I can already hear the Spotify hipsters booing, but the real ones know Apple Music is the superior music streaming service.
As a five-year Apple Music user who switched from Spotify, I’ve found several reasons why it’s better.
The most obvious one is the user friendly interface.
While Spotify does have a ton of content, it looks and feels crowded to the user.
The search and home features are complicated to maneuver and take you to several different screens until you find what you want.
On the other hand, Apple Music’s intuitive design is more organized. This is especially true on the mobile app which, let’s be honest, is where we primarily use these services.
I can easily listen to new albums I just downloaded, find my playlists and effortlessly discover new songs and genres because of Apple’s organization.
But maybe a complicated interface doesn’t bother you. However, something that should bother you is that Spotify pays artists only about half of what Apple Music does.
The average payout for one million streams on Spotify is around a minimum of $3,000, which averages to 4.5 cents per stream, according to a March 3 Forbes article. Meanwhile the average payout for one million streams on Apple Music is around a minimum of $5,000.
Neither of these systems offer huge checks to musicians for their work to begin with, but over time every cent adds up.
Meaning if you’re using Apple Music, you’re literally supporting your favorite artists more than if you were using Spotify.
Listeners also fail to realize you’re able to listen to more songs offline and download music easier on Apple Music.
Apple Music has a limit of 100,000 songs that are available for download, while Spotify has a 10,000 song limit, according to a Feb. 18 article on Digitaltrends.com, one of the largest technology publishers in the world.
To complicate matters, Spotify won’t allow its users to download individual songs. You have to put whatever songs you want into a playlist, then download that whole playlist.
On Apple Music, there’s a tab for your downloaded songs so you can easily listen to your music anywhere you travel.
Oh, and Apple allows you to download individual songs with one click.
Something else obvious yet important is how Apple Music syncs to all of your Apple products in their ecosystem.
If you’re using Spotify on an iPhone, Macbook or Apple Watch, what are you doing?
Apple Music curates all its playlists, music and features so Apple product users have the convenient experience of having everything in one place.
Even though these reasons I just gave are important, Spotify users, like my colleague, always mention their community-driven playlists and their ease finding new music.
Yet in my experience, Apple Music doesn’t lack in these areas.
Just the other day, I finished listening to one of my mellow playlists and more music was automatically recommended to me.
Apple Music doesn’t just recommend new songs, but an entirely different, yet similar genre. That genre was Japanese Jazz, which I now indulge in daily.
Why would I collaborate with someone to make a playlist when I can share a unique one that reflects my own music taste? I personally don’t want someone having access to one of my playlists only to add music I don’t like.
It’s all in the details for Apple Music.
From having the option to read lyrics from your favorite songs in real-time, to having exclusive content first like Frank’s album “Endless” or Drake’s album “Views” in 2016, the choice of which music streaming service to pick is self-explanatory.