Spotify or Apple Music?
Kirk McElhearn asked the question on his iTunes Forum, “Are there any long-time Spotify users who want to chime in and say what they think are the pros and cons of Spotify and Apple Music?”
It’s an interesting question and my opinion of Apple Music changes the more I use it.
One of the definite pros of Spotify is the ability to share and collaborate on playlists. Most of my friends use Spotify regularly, or at least have a Spotify account. If I want to share some music with them, Spotify is the place to do it. I am in a ‘band’ as well as having a few fellow DJ mates, so collaborating on playlists is a great way to share song ideas as well as the latest dance tunes.
One great thing about Spotify is that it’s fast. Apparently they no longer use a peer-to-peer file sharing infrastructure, but even so I press play on a song and it’s playing in less than a second. Apple Music is a fair bit slower by comparison, but still totally acceptable.
Spotify has never been particularly good with music discovery. If I know what I am looking for then great, but the recommendations sections have only been good in recent times. Even then, I can’t just start a radio playlist based upon the current song or artist as I can in Apple Music.
But what I really like about Apple Music is Apple’s integration. Walking down the road, I fire up Siri by pressing the remote button on my SoundMagic E10s. I say something like “play me songs by Jess Glynne”, and within a few seconds I’m listening to some top rated songs by Jess Glynne.
I just wish Apple would take a bit more time to add some more in-depth features here. I flummoxed him/her last night by requesting “Play some early tracks by Mike Oldfield”. And although “Play the rest of this album” works, if the track has already finished, you’re too late. If you’re playing music via AirPlay, why pause the music while using Siri? Let me DJ using Siri and not interrupt the flow for my guests.
It’s also worth noting that when I talk about these services, I am not going into the pros and cons of their desktop and mobile apps. Let’s just say that neither desktop apps leave much to be desired, but I really do hope there’s a department at Apple, busily beavering away at a brand new Photos app equivalent for iTunes.
Apple Music has thus far been free for me and its supposed 11 million other users. There are facets to Apple Music I don’t really use (Connect, Beats 1, New), however I’m probably going to continue with the service because I still feel I will be getting my money’s worth from stations I can create on-the-fly. I must also admit however, since I use iTunes Match, that I’m rather worried about what could happen to my library if I ever decided to cancel!
There are still some great tricks you can play with Apple Music and Siri, which for me gives it the edge over Spotify due to its convenience. We’re getting ever-closer to a future where we can conjure up music in a Star Trek computer-like fashion… I can’t wait.
Related links:
The Committed Episode 93: “I’m Not Opinionated, I’m Right” — Kirk and Andy Doe discuss the state of streaming services and the future of Apple Music
“To Stream or Not To Stream? That is the Wrong Question.” (Andy Doe)
