Spotify vs Apple Music: Which Music Streaming Service Is Better?

Spotify and Apple Music are two widely used streaming music services. While both platforms offer music streaming capabilities, they each have their own unique advantages and disadvantages. When choosing between the two services, you need to compare the two platforms from various aspects. So, the question remains, Spotify vs Apple Music, which is the better choice for you?

Luckily, to help you make the best option, this article makes a thoroughly comparison of these two services. If that’s what you need, please stay with us and keep reading.

Spotify vs Apple Music: A Brief Comparison Table

Spotify or Apple Music: Specific Comparison

Size of Music Catalogs

Both Apple Music and Spotify boast immense music libraries, each offering over 70 million songs from just about any artist you can imagine along with thousands of expertly curated playlists.

However, Apple Music tends to win exclusive debuts of albums from the world's biggest superstars like Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean, Drake, and more.

But hardcore music fans may still prefer Spotify's unmatched depth in niche genres like folk, electronica, jazz, classical, and more.

Ultimately both services have vast catalogs for their core demographics — Apple Music catering best to mainstream pop listeners and Spotify dominating overall variety.

Audio Quality and Streaming Options

Apple Music delivers great audio quality with 256 kbps AAC files across all devices. Spotify also streams at a decent "Standard" quality of 96 kbps Ogg Vorbis out-of-box.

But audio-oriented users can crank Spotify streams up much higher across Premium tiers: "High" (320 kbps), "Very High" (approximately 6-900 kbps), and at the top end “HiFi” delivering near lossless-quality music at 9216 kbps.

Essentially, while casual listeners will be plenty happy with Apple Music audio, true audiophiles have more refinement options on Spotify Premium for enjoying extremely high fidelity streams.

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Intuitive Interfaces and Ease of Use

Spotify and Apple Music both deliver appealing interfaces making browsing endless music straightforward. Apple Music adopts Apple's signature aesthetic with blown-up album art, a tasteful black/grey/white color scheme, and evenly spaced text.

Navigation stays consistent from iOS to desktop too. Spotify features a darker palette punctuated by its trademark lime green accents.

While dense with tabs and menus, controls generally remain understandable. For simplicity alone, Apple Music inches ahead - especially for those less experienced streaming music.

Personalization and Playlists Discover

Weekly and Release Radar epitomize why Spotify is undisputed industry leader in algorithmically personalizing music to individual tastes.

Apple Music's hand-curated playlists also impress yet lack the "magic" feeling of Spotify continually understanding your preferences.

Spotify also leverages its community with 4 billion+ user-shared playlists. For tailored playlists down to the song, Spotify still wins.

Platform and Device Compatibility

Given Spotify's independent status, you can find it on an astoundingly wide array of platforms beyond phones and laptops — from smart speakers and wearables to gaming consoles, smart home devices, in-car entertainment systems, and everything between.

Apple Music predictably focuses its integration mainly into Apple's gardens — iOS, Mac, Apple TV, CarPlay, etc. While Apple Music has expanded to Android, Echo speakers, and Windows, Spotify's universal multi-platform support can’t be beaten.

Pricing and Subscription Plans

Both Apple Music and Spotify adopt an identical $9.99 USD monthly fee for their unlimited, ad-free individual plans. However Spotify offers greater flexibility for price-sensitive users, with discounted annual plans and segmented offerings like Premium Student ($4.99/month) and Premium Duo ($12.99/month for couples under one roof).

One advantage Apple holds is cheaper access via Voice Plan for Siri requests ($4.99/month). But cost concerned users may prefer Spotify's free, ad-supported base tier with shuffle functionality over Apple Music’s lack of any free option.

Music Discovery and Curation

For music discovery, Spotify again demonstrates why its become shorthand for streaming excellence — an explore section highlights rising artists getting early buzz while well trained algorithms suggest songs, albums, artists and playlists you may like at the individual user level.

Apple Music catches up some through human curation with daily highlights, artist spotlights and album commentary sourced from editors. But Spotify feels more personalized, intelligent and focused when it comes to uncovering your next favorite artist or song gem.

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