It seems like everyone loves Apple Music.
A combination of exclusive artist partnerships and an ever-expanding track catalogue has seen the service come on leaps and bounds since launching in 2015, while the recent arrival of Lossless and Spatial Audio for its iOS and Android users threatens to push it to the front of the queue when it comes to the best music streaming platforms out there.
What's more, Apple announced back in 2019 that its music service had surpassed 60 million users globally, a figure that was rising at a rate of around two million new subscribers per month. It hasn’t published updated numbers since then, but that pace would see the platform boast around 110 million users as of right now – just 50 million shy of Spotify’s 160 million.
But for me, Spotify is still the track star of the streaming world, and it’s about time somebody stood up for the Swedes – especially after TechRadar’s own Audio & Music Editor, Olivia Tambini, declared Apple Music the best option for iOS users earlier this week.
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It’s worth noting that I am no Apple oppositionist. On this very site, I have professed my enduring love for iPhones and the Apple ecosystem as a whole. But I don’t yet feel compelled to ditch Spotify for its American counterpart – for several reasons.
Scandi style
The first is Spotify’s superior user interface (UI). On both its mobile and desktop applications, access to music, artists, playlists and podcasts is as simple as it can be, with well-sized tiles and cover artwork laid out in an easily-digestible format. This is particularly true on mobile, where content is split across just three tabs – Home, Search and Your Library – to keep the experience streamlined and undemanding.
Spotify’s UI is also super dynamic. The latest tracks or episodes from my favourite creators are always bumped to the top of my feed, and though the Home section is the least useful of the three – often becoming becoming a dumping ground for new content – I never run the risk of missing out on surprise releases that might otherwise be condemned to the roulette of discovery playlists.
Spotify was founded in Stockholm, and its app embraces the simple, clean and cheerful philosophy that is so emblematic of Scandinavian design – think IKEA and Volvo, but for music.
There’s little doubt that using Apple Music has become a much improved experience since its iOS 14 update, but it still suffers from a blocky and convoluted menu system so unbecoming of a brand that’s famously design-led in its thinking.
Voyage of discovery
Yes, Apple Music has a bigger track library – but what’s a few million here or there? The more important metric is one that measures just how much of that library is made accessible to the user in a way that isn’t shoehorned into view like old stock in a shop window.
That metric isn’t quantifiable as a figure, but Spotify’s ability to make me listen to and care about artists I otherwise wouldn’t bat an eyelid towards is quite remarkable.
Spotify’s ability to make me listen to and care about artists I otherwise wouldn’t bat an eyelid towards is quite remarkable.
Have you ever heard of Tom The Mail Man? Neither had I, until Spotify sneakily added his tracks – which at the time were recorded in his friend’s bedroom – into my Discover Weekly playlist. Now, I’ve got alerts on for all his new releases.
The point being, I’m all for discovering emerging artists as long as their music doesn’t sound amateurish, and Spotify does a great job of sourcing tracks that never sound out of place in my tracklist.
Apple Music, for all its exclusive creator and curator partnerships, can’t get close to Spotify’s algorithm-based approach to song recommendations. Sure, it’s nice that Tim Cook and co. enlist the services of real people when curating discovery playlists for their platform, but Spotify has managed to crack that nut through an impressive sequence of code which delivers a welcome surprise nine out of 10 times.
This is the main reason that the ‘Apple Music has more songs’ boat doesn't really float with me. 5 million more tracks in an ocean of 75 million is inconsequential, especially when Spotify does a far better job of exposing users to its 70 million-strong library.
Again, this is not intended as a slight at the quality of Apple Music as a service – I’ve used both, and it is a great platform – but rather a defence of a competing service which gets unfair flack based on meaningless library stats.
Sharing is caring
And then, we come to Spotify’s social features. Granted, this is decidedly lower down on the pecking order of most important streaming service features, but I actually find myself using the platform’s extensive social options all the time.
Sharing tracks to other apps like Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp is a breeze, and is made more interesting thanks to the auto-generated music videos that sometimes accompany songs posted to your social media stories. It’s also super useful that users on these platforms can then listen to the same tracks via the single touch of a button, without the need to sign in to an account.
The app’s integration with Facebook is a nice touch, too. On desktop, it’s always fun to see what your friends are listening to in real-time – especially when you catch a gym buff rocking out to Les Misérables.
Spotify also gives you the ability to publish your recent listening history to Facebook, which then allows your Facebook friends to like or comment on your activity. Admittedly, this isn’t something I’ve ever done – not everyone rates Justin Bieber, you know – but it seems like a cool idea, in principle.
On that point, though, listening history is tracked extensively by Spotify, and if you’re OK with Mark Zuckerberg knowing you had Olivia Rodrigo on repeat for three days, features like Spotify Wrapped make for entertaining and enlightening reading come the end of each year.
Apple Music offers some of these social features too. You can likewise see what your friends are listening to and share playlists between users, and those options unique to Spotify – like Facebook integration and Spotify Wrapped – might seem superfluous novelties to those who prefer to keep their music to themselves. And that’s fair.
But superior social features nonetheless mark another feather in Spotify’s cap, and one worth flagging to the naysayers reluctant to acknowledge the platform’s merits.
Truce?
The point of this article hasn’t been to bash Apple Music. Think of it as less an attack on one service, and more a defence of another. Spotify is still great, even for iPhone users, and it’s a fact easily forgotten when its biggest rival is introducing impressive new features left, right and center.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Apple Music will jump ahead of Spotify in the years to come, but right now, the stellar user experience and recommendation smarts of the latter make it just as impressive as it ever has been.
Now, what’s all this fuss about Tidal?
