Apple music is better than Spotify and it's not even close

Key Takeaways

Apple Music offers a larger music library with superior audio quality.
Apple Music’s human-curated playlists lead to better music discovery.
Despite Spotify’s features, Apple Music is the superior choice due to its better audio quality and organization.

Spotify may be the biggest subscription music streaming service on the planet, but that doesn’t make it the best. I used to be a Spotify subscriber, but several years ago I made the switch to Apple Music, and I’m so glad I did.

Apple Music launched in 2015, and it started out a bit rough, including issues with the app, and concerns over shift from the old iTunes store to the new streaming paradigm. But a few years later, in late 2020, my family decided to go all in on an Apple One family subscription, which included Apple Music in its suite of services, alongside Apple TV+, Apple Fitness, and the all-important extra iCloud storage.

For a little while there, I actually still stuck to using Spotify, but eventually I managed to get my library and all my playlists transferred over to Apple Music and I was off to the races. I quickly discovered it is my preferred music streamer by far.

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Apple Music

Apple’s premier music streaming service, with access to millions of songs from artists both big and small.

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Free Apple Music subscription deals are few and far between, but I’ve found a few actually decent offers available so you can start listening today.

What does Apple Music offer?

The biggest library with the best audio

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The first thing I noticed when I started using Apple Music was that its library of songs is quite a bit larger. Spotify boasts about 80 million songs, while Apple Music offers about 100 million. Spotify has since mostly closed the gap, but with Apple you won’t have to wonder. If a song exists and it’s on streaming, it is almost certainly available on Apple Music. I also find that the app, though not perfect, is better for actually organizing my library than Spotify was.

Songs on Apple Music sound more full, clear, and defined.

The other big feature, which Spotify has yet to catch up on despite years of promises, is the quality of the audio. Simply put, Apple Music eats Spotify’s lunch on this front. Not only does Apple offer lossless audio at high bit rates, even its basic compressed audio sounds better than Spotify. I’m not an audiophile by any stretch, so when I say the difference is noticeable, I mean it. Even through Bluetooth earbuds, which further degrade audio quality, songs on Apple Music sound more full, clear, and defined. Plus, they offer features like Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio for surround sound listening. It’s simply a more pleasurable listening experience, and when it comes to music, there’s really nothing more important than that.

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Apple Music playlists

Human curation to the rescue

Much of Spotify’s success is a product of its incredible assortment of playlists, both user-generated and algorithmically-generated. Users have been able to discover all kinds of new music thanks to their offerings. But I’ll admit, I always found the algorithmic playlists on Spotify lacking. They’re not bad, but they never felt well considered. That’s the problem with having a computer do the work. The job gets done, and gets done reasonably well, but it’s missing a human spark.

Apple Music has plenty of user-generated playlists (though not as many as Spotify, admittedly), but it’s the official Apple Music playlists that really shine. The company has stuck to its guns, offering mostly human-curated playlists that are far more thoughtfully made than what you’ll get from Spotify. Despite there being fewer playlists, and the fact that they’re often shorter, I have actually discovered a lot more new music thanks to Apple’s playlists. This is because the songs actually make sense together, in the order they’re presented, helping me hear the connections between songs and keeping my ear more open to music I might actually like.

On top of the playlists, Apple has radio stations with actual (not AI) DJs, another great way to discover new music and keep up with emerging hits.

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The Spotify advantage

Endless features

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While I have come to greatly prefer Apple Music to Spotify, I acknowledge there are some areas where it lags. Apple Music’s mobile apps are good, but Spotify’s is far snappier, and the desktop app is flat out better than Apple’s cumbersome one, which seems to still be dealing with the legacy of the old iTunes app. Spotify’s service is also simply easier to access on more devices.

On top of that, Spotify has many great special features, like its year-end Wrapped feature, tallying users’ music listening habits. Apple has their own Replay feature, but its nowhere near as well crafted and implemented.

Spotify’s service is also simply easier to access on more devices.

The Spotify Connect feature lets users control their music directly from the app on a range of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Chromecast, and AirPlay speakers for convenient wireless audio listening. Apple Music uses AirPlay, which works extremely well, but it’s not nearly as well integrated with products like Sonos speakers.

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Apple Music all the way

The best music streamer

Apple / Pocket-lint

Despite those small points for Spotify, in the end, it’s all about the tunes, and that’s where Apple Music excels. The music sounds better, organizing my library is easier, and the human-curated playlists have helped me discover more new music than I ever did on Spotify. For me, Apple Music is the better choice, and it’s not even close.