On top of that, you can make and share playlists, check out playlists other people have made, and browse official playlists curated by Apple and Spotify. You'll never hear an ad if you pay for Spotify Premium or Apple Music, either. For $10 per month, you get access to tens of millions of on-demand tracks from artists both major and obscure.
The content offerings for the two paid services are remarkably similar. The biggest differences between the two streaming juggernauts exist in the margins, so that's where we'll look as we try to determine who has the better value between Apple Music and Spotify. Both services cost $10 per month, so it's not a simple math problem. That's sort of a tough question to answer. Which one should you actually use, though? Spotify has offered a premium subscription for longer, but Apple has picked up considerable steam in recent years. While alternatives like Pandora, Tidal, and Amazon Music exist and have their audiences, it certainly seems like the big battle right now is between Spotify and Apple Music.
It's never been easier to listen to any music you could possibly fathom, no matter where in the world you are, but that doesn't mean the choice of how to do that is easy.