With all the talk about Apple Music, iCloud Music Library, and iTunes interface issues, why not just switch to Spotify?
So I did.
Here’s what I found.
Spotify’s interface is complex and confusing, but no more so than Apple Music (and nothing could be as confusing as iTunes). There are some really nice elements to Spotify’s interface, some lessons Apple might consider. For example, in Spotify’s iOS app, if you press and hold on a playlist (don’t let go), a page of icons will appear, with one icon per song. Slide around and each song will start playing, allowing you to quickly get a sense of the music in that playlist.
Another thing I really like about the Spotify interface is how easy it is to push music to my phone for offline listening. Every playlist has a toggle marked Available Offline. Tap it, and the music starts downloading to your device. Easy peasy.
Don’t get me wrong, there are things that Apple Music does well, too, some things better than Spotify. I’d say, as far as pure capability, it’s a push.
Here are some other factors to consider.
The music libraries seem pretty comparable in size and quality (unless you are a rabid fan of Taylor Swift’s 1989). As far as I can tell, both services feature a library of about 30 million tracks.
Sharing is a push as well. If you are willing to share your Facebook credentials, you can social with other Facebook logged-in Spotify folks. I didn’t go down that path. But you can use the standard sharing mechanisms in both Spotify and Apple Music to share playlists.
Spotify allows you to follow curated, active playlists. Apple Music has a similar feature, described here.
But Apple Music benefits from being inside the walled garden. And those benefits start to stack up. Some of the more obvious benefits:
– My music is available in Apple Music. I can mix and match, switch back and forth between Apple Music and my music effortlessly. I can build a playlist with both. With Apple Music, there’s no sense of inside and outside the garden. That said, there is the question of Jim’s lost music, an issue of trust, but one that can be safeguarded by a simple backup.
– Only Apple Music is integrated with Siri. I can ask Siri to Play Prince Royce, Play Jazz, or Play Recent and I’m done. This is a big deal when I am very busy, don’t have my hands free, am driving, etc.
– The Beats 1 experience is unique to Apple Music. There is simply nothing like it. I’m listening to live music that I can like and add to my own playlists. Apple has done an exceptional job here, bringing the traditional terrestrial radio experience into the data driven streaming music universe. Tying the analog old-school feel of human curation with my existing music library experience.
– Though this may change, there is currently no way to store Spotify music on my Apple Watch. I can see what Spotify tune is currently playing, but there are times when I need music stored on my Watch and won’t have my phone nearby (going for a run, for example).
– Family plan pricing. Apple Music’s family plan is $14.99 for up to six people. Spotify’s family pricing is $14.99 for me plus 1, $19.99 for me plus 2, $24.99 for me plus 3, $29.99 for me plus 4. That is a huge difference.
Bottom line, Apple Music has a distinct home field advantage. If Apple can find a way to unify the iOS and Mac universes, sand off the rough edges from both interfaces, and get Jim back on board (last I spoke with him, he was walking around with Spotify in his earbuds), this is their ball game to lose.
Me? I’m going to continue listening to Spotify, get to know it a bit more. Time will tell if I throw my long term lot in with Apple Music.
Spotify, at least Spotify on the Mac, does integrate with your own library, but it’s definitely a bit confusing. For me that’s the biggest appeal of Apple Music, having all my music in once place. But, of course there’s the classic “eggs in one basket” argument. If it breaks, which it will, you’re SOL.
And last week when streaming from Apple Music was dead I booted up Spotify and was still able to listen to music.
Beats 1… too bad its so Top 40 or hip-hop. I suppose thats what appeals to the masses, but I was hoping for something oh so much smarter and edgier. If they wanted to hit it out of the ballpark they should have focused more on EDM style if they wanted popular. Playing the same song every 3 hours is so un-Apple-like I can’t stand listening anymore.
I’m ditching Music and will use Spotify only if I need to listen to a whole album before I buy it in iTunes. Match serves me well, I’m from the generation that collected our music and painfully converted CDs over to electronic and have lots of time into my Match collection. (its just too bad Apple wants to corrupt that library too from time to time – one or two more and maybe I will look for a wholesale switch)
I believe Spotify’s streaming is peer-to-peer and that’s why it’s instantaneous even on slower connections, compared to services like Apple Music where there may be or second or two waiting for the song to load. That’s still one of the biggest advantages of Spotify to me. The software on desktop has definitely taken a nosedive in the last year though.
Spotify has one big advantage: Spotify Connect.
It’s much better than AirPlay because it frees the iPad/iPhone/Mac for other stuff.
One can play music through the amplifier using Spotify Connect and still watch YouTube etc. with audio on the iPad and so on. This is not possible with AirPlay because it streams all audio from iPad to the amp.
Also, AirPlay is a bit choppy in my experience. If I use my iPad Air heavily during streaming I get short breaks occasionally i.e. the streaming cuts off for a few tenths of a second.
Finally, Spotify Connect is free in terms of battery usage from the client device point of view. AirPlay is not.
For now, I will continue with Spotify once the AM trial ends.
But if AirPlay gets Spotify Connect like streaming where the amp does all the work (I think they have this for videos?), then it’s nearly all the same for me which service to use. I am not a big fan of either UI.
( I don’t have any local music, so all that is totally irrelevant for me)
I switched over to Apple Music from Spotify on day one, and instantly liked how my music (about 2,000 songs) was intermingled with anything I could like from the service. This was the big selling point to me. I didn’t run into any of the glitches Jim did when he turned on the service combined with iTunes Match.
A few weeks later now, I have replicated my custom playlists on Spotify and am enjoying Apple Music as much as I did Spotify.
This weekend, I did run into some issues with iTunes Match. These are not new issues. Tracks from a playlist filled mostly with tracks I own would not play. This happens occasionally (too frequently) with iTM, and has from day one.
I am frankly amazed that Apple Music is even available where I live, as it was not in the list of countries mentioned in the keynote, and we only got the iTunes Music Store about two years ago. So I was actually shocked to discover that the pricing here is $4.99 per month, or $7.99 for a family subscription. I am pretty certain that I will subscribe after the trial comes to an end – and this is helped of course by the fact that it’s the only game in town. The likes of Spotify, Pandora and their ilk do not seem interested in selling their wares in Thailand.
AppleMusic has a problem with streaming quality. I compared Rdio and AppleMusic with Beck’s new song Dream. AppleMusic sounds like a 64bit mp3 ugly compressed piece of crap.
Over LTE, the quality is reduced, to lessen the amount of data it uses. Over Wifi the quality seems pretty comparable to me on my Sennheiser HD555s
Depends which show you listen to. Beats 1 NYC does seem to play more Hip Hop, but I’ve heard Ebro play songs that are definitely not hip hop as well. He’s played rock and alternative several times that I’ve listened. And Top 40? Every time I put on Beats 1 I don’t hear top chart music in constant rotation. I usually hear something I’ve never really heard of. Not always something I like, but there seems to be a pretty good mix of hits and unknowns. Each DJ definitely has their own style and type of songs they favor. Beats 1 NYC plays songs that are “hot in NYC,” so of course you’re going to hear more hip hop from that show.
And focus on EDM? Eh, no thanks. Thats your preference maybe, but how exactly would they hit it out of the ballpark by focusing on that? I didn’t know EDM was so smart and edgy. I’m sure the London show plays more EDM than the NYC show.
the test was on my imac, with ethernet and 100mbit. i used 2 headphones, the cheapest sennheiser (hd201) and the new momentum overear. applemusic stream was horrible and give me way to much base, wich the hd201, naturally, could not handle and oversteared extreamly. the distorsion from the compressed stream was very noticable with the momentum. to be fair, it isnt allways like this, only from time to time.
Let me get this straight. Jim basically destroyed Apple Music because he had personal, ripped tracks, with different meta data and file sizes, which then Apple copied ‘the same, but different’ tracks to his playlist? And he didn’t know how to show his iTunes Match tracks in MyPlaylist?
Wow, just wow.
Have fun with that swedish piece of crap. Apple Music has been nothing but AWESOME for me.
I am from Malaysia and I find Apple Music USA gives a richer experience compared to Apple Music Malaysia. Here, most of the recommendations are played-to-death pop or older popular songs. I love country music, but I can’t get the same user profiling as from Apple Music USA so recommendations and playlists for me suck. Why can’t Apple Music have one general experience worldwide like they do with Beats 1. Have a uniform genre selection adding in one or two localized categories. In a global world, some of us like country, Korean, Japanese, korean or even African Tribal music – even though we are not from that country. At the moment Spotify curated playlist (especially for country music) is easier to discover compared to Apple Music.
Ps. Spotify UI is much simpler to use in-car.
Not only does Apple music give you a better value for families in price, they also offer to turn off explicit material which is a godsend while playing playlists in the car with the family, or at work. Spotify has refused to implement this for years while pandora, google music all did.
Perhaps I’m doing things the wrong way. Spotify’s integration on Mac doesn’t work well. I have my library on an external drive because it’s huge and I don’t want it to eat up my MBP’s SSD. What this means is if the drive is disconnected, Spotify would refuse to play tracks that I have on my own library. In contrast, Apple Music plays the tracks regardless of weather the drive is plugged in.
I’m not sure if it’s just me who set up my library this way, but it’s one big issue I have when I try to stream songs from my library on Spotify. Which is kinda the point of using Spotify: to stream those songs. If my drive is plugged in, I’ll play the songs off the drive.
One big plus of being in Malaysia is the price of Spotify. The price point makes it hard for Apple Music to compete.
Airplay also does video and I Airplay to speakers all over my house with no problem at all and no choppiness or other issues. I would check into your wireless network.
My Yamaha Receiver does Airplay, Spotify connect,and Pandora. I also can do Spotify on my Roku attached to the receiver. Lots of devices and even some speakers have Airplay built in.
Also I have not noticed that much battery drain with Airplay. Given its much greater capability I use Airplay much more than Spotify connect including to speakers in other rooms attached to airport expresses. I can play the same music in all the rooms of my house at the same time with much higher quality, much lower cost, and a lot more flexibility than using a Sonos.
I doubt you can tell a difference in normal usage. In fact I’m sure you can;t unless you have different ears than the rest of us.
Your grammar is so poor I can’t follow what you are saying.
In Malaysia Apple Music is USD3.99/mth & USD5.99/mth family plan. Spotify Premium Individual is about same, unless you subscribe to a Spotify service from a telco where it can be considerably cheaper. Apple Music Family plan is way cheaper than Spotify.
Considerable difference if you subscribe to Spotify through a telco.
ok, lets speak german. maybe you can follow me than.
“Spotify’s interface is complex and confusing…”
This is exactly why I’ve been an Rdio user for a little over a year now. It’s desktop app is nothing but a wrapper for their web site, but in comparison to Spotify or Apple Music it’s stunningly simple and clear.