So I've been an avid Spotify Premium fan for a while now, and I love it. It is not without its flaws and quirks, but I'm erally quite happy with it. I'm about 3 weeks into the 3 month trial on Apple music, and I have to say that their UX kinda sucks comparatively. If Spotify didn't exist I think I would dig it, but this isn't the reality. 3 weeks in, I have not figured out how to jump directly to the album of the song I'm listening to currently so I can skip around to other tracks (who in the world listens to entire songs especially as they tail out?). It's a pretty core behavior and I have tried mightily to figure it out but come up empty. On the other hand, Apple Music's auto generated playlists have been fairly fantastic. Rather than make me want to leave Spotify, Apple Music surprisingly makes me content to leave my other favorite music app, Songza, which is a app choc full of curated playlists based on activity, genre, decade, or time of day. It's seriously awesome, and makes listening to algorithm-driven apps like Pandora feel like nails on chalk-board by comparison. So yeah, since Apple Music I think I've opened that app up twice when it used to be every day. I like the size of the catalog as well compared to Spotify. I think the biggest knock against Apple music is the fact that it isn't laser focused like Spotify. Spotify is there to do one thing and one thing only. Apple Music is there to do that, plus integrate with all of the legacy iTunes cruft, as well as try and sell you stuff. The 'New' button at the bottom is entirely not needed. If Apple is concerned with funneling user attention to new releases/artists, they can do this by including those tracks into the various generated playlists. I've discovered an untold number of new artists on Songza this way (and I would then jump into Spotify, find them, and add to a playlist...Apple Music could work well like this). The 'radio' button and the 'connect' button where you 'follow' artists are also cruft in my view. The personalized suggested playlists that pop up in the 'for you' section are far better than any of the generic 'radio' stations under that tab. I'm going to keep at it. At the core, it's a massive catalog of music to stream and the service isn't terrible so far.
I like Apple Music better than Spotify for one reason: I can get into the interface and listen to locally saved music even when I have no service. Spotify takes me to the Browse interface by default and then complains there is no connection. I run through some no-service zones, and if I need to change my playlist mid-run, the music stops and will not start again until I get back home, This really throws off my momentum, to where I am noticeably slower when Spotify refuses to let me play locally saved music offline. On Apple Music, I can always fall back on iTunes. On that note, does anyone remember the days when apps used to work even on an EDGE connection, pre-3G? When YouTube and Google Maps would load on EDGE? It was slow, but it loaded... Spotify, Google Maps, and a ton of other apps that should know better refuse to load even on 3G or a spotty 4G connection. I don't have LTE everywhere I go. I miss 2005.
I've heard complaints against Spotify's library, but I've petty much only found really fairly obscure stuff to not really be there (excluding T Swift's infamous exodus). My main complaint with Spotify is their terrible autogenerated playlists. Other than that it's definitely the main place I listen to music and has effectively ended my music piracy.
Spotify lacks large portions of influential artist output. Last time I used it they didn't have three albums in a row I was looking for. I uninstalled it in a fit of pique. I would never pay money for a service that doesn't carry albums I want to hear when they are available digitally from Amazon.
They do, it's connected with having Prime. But a lot of their music that's available for download isn't for streaming. I checked them out recently and was disappointed.
Honestly around 75% of the time Pandora's playlists are actually pretty good. It'll never be as good as an actual human curated list (one of the best parts of Spotify is how many there are). I honestly haven't given Apple Music a shot. Long ago I realized that Apple only cares about experience on anything that's not a Mac.
Maybe it's my taste in music, but I stopped listening to Pandora years ago, before there was even a viable alternative because of how stale it sounded. No deep cuts, a lot of repetition, and the discovery engine was just terrible. I know I don't speak for everybody though.
No, I definitely agree with you. I stopped using Pandora something like a decade ago, but at my fiancée's work they have a business account so she got reacquainted with it and it's definitely better as far as algorithmic playlists go. Still can't compare to a curated list, but definitely better.