You certainly don’t need us to tell you that music generates a multi-billion dollar industry. And the biggest players in the game? Apple Music and Spotify.
And yes, this article is all about this clash of the titans: Spotify vs Apple Music!
And yes, these two streaming platforms have a lot in common. Needless to say, they are both solid, and you won’t really go wrong with either option. But they are paid platforms, after all, so you should get the best possible experience to match your style, right?
So enough chit-chat: Apple Music vs Spotify, go!
Apple Music Vs Spotify: TL; DR
Overall, Apple Music is better than Spotify in our book. The platform offers better sound quality and more exclusivity among some big artists to stream their music. It’s also more affordable.
But still, Spotify’s customization features and social factor are hard to beat, so it’s not that one-sided – it was a close call.
Spotify Vs Apple Music: Ease of Access
Winner: Spotify
Once upon a time, not so many years ago, Apple Music was only available to those with Apple devices. However, now you don’t need to be an Apple user to stream your tunes with Apple Music.
Both Apple Music and Spotify are available on Apple and Android devices. Apple Music and Spotify both offer desktop apps, as well. The iOS app for Apple Music is accessible through this link.
A huge bonus for both services is the option to download music for offline listening. This feature means there is truly nowhere you can’t take your playlist. Spotify even has an Offline Backup Playlist feature.
When it comes to availability and ease of access, Spotify takes the lead because you can easily register on any operating system using your Gmail or Facebook – or your classic email account.
With Apple Music, though, you have to register your Apple ID – even on the Android app. That’s still pretty easy, but just not as convenient.
Also, Spotify is available in over 180 countries, while Apple Music is still in under 170 countries. A win for Spotify here.
Apple Music Vs Spotify: Price
Winner: Apple Music
The next area where we will compare Apple Music and Spotify’s streaming service is the one that hits where it hurts most, our wallets. At first glance, you may feel that Spotify is the clear winner because they have a free plan, whereas Apple Music does not.
Is it really that simple of an answer, though? Take a look at our side-by-side price comparison below.
| Apple Music | Spotify | |
| Price for offline mode, no ads | $10.99/month | $11.99/month |
| Student Price | $5.99/month | $5.99/month |
| ‘Duo’ Household | N/A | $16.99/month, 2 accounts |
| Family Package | $16.99/month, 6 accounts | $19.99/month, 6 accounts |
| Annual Plan | $99/year | N/A |
| Exclusives | Works with Siri on the HomePod/HomePod mini; Apple Music 1 Radio; Cloud music locker; spatial audio | Available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and Xbox One; Spotify Studios podcasts |
The biggest difference in Apple Music and Spotify’s pricing is the option for a free plan. However, if you’re looking for uninterrupted streaming, you’ll have to pay $11.99 for Spotify, which is more than the starting price for a subscription with Apple Music.
So, when we consider the bottom line, the availability of Free and Duo plans is not enough to overcome Apple Music’s cheaper price.
Apple Music Vs Spotify: Music Library
Winner: Tie
Spotify earned its leading position in the music-streaming market with an impressive 100 million-plus song catalog and over 6 million podcasts.
With more than 60,000 new songs added to the service each day, Spotify offers a library that would be overwhelming if it weren’t so awesome.
The New Releases tab on Spotify’s service brings you all the latest releases, exclusive live sessions, and new singles each Friday.
Apple’s service also boasts more than 100 million songs. Moreover, Apple has secured many more exclusives because it doesn’t offer a free tier.
Apple’s attempts to monopolize the exclusivity market have caused tension with Spotify—which reportedly has altered search rankings for artists who release their music through Apple first.
One of Apple Music’s biggest advantages over its competitors is integration with your existing iTunes library. Your purchases will appear in your Apple Music library, so you can freely browse your own music alongside the standard catalog.
Spotify has a separate tab for accessing local music. Still, you can’t perform broad searches on the service as you can with Apple Music.
Unlike Spotify, Apple Music allows you to search broad terms such as “songs about drinking” within your own music library as well as with songs you’re searching for using their platform.
Spotify does allow broad searches such as “upbeat workout songs” when you’re looking for songs to stream or download, but if you’re searching in the separate tab that stores your local music, you are out of luck.
Apple Music excels in the library’s size and usability, while Spotify is a stronger hub for podcast fans. We’re calling it a tie.
Spotify Vs Apple Music: The Social Factor
Winner: Spotify
You can easily share Spotify content as Instagram and Facebook stories, post album art on Snapchat (which then links friends and followers to the song), or create links that make any messaging platform feel like a music discovery app.
While Apple Music allows you to share playlists with other registered users over AirDrop or create links that can be posted on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, its integration is nowhere near as robust as Spotify’s.
Although this isn’t a major qualm for most people, it is certainly worth considering when comparing Apple Music and Spotify’s streaming service.
Spotify’s social sharing features are some of the best on any music app, making it the clear winner when it comes to the social factor.
Apple Music or Spotify: Sharing Features
Winner: Spotify
It’s no secret that we live in an age of social sharing, and like so many other things, this has also been applied to how people listen to their favorite songs. Apple Music and Spotify make it easy for you to share music with friends and family.
Both apps let you share songs on your Instagram story or even send a direct link to social media, but Spotify has some features that make it stand out from Apple Music.
Spotify offers an innovative feature called Collaborative Playlists. Creating a collaborative playlist with your friends can make the perfect music mix for parties or road trips. If you need any tips and ideas on how to come up with a cool and fun name, check out the best playlist name ideas.
Another phenomenal feature Spotify offers is Spotify Codes. You can share Spotify Codes with friends, which allows them to quickly listen to the songs or playlists you’ve shared. Apple Music doesn’t support collaborative playlists yet, but it does allow users to create and share playlists.
Spotify outshines Apple Music in this category. They truly went above and beyond to make sharing simple. If social and sharing your music taste is a deal breaker for you, and now you want to move from Apple Music to Spotify, check out how to cancel Apple Music on all the main devices. It’s a detailed tutorial on how to get rid of an Apple Music subscription once and for all.
You can share the joy of music with others by using Spotify’s top-notch sharing features, but what happens if you want to switch from one service to another and move all your songs?
What if you find the perfect playlist on YouTube but want to listen to it on Spotify? Or did you create a playlist that speaks to your soul on Apple Music, but after reading this article, you finally decided to switch from Apple Music to Spotify?
You no longer have to choose between staying stuck and spending hours manually moving your music because there’s a new way to transfer your songs from Spotify or Apple Music—and it works!
Tune My Music helps you move seamlessly between music services, like moving your playlists from Spotify to Apple and keeping your music library intact.
Apple Music Vs Spotify: Sound Quality
Winner: Apple Music
We should also compare how the two services sound when streaming music, right?
Spotify’s free version streams 128 Kbps through its web player, while the mobile app adjusts streaming quality based on your connection—from 24 Kbps to 160 Kbps. The Premium subscription upgrade boosts quality to 256 Kbps, but Spotify has yet to roll out a promised lossless tier of service.
In contrast, Apple has made significant strides in providing free audio quality upgrades for all subscribers. For example, the entire 90 million songs on Apple Music are now available in lossless format—Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to ensure the files stay true to their original state.
There are several levels of lossless audio available, beginning with CD quality, 16-bit at 44.1kHz, and going up to 24-bit at 48kHz. There is also a hi-resolution lossless format all the way up to 24-bit at 192kHz.
Apple also made a wide range of its library available in surround-sound spatial audio format last year. Enabled by Dolby Atmos coding, the new format gives music additional depth and compatibility with dynamic head-tracking–among other advantages.
Once again, Apple Music’s streaming service is the standout winner.
Spotify Vs Apple Music: Tuning Into The Radio
Winner: Apple Music
Spotify has replaced its old Radio tab with an option to make a radio mode for any specific artist, album, playlist, or song.
You can create a new radio station by tapping the three-dot menu icon and then choosing “Go to Radio.” You can save your favorite stations as playlists in the library so you don’t lose them.
The app also offers assistance while making playlists, giving you a more personal experience than simply using the radio.
A good example of Spotify’s assisted playlist feature would be if you wanted to create a playlist to accompany you on your evening runs.
Using assisted playlists, Spotify will use the title you’ve given a playlist (like “Running”) and then pull from suggestions based on your past listening history as well as recommendations based on what others with similar tastes have added to their own “running” playlists.
You can fill your playlists with tracks on your own, or Spotify will do it for you once you’ve chosen a few. Users can also search and preview songs before adding them to their playlists.
The music streaming experience is changing, and the days of channel surfing may be over.
In an era when technology is ubiquitous, Apple Music’s allegiance to living human interaction sets it apart. In the case of its radio station, Apple Music 1, which broadcasts music mixed by DJs in real time,this philosophy comes across loud and clear. These shows offer listeners an intimate look into the lives and tastes of their favorite artists.
Beyond Apple Music 1, Apple Music has some more generic radio stations (such as classic rock, jazz, and Top 40 hits) that are perfect for those who want to listen but don’t care what they’re listening to. There’s also an eclectic mix of non-music stations such as BBC News and ESPN—it’s hard not to love these options!
As you can see from the categories we’ve discussed so far, Apple Music’s streaming services—which continue to dominate its competitors like Spotify—have numerous advantages over other music-streaming platforms.
In short, Apple Music also wins this round.
Apple Music vs Spotify: Final Winner Declared
For years, Spotify held the top spot as the world’s leading online music streaming service. But Apple wasn’t content to settle for second place and has worked hard to take over that position from its rival.
 |  | |
| Ease of Access | 95 | 90 |
| Pricing | 84 | 93 |
| Music Library | 90 | 90 |
| The Social Factor | 95 | 85 |
| Sharing Made Simple | 95 | 85 |
| Quality of Audio | 80 | 98 |
| Tuning Into The Radio | 79 | 90 |
| Integration With Tune My Music | 100 | 100 |
| Final Score | 89.75 | 90.38 |
In the end, Apple Music’s lossless and spatial audio features make it stand out from the competition.
Because it offers the highest-quality sound and is no more expensive than Spotify’s Premium version, Apple Music wins on two fronts: great value for listeners who are willing to pay and excellent quality.
You can subscribe to Apple Music and test the one-month trial so you can better decide if it’s the best service for you. It’s pretty easy and simple.
Are you a lifelong Apple Music or Spotify customer? Or did some of the key differences we pointed out in this article sway you to make a switch? Let us know!
Transferring Music Between Spotify, Apple Music & Other Music Services
You worked hard to get your music library just the way you like it. Now you have another service you want to use but don’t want to re-create your music library again.
Can you imagine if you could copy and transfer music between any music platforms?
If you have more than one music service, it’s easy to get confused about what songs are where. It’s even easier to get overwhelmed when trying to move your playlists to a new platform.
Tune My Music is a free service that introduces an array of features that can help with this problem, giving music fans of all types the opportunity to share their music library, keep them updated, transfer playlists, keep it synced between music platforms, and much more.
And if you’re still wondering how you could use a site like this in your everyday life, the answer is simple: you need never worry about losing your perfect playlist again. Bring it everywhere with you, no matter which streaming service you use.
The ease of use is some of the great advantages of Tune My Music. If you have a large music library and want to move platforms, keep them synced or use more than one without losing a single song, this tool is for you!
And lastly, if you’re interested in making the switch and want to move your beloved catalog of playlists, albums, and songs, let us help you move it with no headaches. You can also move your liked songs, liked albums, and liked artists over as well.
The best of all, for playlists of up to 500 tracks, Tune My Music is entirely free. No account creation is needed, so there are no strings attached.
Tune My Music is a rare find – software that effectively simplifies a complex process. Are you ready to let Tune My Music simplify your life?
If you have still not decided on which service you want to go with, you can look at some other articles we have prepared for you that compare Spotify with Deezer and Tidal with Spotify. This way, you can make the most conscience decision and know you are giving your ears and music soul the best treatment they deserve.
Spotify Vs Apple Music: Summary
That’s all for this one, guys! We hope you enjoyed our in-depth dive into the world of streaming.
Again, Apple Music is the winner of our Apple Music Vs Spotify comparison. It has superior audio quality, costs less on a monthly level, and has better radio-like discovery features.
Spotify is still very convenient to use and wins in the social factor battle, though.
If you are interested in checking other comparisons between Spotify and other platforms, visit our music platform comparisons page. There, you can find everything you need to get the right music streaming service subscription for you. Stay safe and enjoy the music!
