Spotify or Apple Music - Something you need to know

Both Spotify and Apple Music are among the best music streaming services in the markets. How do the two compare? It is hard to say which one is better. Follow us below to see the similar and the difference between Spotify and Apple Music.

Price

Spotify

• Individual: $9.99/month
• Duo: $12.99/month
• Family: $15.99/month
• Student: $4.99/month

Apple Music

• Individual: $10.99/month
• Family: $16.99/month
• Student: $5.99/month
• Voice: $4.99/month

Free trial

Apple Music offers one month free trial to all plans. New subscribers get 6 months free with your eligible AirPods, HomePod mini or Beats. Eligible devices includes any AirPods Pro, AirPods (2nd generation and 3rd generation), AirPods Max, HomePod, HomePod mini, Beats Fit Pro, Beats Studio Buds, Powerbeats, Powerbeats Pro, or Beats Solo Pro.

How to redeem your offer.

1. Make sure your iPhone or iPad is running the latest version of iOS or iPadOS.
2. Pair your eligible audio device to your iPhone or iPad.
3. Open the Apple Music app on your iPhone or iPad and sign in with your Apple ID. If the offer doesn't appear immediately after launching the app, go to the Listen Now tab where it will appear.
4. Tap Get 6 months free.

Spotify also offers one month free trial to all plans. Currently it offers 3-month free trial to Spotify premium plan for users who haven't tried Spotify Premium before.

Student discount

Apple Music and Spotify offer students discounted memberships provided they can prove their eligibility. Apple Music Student Plan costs $5.99 per month, while Spotify Student Plan costs $4.99 per month.

If you have an Apple Music student subscription, you also get Apple TV+ for a limited time.

For $4.99 per month, Spotify Premium Student will give you access to the service’s massive music catalogue, personalized playlists, and extensive podcast selection, all of it ad-free. And you’ll also get a free subscription to Hulu’s ad-supported tier. It used to also contain Showtime ad-supported tier, but now it is removed.

Music Library

Both Apple Music and Spotify libraries have more than 100 million songs, but their track records for exclusives set them apart. Apple Music has claimed a series of high-profile albums (such as Chance The Rapper's "Coloring Book" and Taylor Swift's "1984") as windowed-exclusives, meaning they hit other services eventually. -- How artists upload songs to Spotify for royalties?

There’s another area where Apple Music has the leg up on its competition: integration of the iTunes library. Users are able to upload any music to Apple Music library, and it allows users to browser your own music. Spotify has a similar function, but you can’t access your local music via broad search.

Music quality

In addition to AAC(Advanced Audio Codec), Apple Music is making its entire catalog of more than 100 million songs available in lossless audio at different resolutions. In Apple Music, “Lossless” refers to lossless audio up to 48kHz, and “Hi-Res Lossless” refers to lossless audio from 48kHz to 192kHz. Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless files are very large and use much more bandwidth and storage space than standard AAC files.

Spotify offers different audio quality for free and premium users. Free users get up to 160kbit/s and premium users get up to 320kbit/s. Spotify uses AAC in web player and Ogg Vorbis Codec in app.

Apple's 256k AAC is pretty similar to Spotify's 320k OGG Vorbis. On paper Spotify's higher bitrate should produce higher fidelity audio but AAC encoding is better than Spotify's OGG Vorbis, therefore nullifying any advantage of Spotify's higher bitrate.

• Automatic: Dependent on your network connection
• Low: Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s
• Normal: Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s
• High: Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s
• Very high: Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s

Music Discover

Spotify's most compelling feature is its user-specific Discover playlists, a once-weekly, now daily way for music lovers to discover new tracks. Discover Weekly in particular deserves high praise in the streaming world (it’s so smart that Google copied the feature). Added to your feed every Monday morning, the feature delivers a two-hour playlist of personalized music recommendations based on your listening habits, as well as the habits of those who listen to similar artists.

As for Apple Music, upon creating an account users will be prompted to select some of their favorite artists so the service can get a sense of their tastes. Apple Music has a similar section called My New Music Mix. Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio function also plays a major role when it comes to music discovery. Apple Music invites well-known musicians — Elton John (!!), Josh Homme, Pharrell Williams — to host their own shows. Then they share the playlists!

Social

Apple Music has Connect, which is supposed to interface musicians directly with their fans. In reality, that hasn't really happened.
Spotify approaches social differently: It connects you with your friends on social media to get a glimpse at what they're listening to, in real time.

Other features

Liked songs

Liked Songs is one important feature in Spotify that Apple doesn't offer. You could add or delete any song from the list by tapping the "heart" button. If you have many songs in the list, you could shuffle through the playlist and go weeks without hearing a repeated song. Apple Music doesn't seem to work that way.

Spotify connect

Spotify connect allows you to remote control the song from your phone. When you play Spotify on MacBook or Amazon Echo, you can use the Spotify app on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch to choose songs, skip, adjust volume everything.

Podcasts

Spotify combines music and podcasts together, while if you use Apple Music, you need another Podcasts app. Apple which doesn't even offer Podcasts app on Android.

Crossfade

Apple Music Crossfade feature is not available on iPhone, though avialable on Mac/PC and Android. Crossfade feature is great to have and your listening is never interrupted by silence between songs.

light and dark mode

Apple Music has light and dark mode while Spotify only has dark mode. Light mode works better in bright sunlight.

Recommendations

Spotify has always done a better job with playlists and recommending you songs. It is way easier to find music that you actually like.

Apple Music algorithm is geared towards album oriented while spotify is track-playlist oriented.

Collaborative playlist

Planning a party? Yeah, just open a new playlist and everyone can throw some songs in. And with their new feature you can have auto generated playlist with friends, that are based on what you share with your friend.

Lyric

Apple Music's lyrics display design is easy to read. Apple Music's synced lyrics are not available on windows/web browser, whereas Spotify's synced lyrics feature works on windows/web browser. They both supports searching songs by lyrics.

Apple Music Replay and Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped

Since 2016, Spotify has been releasing a personalized end-of-the-year lineup for each user including insight on their music from the past year. When a Spotify user opens the mobile app during the first week of December they’re greeted with a new icon on their home screen that reads, “Your 2022 Wrapped is here”.

Spotify Wrapped feature is only available in its story-mode format for a limited time. It usually drops at the end of November or the start of December, and lasts until the end of the year or the start of January. After that you can still access Your Top Songs playlist but not the story.

Apple Music Replay existed as a playlist presentation since 2017. Many people say that Apple Music Replay is more aesthetically pleasing, while Spotify Wrapped is more shareable. Apple Music Replay is rolled out in the first month of each year. So you can access Apple Music Replay 2023 at the bottom of Apple Music app.

Ondesoft Apple Music Converter and Ondesoft Spotify Converter

Music plays a key role in our daily life. Although the online music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music provide us a better way to enjoy music, they can’t meet all our requirements. So it is vital important to convert Spotify/Apple Music to MP3 or other formats if you want to enjoy Spotify music or Apple Music on multiple devices, if you prefer accessing Spotify songs anytime without the internet connection or if you want to play Apple Music on non-apple devices without DRM limitation…

When you want to enjoy Apple Music and Spotify music more freely, you need Ondesoft Apple Music Converter and Ondesoft Spotify Music Converter . These two converters will get rid of the DRM protection from Apple Music or Spotify music.

Ondesoft Apple Music Converter for Mac/Windows

With an Apple Music membership, you get access to a whole world of music - any of the 40 million songs.
But you are not allowed to play them on so many non-apple devices, you need an Apple Music converter to remove DRM and convert Apple Music M4P songs to MP3 first. Ondesoft Apple Music Converter allows you to easily remove DRM and convert Apple music to other formats at a16 faster speed on your Mac or Windows. What's more, you are able to convert online Apple Music without downloading them.
Although there are so many Apple Music Converters in the markets, you will find Ondesoft Apple Music Converter is the most professional and convenient.

Ondesoft Spotify Music Converter for Mac
For the Spotify music, it also has DRM protection, so you are not allowed to download and listen to them on your computer or devices offline with a free account. Ondesoft Spotify Converter is designed to remove DRM from any Spotify music and convert them to MP3/M4A/WAV/FLAC with 100% original quality. Ondesoft Spotify Converter adopts an advanced ID3 tag identification technology. It can keep all ID tags like Title, Artist, Album and Genre. Then you can download Spotify music for playing them offline on any devices