Curious. Why do you prefer Apple Music? Has something changed recently? I had both for a while but found the UI, playlist building capacity, the generated playlists, and the ability to share music on Spotify to be superior so I dropped Apple.
Howdy, I have been running both macOS and iOS betas on my personal devices and both iTunes and Music have had a significant UX overhaul on macOS 10.13 and iOS 11, they’re not perfect - but it’s a good step forward.
A bit high level but here’s my list of pros:
- I’ve found a lot less missing tracks / albums, especially for more underground / lesser known artists I had real problems with this on Spotify.
- Significantly less bandwidth usage compared to Spotify.
- Unified interface to my music library (1.2TB~) and streaming / downloadable music on both the desktop and phone.
- The ability to have my own music uploaded as part of my library and available on all desktops/laptops and my phone.
- Apple Music data is unmetered on my mobile provider (I average around 8GB/mo of mobile music streaming on my phone)
- The Music app on my phone is /really/ good at figuring out what music/playlists/albums to sync (prefetch if you will) onto my phone, I set the data limit (to 128GB) and it just figures it out nicely, often when I go to listen to a new album from an artist I follow / like - its already there for me (note: I believe this is opt-in functionality)
What I don’t like about Apple Music / think needs to improve:
- Playlists, They’re not as nice or as fast to manage as on Spotify but at least tracks don’t go missing randomly.
- Artist/Album workflow performance, at times it still feels very ‘webframe’ (if that makes sense?) when browsing artists and their albums, the UI latency really annoys me and I liken it to the feeling that JavaScript ‘apps’ give you.
It sounds as though the spotify IOS client is somewhat behind on features compared to android. That, or its not obvious enough how to access some of these features, because many of these are available on android such as :
changing stream quality for bandwidth, and downloading music on phone, using own music on phone (admittedly a bit of a hassle, you have to put it on a playlist on pc then sync download that playlist on mobile)
> using own music on phone (admittedly a bit of a hassle, you have to put it on a playlist on pc then sync download that playlist on mobile)
This really isn't the same thing at all. With Apple Music or Google Play Music, your own library and cloud tracks are seamlessly integrated and can be streamed and accessed from anywhere and any device.
A kludgy solution where you can use Spotify like a 90s MP3 player really doesn't cut it. If Apple, Google and Deezer can offer local library support, Spotify has no excuse. It's a huge gap, and makes Spotify unusable for many people or only supplementary.
I don't expect a streaming service to have everything in history all the time, just have as much as possible, and let me fill in the gaps.
Apple Music is rapidly evolving. They're putting a lot of effort into it.
OS integration is a big one for me, Apple Music is just so seamless. Personally I hate the Spotify UI, search is among the worst, and just like Google Music I find it has way too much Karaoke bullshit cluttering up results when it doesn't have the song you want.
That plus Spotify having no way to upload your own local files makes it a complete non-starter for me. Apple Music is getting way better on the radio & playlist front. The New Music Mix knows me surprisingly well.
I'd give it another shot if you haven't tried in the last 6 months to a year.
