Apple Music VS Spotify – Which One Is Suitable for You in 2018

Updated Jun 05,2018 | by Cody

Spotify is the most popular music streaming service, which has tens of millions of paid subscribers. Apple Music is growing fast in 2018. Apple Music VS Spotify: which is the best music streaming service that you should choose?

In this article, I will compare Apple Music with Spotify in many aspects including price, music collection, music quality, etc. if you still wonder which music streaming service to choose, hopefully, your search ends here.

Pricing

Apple Music and Spotify both provide similar pricing plans with a slight difference.

They both offer $9.99/month for individual plan, $14.99/month for a family plan up to 6 users, and $4.99/month for students only.

Apple Music also offers a $99 annual plan for individuals, which saves 20.88 compared to individual monthly plan. If you are already a paid subscriber (trial included), you can change to an Annual subscription. In the Music app, tap For You > profile icon > View Apple ID > Subscription >Apple Music Membership to select Individual (1 Year) plan.

Compared with Apple Music’s 3-month free trial, Spotify’1-month free trial is not so generous, but Spotify offers a free plan. You can use Spotify to listen to music for free forever if you do not mind the ads and quality.  

Music Library

Spotify collects 30 million-plus songs in their catalog, and it adds over 20,000 new songs every day.

Apple Music claims to have 40 million-plus songs and more exclusive deals. Some new songs will be released to Apple Music first. Based on the location you’re in, some music may not be available in Apple Music.

Spotify only allows you to add 10,000 songs into your music library while 100,000 songs in Apple Music.

For music collection, the winner is Apple Music obviously.

Spotify VS Apple Music Quality Comparison 

Spotify allows you to choose music quality in Music streaming or download. It has three options: Normal quality, High quality, and Extreme quality. The normal quality is 96 kbps(kilobits per second), the high is 160 kbps and extreme is 320kbps.

Apple Music does not provide such options. Music is streamed and downloaded at 256Kbps.

You can download music from Apple Music, but Apple Music saves music offline as DRM-protected format M4P, which means you can only play the downloaded with music when you are subscribed to Apple Music.

Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis as the streaming format. Songs can also be downloaded for offline listening, but they are also DRM protected. You need to use third-party tools to convert Spotify music to MP3, M4A or other formats. if you use Spotify to download songs, you can transfer music to iPhone, iPad, iPod and any other device to play.

As for sound quality, Apple Music vs Spotify, the winner is Spotify.

Supported Devices

As you know, all Apple products are more like a “closed” environment, and Apple Music is no exception. You can use Apple Music on most Apple devices including Apple TV, Apple Watch, CarPlay, and HomePod.

Though there is Android version of Apple Music, it does not work as well as on iOS device. What’s also worth mentioning is that you can ask Siri to play songs in Apple Music, which is cool.

Compared with Apple Music, Spotify is far more cross-platform friendly. It works with Android devices, iOS device, PC, Mac, Spotify Connect, Samsung Gear, PlayStation, Smart TVs, etc. it even has a web version, so you can use Spotify on any device that has a web browser.

Music Discovery

As you keep listening to music and liking songs, both Spotify and Apple Music will recommend playlists that may like. I have used both for a few months and I find Spotify has a big advantage in discovering new music. Spotify has 2 automatic custom playlists Daily Mixes and Discover Weekly to show you songs based on your listening habits.

As Spotify has more paid subscriber and free users, it has way more amazing playlists that you can choose from. Besides, Spotify allows you to share any public playlists on any social media.

Though Apple music has the Connect feature that allows you to follow music artists, when I listen to music in Apple Music, it keeps recommending the same playlists.

Anything Else

Radio Station: Both Apple Music and Spotify have Radio stations created from artists. 

Lyrics: Apple Music can display full lyrics while listening to a song, but the lyrics do not scroll as the music plays. Some of the songs in Spotify will display background information about the song.

Offline mode: Both Apple Music and Spotify allows you to listen to music when you are offline. Apple Music Lyrics is not available in Offline Mode.

User experience: Besides Dark mode, Spotify allows you to add songs to the queue or library by swiping a song to left or right. When you search for a song, Spotify allows you to tap on a search suggestion to play it right away without the need to actually tap the search button, which is also available in Offline Mode.

Collaborative playlist: Spotify provides a collaborative playlist feature that allows you to work together with other people to edit playlists. Apple Music fans have expected this feature for so long, but it is still unavailable yet.

Conclusion

After comparing Apple Music and Spotify in so many ways, you should have a clear idea of which one is suitable for you. Not so clear? Below is Apple Music VS Spotify features comparison, which should give you more clue.

If you enjoy Apple eco-system and want to listen to new songs the first time, then Apple Music is your best choice. If you want to enjoy music on multiple devices and want the best quality of music, then Spotify is more suitable.  

If you still cannot decide, then you can sign up for both Apple Music and Spotify trail version to test it out. When you make up your mind, you can transfer playlists between Apple Music and Spotify using a free app SongShift, which can be downloaded from AppStore. 

For me, I choose Spotify over Apple Music because it always finds music that I love and I really enjoy the music quality it serves. 

Bonus Tip: Transfer Music Downloaded between iPhone and PC

If you have downloaded music from Spotify or Apple Music on your computer, then you do not need to download it again. This is really helpful if you switch Spotify to Apple Music and you want to transfer Spotify music to Apple Music.

To do that, you need iPhone transfer software IOTransfer that can help you transfer music between PC and iPhone. you can free download it to get started.

Within IOTransfer, you can click Manage tab > Music > Import to select songs on your computer to transfer to your iOS device. Just select the Export button if you want to transfer music from iPhone to PC.

This tool IOTransfer is really helpful to iPhone users. Besides transfer music, you can also use it to transfer videos, photos, contacts, books, etc. What’s more, it can help you clean up your iPhone to free up storage space and download videos to your iPhone. 

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