The music industry has always persuaded on rivalries.
The following comes from Reviews XP, a Digital Music News partner.
With the rise of music streaming platforms and services over the last ten years, another new rival can be added to the already predominant group. While there are a number of music streaming platforms to choose from, Spotify, a Swedish-born platform, and Apple Music, the replacement to iTunes, top the list.
When you sign up on each of these platforms – Spotify and Apple Music – you are asked basic information related to your favorite genre and artists to set up a personalized recommendation for you. Both Spotify and Apple Music have radio stations based on the choice you make while signing up.
While Spotify does not look for an upfront payment as you sign in, the option to buy Spotify plans is always available. In fact, you can look up Spotify plans to suit your purpose. However, the free version of Spotify works just as fine. Apple Music, on the other hand, though offers a free trial, but at some point of time, you have to make a payment to benefit from their services.
Elaborated below are detailed discussions analyzing the know-hows and performance of both the streaming platforms to enable you to choose the best, depending on your preference and requirements.
Spotify vs. Apple Music
Spotify is a flexible option for music lovers where you can stream songs for free. It has tailored playlists such as, Discover Weekly that is automatically jammed with new songs and latest releases every week. It has an impeccable algorithm that recommends new songs based on your listening habits.
On Spotify, you have an additional feature of seeing what songs your friends are listening to, if they share this detail with you, on the desktop app. Spotify Codes are an amusing means to share playlists, albums, and tracks with your friends.
Spotify works across devices from PCs to smartphones to game consoles to smart speakers. They are best for their podcast offering. The thing that mainly matters is the number of plays on the playlists. You can check out these best sites to buy Spotify plays on your playlists.
Alternatively, Apple Music, with their exclusive albums and humongous song library, also has playlists based on your listening habits. Additionally, you can listen to their Apple Music 1 Radio stations controlled by human DJs.
One property that makes Apple Music stand out is its exclusive social feature called Connect, which is a part of the Apple Music package. It is a substantial way for the artists to “connect” with their fans in an intimate fashion, gifting access to their new releases.
Initially exclusive to the iOS users, Apple Music has now made itself available for android users too.
Music Library
Spotify presently boasts over 50 million songs. With a reported addition of 40,000 tracks, on average, every day, Spotify’s services are not bowing down. They have an ample provision of music, much more than you can even listen to. The platform escorts all the latest releases and exclusive lives sessions to its New Releases tab each Friday, making it more convenient for its users. Additionally, the service curates and designs playlists for every musical subgenre and buying Spotify plays for curated playlists is a pro tip to get the best results and being famous.
On the other hand, Apple Music displays over 60 million songs across a broad range of genres, overleaping Spotify’s mark. Additionally, Apple Music has a feature of the iTunes library. This function provides you with an option to freely browse your music – purchased via iTunes store or taken from a CD – along with Apple’s standard catalog.
Subscription Fees
Spotify, though has experimented with different versions, has chosen to stick to its basic formula of allowing everyone to access tracks in its catalog for free. There are ads every few songs, but the free version give you access to its Discover Weekly playlists and allow you to tailor 15 playlists of your choice. It is a good strategy to hold onto its users and lure them to their Premium paid accounts.
Spotify Premium plan ranges from a personal plan for $9.99/ £9.99/ AU$11.99, to a family plan for $14.99/ £14.99/ AU$17.99. Spotify Premium also has discounted offers for students for only $4.99/ £4.99/ $5.99 and a Spotify Premium Duo plan, priced at $12.99/ £12.99/ AU$15.99 per month.
While Spotify offers both free and paid versions, Apple Music requires you to sign up and pay to keep enjoying its services. However, Apple Music has a set of three different payment plans for the greater benefit its users. Its student-friendly plan is priced at $4.99/ £4.99/ AU$5.99, whereas, the personal plan comes for $9.99/ £9.99/ AU$11.99 and family plan is priced at $14.99/ £14.99/ AU$17.99.
Radio and Podcasts
Spotify replaced its radio tab with an “assisted playlisting” feature, which can be found under the search tab. This feature provides you with recommendations based on your interests and past listening history. Premium users also get the benefit of a feature called Endless Artist Radio.
Apple Music’s premier radio station, Apple Music 1, runs nonstop music mixed by human DJs on live radio shows, with in-house DJs like Zane Lowe and notable musicians such as Annie Clark (St. Vincent) as hosts. Besides, Apple Music also has some generic radio stations and non-music stations.
User Interface and Mobile Experience
Spotify has a UI designed to work uniformly strong across all the devices making it more user-friendly. Being redesigned for smaller screen and being able to work with multiple platforms are its huge assets.
Apple Music, on the other hand, has a clear disparity between its PC version and mobile version. The version that is developed for smartphones is a little complicated with its large icon design.
Offline Downloads
Apple Music allows you to download offline tracks across 10 different devices at once with an upper limit of 100,000 songs. Spotify, however, falls behind in this arena with their upper limit sitting at only 10,000 songs on up to five devices.
Final Verdict
While Apple Music has some noteworthy progress and better features, Spotify still wins the race with its simpler and accessible interface. Although Apple Music’s larger catalog, exclusive releases and Apple Music 1 makes it a serious contender, but Spotify’s free access and Discover Weekly playlists earns it for the streaming service.
Music is made by musicians, many of whom work extremely hard to try and produce quality music for their fans. Were any of these people consulted when these streaming rates were set? Did anybody at Spotify or Apple talk to these musicians to ask them how they will be able to continue to provide good music with streaming rates so low that they all have to go out and get real jobs? Nobody wants to pay the musicians of course. Fans got so used to going online and stealing the music after Napster that they decided that music should be free and musicians no longer deserved to get paid. And then the better musicians (60% of them) quit the music business and the fans seem to think that all the new amateur musicians (800 Million of them) will make music as good as the Professional musicians. Hmmmmm?! Will some guy in Bakersfield working in his bedroom studio come up with another ‘Dark side of the moon’ on next to no budget? Can some amateur musician (after working his day job as a Plumber) come up with another Sgt. Pepper working out of his basement? Well the fans seem to think that bands getting ZERO can make great albums when they used to get $250,000! Yeh sure. Keep on believin!! And thanks so much for supporting Spotify, set up by a guy who was involved with STOLEN MUSIC at a Torrent site. Made stolen music LEGAL and how he’s really rich! What a great era for musicians! But the fans could give a Rat’s ass about the musicians. They could care less about how they pay their electric bills or provide for their families. “Go out and do some gigs to make money” they say. “Go sell some T-shirts” is the solution! Then came COVID. Now what?? And so bands are slowly going away. How can five guys in a band make enough to pay their mortgages in 2020? And so SOLO musicians are the future. One guy can survive POORLY on Streaming rates. This is the future of music, sadly. Revenues now down 70% due to musicians getting next to nothing from their fans. Stay away from this music business. It ended badly and streaming killed it!
Roberto, nobody is forcing musicians to sign contracts, or otherwise forcing independent bands to put their music on streaming services. You can make vinyl or cassettes and sell physical media. You can sell digital files on numerous sites. You can even sell subscriptions so fans can stream privately.
Why are you whining like a little bitch about Daniel Ek? Why are you being an elitist asshole about how many people publish music today? You think you deserve a seat at the table on how the music industry is run? What a joke. I bet you couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
Why are you showing a link to “Buying Spotify Plays” ? From the “trusted review” site to the Top 10 scammers ! None of the sites are legit. You are actually taking money out of musicians pockets. Did you get paid for this or do you have a site business.