I've been using Apple Music since 2017-ish except for last year when I tried using Spotify exclusively. I pay for both cause they have super-affordable student plans here in India (~$0.69 per month)
Here are some things I like and dislike about them:
Apple Music
👍 Better artist payouts
👍 Apple TV+ included
👍 Better sound quality
👍 Sometimes has extra tracks that aren't available on Spotify (e.g. Lana's Is This Happiness from Ultraviolence, beabadoobee's cover of The Adults Are Talking)
👍 Prettier mobile app
👍 Radio shows
👍 Separate Apple Music Classical app for Classical music enjoyers
👎 Apple will NUKE your library and all your playlists if you stop your subscription
Spotify
👍 Free tier available
👍 Better social features
👍 Tons of niche playlists
👍 Love the giant cover thing on the TV app
👍 Easier to switch which device the audio is playing from
👍 Easier to work with 3rd party apps, websites and services
👍 Spotify Wrapped
👍 Algorithms better tuned to my specific taste
👎 Shittier artist payouts
Apr 17, 2025
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I mean, if you own an iPhone, there’s no fucking reason to use Spotify. Let me explain:
On the Spotify front:
- Spotify pays LESS to artists. Whether they‘re Taylor Swift or someone with 10 Monthly Listeners, they pay a MUCH LOWER rate than any other streaming platform
- Spotify is also just a platform to flex with fame and notoriety: you can see how many plays, how many monthly listeners, how many followers each artist has. You can even buy merch and tour tickets (that’s kind of the only cool thing they got going on rn tbh)
- Spotify doesn’t roll out their Organic Promo Features to all artists. Again, if you are Taylor Swift, you’ll get all the perks, but if you’re just starting you won’t be able to do shit besides having your music there. Ex. indie artists don’t have access to Countdowns, Clips, Paid Promo Tools, etc.
- Since last month, Spotify passed a rule in their company to NOT PAY ARTISTS WITH SONGS WITH LESS THAN 1000 STREAMS. This is BULLSHIT. And adding to that, you CANT SEE DATA from less than 1K played content now: since they’re not paying you, you can’t know how your music is doing. Which again, is BULLSHIT.
- The playlists are all over the place, tainted by modern day Payola (Submit hub, Groover and such) and editorial playlists ran by RANDOM ASS PEOPLE that do not make music or know about music at all. They work on a “Vibes” basis for their editorial playlists, which suck because that’s the only way to grow in the platform as an emergent artist.
- They advertise A LOT: it doesn’t matter if you have premium, that weird random song/artists that you got suggested, well, they PAID for that.
- Talking about advertising your music on Spotify: you CANT advertise unless you have 1K monthly listeners already. And when you have them and advertise from your Spotify for Artists account, those campaigns have probably THE WORST OUTCOME I’ve ever seen in years working with online and social media advertising. It’s SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE AND DOESNT DO SHIT FOR YOUR ARTIST CAREER or exposure.
- Spotify does this thing called “Normalization” which is basically further compressing the songs that are already mastered by the artist. In English, they have a threshold to fulfill and they will get the volume of your song to the levels they’re looking for to have in the platform, NOT YOUR MASTER and the decitions artists made when post producing their songs.
- Also, their interface is ugly af. Hate the green and black.
On the Apple Music front:
- If you own an iPhone, it literally just makes sense to pay for AppleOne and have Music, AppleTV+ and your iCloud all in one bill. Money wise, it make sense.
- I LOVE the fact that AppleMusic DOESN’T SHOW NUMBERS BECAUSE IT’S A MUSIC LIBRARY, NOT THE BILLBOARD CHARTS. If I want to know how many plays did any song/EP/album/artists has, I will see the charts, not my own music library. Because mainly I don’t listen/search for music because of the amount of times they’ve been played.
- Audio Quality: if you have a good Soundsystem at home, or good quality headphones or any of the Apple earphones/headphones it’s just plain better.
- It works with Siri!!!! My girl knows me, she knows what I listen to. I have a HomePod Mini and it’s the best thing because I just ask for a song/artist/vibe/radio/playlist and she’ll do it for me. This also works on my Airpods while I’m walking.
- The interface is cute and the animations, lyrics and bios are fucking cool and not ugly
- They pay a HIGHER RATE per song than Spotify. I’ve noticed the HUGE difference when Spotify payed my $2 for what AppleMusic paid my $12
- Playlists and suggestions are linked to your phone use so, it will be better than Spotify no matter what.
- Zane Lowe!!!!!
So yeah, thats my lengthy recommendation for today.
Apr 30, 2024
😶
Sounds better than spotify, usually.
Obviously torrents, bandcamp purchases, and physical media are superior to streaming, but if you're gonna stream music, go with apple music.
Mar 24, 2025
😃
I personally prefer the set up of Apple Music and they pay artists more which is really important to me
Apr 17, 2025
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Jan 29, 2024
3d ago
😔
Where are they now? I hope they’re doing ok, collecting memories and loading up a bank of recs they can share when they return to this app. I miss them so much.
Sep 25, 2024