Spotify supplies 320kbps Ogg Vorbis high-quality streaming for Premium users and 128kbps for free-plan users. If you are using sensitive sound equipment then the difference will be.
Spotify and Apple Music are the most popular music streaming services with the worldwide market share of 36% and 19% accordingly, states Statista. Each of them has its own benefits and drawbacks. They also have their fans and haters across the globe. Let’s sort things out: which is the best music app? Here’s our Spotify Premium vs Apple Music comparison.
“The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt”, Steve Jobs
During the Special Apple Event in 2003, Legendary Steve Jobs forecasted music streaming services to be stillborn. He introduced the iTunes Music Store and said that those services offering subscription plans treated users like criminals. The Apple co-founder supposed such services to be a wrong path.
He claimed that people preferred to pay for music to download it and further listen to their favorite songs wherever they go. Just like we used to do when using LPs, cassettes, or CDs. However, these words referred to iPod times when you had better download a song rather than play it online. The Internet data transferring speed wasn’t as fast as today. The 3G network wasn’t available in the U.S. as of 2003.
Since that time, technologies have drastically changed. Furthermore, streaming services have become as popular as never before. We no longer pay for downloads to watch a movie. Instead, we use Netflix. We no longer download songs. Instead, we use Spotify or Apple Music. Although, we often can’t understand which music streaming app is better. Let’s compare them now.
Availability
Any iOS- and Mac OS-based device has Apple Music installed by default. In addition, Android and Windows fans also can download this mobile app. Moreover, you can download the music streaming app to your Apple Watch and listen to favorite songs in the gym or while jogging on the street. Furthermore, you can transfer music from your iPhone to any other device via Bluetooth including wireless headphones.
When it comes to Spotify, it’s available for all platforms. This service even has a Web app so you can use it using your desktop computer. In fact, you can use Spotify on a wide range of devices: Amazon Alexa, Chromecast, Xbox, PlayStation, etc. However, a free mobile app is available only for iPhones.
Winner: Spotify
Sound Quality
Downlaod spotify app on computer. Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis format with up to 320 kbps. This format hardly differs from traditional MP3. Unlike Spotify, Apple Music uses AAC with up to 256 kbps. It may seem that Spotify has a higher sound quality due to a higher bitrate. However, these formats have different data compression technologies so they can’t be compared by the single indicator. When listening to music using AirPods, you will notice no difference between Spotify and Apple Music.
According to CNET, Spotify sounds better than Apple Music. Researchers conducted a test using advanced hardware and concluded that Spotify’s sound was somewhat brighter that Apple Music’s one. They claimed that the saxophone sound felt to be more volumetric while the player’s articulation was more clear. The tests also have shown that Apple Music generates sound felt like coming from far away and seemed less vivid. However, the total results of both services are similar.
In a controlled environment and with high-end equipment, music sounded almost the same. To identify the difference, researchers had to use specific songs. Therefore, the test results can be considered as subjective since the CNET employees couldn’t all the music genres or songs. Hence, there hypothetically are tracks that sound better with Apple Music than Spotify. This is exactly the conclusion the guys from CNET have made.
Winner: Spotify
User interface
When it comes to a user interface, It’s hard to highlight a single winner in the Apple Music vs Spotify competition. The former solution has several tabs you can navigate between:
The app has a typical Apple-styled design and it’s easy-to-use. The only design issue that may disappoint you is a tag cloud containing the most popular music genres. It may feel difficult to find a required genre in this chaos.
Spotify seems to have a better genre navigation menu. At least, it’s more familiar. Spotify’s user interface looks stylish and original. It has the following main tabs:
Both music services have a modern design with comprehensive navigation even though Apple Music has that bizarre genre tag cloud. So it’s a fair draw.
Winner: Draw
Features
Apple Music recently added video clips to their service so their number is continuously growing. The app also has a social sharing feature. You can subscribe to your favorite artist and follow his news. In addition, you can see which music your friends are listening to. One of the important advantages of Apple Music is its synchronization. You can access your favorite tracks from any device within Apple’s ecosystem since you have one iTunes library for iOS-based devices. You can connect to it using your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Furthermore, you can add tracks from your music collection to Apple Music.
Both Apple Music and Spotify offer personalized radio stations. By determining your preferences, services broadcast tracks of specific genres or songs of your favorite artists. Spotify also has a social component that allows you to share playlists and songs as well as view your friends’ subscriptions. The Spotify mobile app has rich functionality. For example, you can listen to a few tracks with a long tap on a playlist or album.
The synchronization is even better that you can’t expect. You can start listening to the song on your smartphone and then launch the web app on your computer to make magic happen. The track will continue right from the moment it has been paused on your mobile device. Unfortunately, you won’t have access to your tracks if you use Spotify on someone else’s device. You can’t add songs from your own media library to the service.
Winner: Apple Music
Media library
Both Spotify and Apple Music offer a huge variety of tracks. Apple Music’s catalog contains about 45 million songs. The service also provides exclusive content since it conducts contracts with artists without intermediaries. Spotify reports about 30 million tracks along with other exclusive content like podcasts.
Both services offer a wide range of music genres: from classical to jazz and rock. With Apple music, you can synchronize your media library with your iOS devices via iCloud and then listen to your tracks when offline by downloading them to your mobile device. Furthermore, you can download the entire album or playlist.
Spotify now playing overlay mac os sierra 10 13. At the top of track lists, Apple Music shows the most popular songs. It seems to be logical solutions in the case you want to listen to tracks you’re familiar with. However, if you want to discover new artists in a certain genre, this isn’t the approach you will appreciate. Apple is said to invite music experts like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork to properly categorize songs. This allows users to find necessary tracks in an easy and fast way.
Winner: Apple Music
Recommendations
The main advantage of Spotify over Apple Music is recommendations. Its algorithms quickly understand which genre of music you prefer and offer a set of albums and playlists you will definitely appreciate. With Spotify, searching for tracks is an easy and intuitive process. The service recommends more playlists based on your preferences compared to Apple Music. In addition, they’re more diverse. When it comes to Apple Music, it has a poor recommendation system. Its algorithms are obviously not that accurate.
Besides ordinary playlists, Spotify has the “Your Daily Mix” section that contains dynamic playlists getting updated every day. Their number depends on artists and genres you listen to. These playlists have new songs as well as those already existing in your media library. Over time, the accuracy of Spotify’s recommendations become higher because of the self-learning neural networks the service relies on. It seems like it knows you better than you do. Spotify also has other playlists like Release Radar – with new weekly updated music you may like and New Music Friday containing new tracks appeared within the current week.
Apple Music has a playlist with new tracks. The service generates it using your music preferences. In addition, the app has a section called My favorite tracks. It’s supposed to contain tracks you’ve liked. However, it often offers tracks you have marked with a dislike. It’s hard to understand the working principle of this section and algorithms it relies on since many tracks your mark with the like sign may not get in there.
Spotify’s recommendations may sometimes be imperfect but they’re much more accurate compared to Apple Music. The latter service often recommends the same playlists in those sections where you would like to discover those tracks you’ve never heard of. Furthermore, it seems unclear why the mobile app allows users to like or dislike tracks while ignoring these marks at the same time.
Winner: Spotify
Pricing
Spotify offers a free plan so you can listen to your favorite music without any fees. However, its quality has been limited to 160 Kbps and you won’t be able to download tracks in order to listen to them when offline or in locations with the poor Internet connection. Moreover, you will regularly listen to annoying ads encouraging you to purchase a paid subscription and won’t be able to skip track in a playlist.
Another good news about Spotify is that it offers a 30-days free trial. Once expired, it turns into a paid plan with the $9.99 monthly payment. Here’s a full list of Spotify’s plans:
Apple Music also offers a free trial for 3 months. In general, the service offers quite similar plans:
The annual plan becomes available when you purchase a monthly plan. To enable the hidden plan, you should proceed to your subscription settings where you can find 4 plans instead of 3. While choosing the annual subscription, you will see a notification that the app will charge you once your current monthly plan will expire. Therefore, you will save up to $20 annually with Apple Music compared to the Spotify Premium plan.
Spotify free mac 2019. Winner: Apple Music
Verdict
Spotify
In our Apple Music vs Spotify Premium comparison, the latter service gained 3 points.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Apple Music
In our Spotify vs Apple Music comparison, the latter service also gained 3 points.
Advantages
Disadvantages
People like to dispute on things: electric or hydrogen cars, iOS or Android, Apple CarPlay vs Android Auto, etc., especially when discussed things hardly differ. Spotify and Apple Music are very similar music streamings services. Amazon prime and spotify. They have comparable pricing plans and almost identical sound quality. The only feature they differ with is recommendations. This is exactly the area where Spotify leads the way.
However, Apple Music is a suitable app for Apple fans. The app has a rich media library and can easily integrate into the Apple ecosystem. What’s better: Apple Music or Spotify? – Well, our comparison resulted in score 3:3. So if you use an Android-based smartphone and appreciate personalized content, then choose Spotify. If you prefer devices designed in Cupertino, then go for Apple Music.
5/5(1 vote )
6 Differences You Need to Know about Spotify Free and Spotify Premium
On January 4, 2018, Spotify announced on Twitter that it has 70 million subscribers. Spotify also claimed the total number of active users was up to 140 million in June 2017. That is to say, about half of Spotify users pay for the premium subscription and still half of Spotify users stick to free plan. If you are going to have a try on Spotify and has been a Spotify free user, you may wonder whether you should pay for the premium subscription or simply stick to free plan. Before you make up your mind, learn about the 6 differences between Spotify Free and Spotify Premium.
1. Playback Mode: Shuffle Play VS Different Modes
With Spotify Free, shuffle play is the only mode you can use to enjoy streaming music. With Spotify Premium, you can enjoy different playback modes including shuffle play, play in order, repeat a song and repeat a playlist/album.
Many Spotify new members asked how to make a playlist play in order, the answer is to pay for the premium subscription.
Spotify Free Premium Advantages Membership2. Ad Free: No VS Yes
With Spotify Free, you can listen to any music in Spotify, but you'll hear ads between tracks both on computer and mobile. Sometimes, the ads may ruin your mood totally when you are enjoying music leisurely. With Spotify Premium, you won't get any ads no matter what device you are using.
3. Limited Skips VS Unlimited Skips
Everyone has his own music taste. Sometimes, you may hear some songs you don't like and you simply want to skip them. With Spotify Free, you can only skip 6 songs per hour, but with Spotify Premium, you can skip any songs you don't like without limitation.
4. Internet Connection Required VS Offline Listening
With Spotify Free, you must have a stable internet connection to stream the songs. Without a Wifi connection, it's almost impossible to listen to music unless you use data connection. But why would you use data connection as it definitely costs more than Spotify Premium subscription fee. With Spotify Premium, you can download songs to your PC, Mac, iOS, Android or other supported devices and listen to them offline whenever you don't have internet connection. Spotify Premium users can save mobile data by downloading up to 10,000 songs per device, on a maximum of 5 different devices.
5. Play Most Tracks VS Play All Tracks
With Spotify Free, you can listen to most tracks in Spotify library. But some new tracks or albums are only available for Premium users. The songs or albums will be grey out for Spotify Free users. And Premium users sometimes can enjoy some albums several weeks before actual release. Though it happens very infrequently.
6. Audio Quality: 160Kbps VS 320Kbps
On desktop, default streaming audio quality for Spotify Free users is Ogg Vorbis 160kbit/s while Premium subscribers can choose to switch on High quality streaming, which uses 320kbit/s. On iPhone, iPad or Android, Spotify Free users can choose either 96kbit/s or 160kbit/s while Premium subscribers have one more option which is 320kbit/s. As to streaming audio quality on Chromecast, it's AAC 128kbit/s for Spotify Free, and 256kbit/s for Spotify Premium.
Enjoy Spotify Songs on Any Devices without Limitation using Spotify Music Converter
Even if you have subscribed Spotify Premium, there are still some limitations such as only 3 devices can be used, only 10,000 songs can be downloaded and you can't enjoy Spotify offline songs on MP3 players like iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, Sony Walkman, iRiver, Sandisk Sansa, etc. or burn Spotify offline songs to CD for your car audio system.
The best solution of enjoying Spotify music without limitation is to use TuneMobie Spotify Music Converter. TuneMobie Spotify Music Converter can download Spotify songs, albums and playlists to computer and convert to MP3, M4A, WAV or FLAC with ID3 tags and metadata kept, no matter you are using Spotify Free or Spotify Premium.
Spotify Premium Free Download
With Spotify Free and Spotify Music Converter, you can create a playlist in any media player and add songs to the playlist and play in different playback modes on demand, enjoy full pleasure without ads interruption, skip any songs as you like and enjoy them offline no matter there is internet connection or not. The actual audio quality of output songs is same as source which is 160kbit/s, and you need to wait for some time when the Premium-songs are also available for free users. With Spotify Premium and Spotify Music Converter, you can enjoy high audio quality at 320kbps and enjoy the Premium-only songs on any devices whenever they are available.
Spotify Premium Advantages
After reading the 6 differences between Spotify Free and Spotify Premium, will you decide to pay for Premium subscription or stick to free tier? No matter which choice you make, Spotify Music Converter is definitely a must-have program for any Spotify users.
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