Spotify Premium Vs Apple Music: Which One Is Actually Better?

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Apple has been at the forefront of the music streaming industry for years, starting with iTunes in 2003, and more recently Apple Music which debuted in June 2015. iTunes didn’t have much competition, if any, until 2008 when Spotify was introduced to the world. Spotify rapidly grew in popularity, drawing in users with both free and premium memberships. Apple came out with Apple Music, which also quickly grew in popularity, to rival Spotify in 2015, which brings us to this question. Spotify Premium Vs Apple Music: which one is actually better?

The membership

Spotify offers its members both a free and a premium version. The free version is very limited but still allows you to have access to all of the music Spotify has to offer. The limitations are such that you can only skip so many songs and there are advertisements after every few songs, a bit similar to Pandora. Also, on the mobile app, you can only listen on shuffle or to pre-made playlists.

When it comes to Spotify Premium, $9.99 a month goes a long way. Not only do you have access to Spotify’s vast library of songs, you can listen to them without interruption, whenever you want and wherever you want. Yes, that even means abroad. How can you say no to unlimited skips? You’re no longer limited to only listening on shuffle or to pre-made playlists on the mobile app either. Spotify Premium also allows you to download your songs to enjoy offline as well. How can you say no to any opportunity to conserve your data… unless you have unlimited, then who cares?

Apple Music does not offer a free version, but they do give you your first three months for free. After that, it’s $9.99 a month for access to even more songs than Spotify. How many more? We aren’t entirely sure, to be honest. You’ll also be able to access all of your music, think previously purchased iTunes songs or songs ripped from a CD, in one place, and the ability to listen to your music offline, like Spotify.

Note: Both services offer student discount rates.

The music libraries

Spotify boasts a library of over 30 million songs while continuing to add new ones daily. Though some artists withhold their music from Spotify, Taylor Swift finally conceded, so you can find all of her music there. How long can you really hold out from one of the top music streaming services anyway?

Apple Music offers its users access to about 40 million songs. To make up for the fact that they don’t offer a free version, Apple Music offers exclusives, some of which have included Drake and Chance the Rapper.

The users

Spotify announced in January of 2018 that they now have 70 million subscribers and about 140 million active users total.

Apple Music has over 30 million subscribers, and though they have grown rather rapidly since 2015, they are still significantly falling behind Spotify.

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The user interface

I’ll be honest with this one, not that I wasn’t before… but I don’t love the dark color scheme of Spotify. I’d also be crazy to say that that one aspect held me back from this streaming service. Sure, Apple Music may look prettier, but it’s not quite as user-friendly.

Spotify offers a very simple user face. Upon opening the app, you are greeted with your recently played, as well as a curation of pre-made playlists to choose from. If none of that suits your fancy, no problem, just make your way over to your library. There you can choose from your playlists, radio stations, songs etc. It’s all right there. Say you have a favorite artist but don’t want to be restricted to just their music. Spotify has a solution for that too. Pick an artist, or a song, listen to that, and then create a station based off of similar music and artists. It’s as easy as that. And when it comes to shuffle, it’s as easy as playing a song and hitting the shuffle button on the bottom left corner. Easy. As. Pie.

Apple Music, I still struggle with shuffle. Sometimes I just want to play a song then go back to shuffle, but it’s not there where I expect it to be. Your only option is to play your whole library or playlist from shuffle. You can’t pick a specific song and go from there unless you want to listen and then go back into the app and put shuffle on. Clearly, this really irks me. Aside from that, Apple offers relatively the same features to its users, only not quite as easily accessible.

The results

In my opinion, Spotify comes out on top in all categories. Unless your absolute favorite artist of all time, that for some reason is the only person you ever listen to, happens to be one of the few artists not featured on Spotify, then overall, you get a much better experience with Spotify.