---
title: 'Is Apple Music Beating Spotify? I Switched for 30 Days'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=fV8VUGwJo-o'
video_id: 'fV8VUGwJo-o'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 1597
---

# Is Apple Music Beating Spotify? I Switched for 30 Days

> Source: [Is Apple Music Beating Spotify? I Switched for 30 Days](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fV8VUGwJo-o)

## Summary

This video compares Spotify and Apple Music after the creator switched from Spotify to Apple Music for a month. It covers pricing, music discovery, audio quality, social features, and overall user experience to determine which service is better.

### Key Points

- **Comparison Setup** [00:01] — The creator switched from Spotify to Apple Music for a month to compare the two services. They note that both apps work on both Android and iOS, and they will always show Spotify on the right and Apple Music on the left.
- **Pricing Differences** [00:54] — Spotify has a free tier, but Apple Music is cheaper across all paid plans: individual $11 vs $13, student $6 vs $7, and family plans are also cheaper. Apple One bundles Apple Music with other services for $20/month.
- **Playlist and Discovery** [02:42] — Both have over 100 million songs. Spotify's search is quicker and its algorithm suggests more relevant music. Apple Music's search is clunkier but offers filters. Spotify has AI DJ, Release Radar, daily mixes, and prompted playlists, while Apple has radio stations and discovery station.
- **Audio Quality** [10:22] — Apple Music offers higher resolution audio (up to 192 kHz) and spatial audio, while Spotify has lossless on some songs but defaults to volume normalization. Apple's Sound Check can be toggled to prioritize dynamic range, making it sound better to many.
- **Social Features** [13:59] — Spotify has Wrapped, blends, jams, friend activity, and collaborative playlists. Apple Music feels more solitary but recently added collaborative playlists. Spotify's social features make discovery and sharing easier.
- **Other Media and UI** [17:13] — Spotify includes podcasts, audiobooks, and videos, which can clutter the interface. Apple Music is music-only and has a cleaner, more minimal UI. Apple's lyrics feature includes a karaoke mode that mutes vocals.
- **Offline and Device Support** [23:17] — Apple allows 100,000 songs offline across 10 devices, while Spotify allows 10,000 songs across 5 devices. Spotify supports local files poorly, but Apple has iCloud Music Library and is the default player for local files on macOS. Spotify has better cross-device control and works with more non-Apple devices.
- **Artist Payments and Conclusion** [25:27] — Apple pays artists two to three times more per stream than Spotify. The creator concludes that Spotify is more fun with superior discovery and social features, but Apple Music is cheaper and offers better audio quality.

### Conclusion

While Apple Music offers better audio quality, a cleaner interface, and lower prices, Spotify wins on music discovery, social features, and overall fun. The creator chooses Spotify for its superior algorithm and collaborative features.

## Transcript

user for the past 10 years, but a lot has changed recently. And what was the best is not necessarily the best anymore. For example, Apple Music now has a hidden karaoke feature that mutes the vocals and shows lyrics. Spotify
generates playlists to blend your taste with a friend. Apple Music lets you upload your own music and play those files anywhere. Spotify has podcasts and audiobooks, and people say Apple Music sounds better. But I think with two
simple settings, Spotify could sound just as good. The differences go on and on. So in the past month, I switched from Spotify to Apple Music to dig deep into the differences and figure out which one is actually the best. And at
definitive answer on which one I will continue using. So, Spotify versus Apple Music. Well, I care a lot about music discovery, music quality, app features. think we first need to talk about the plans and the pricing. And and a little
side note here, one, this video is not sponsored, and two, every time I show two phones, I'm going to switch Android and iOS because both apps work on both devices, but I'm always going to have Spotify on the right side for this
video, and I will always have Apple Music on the left side for this video. So, pricing. Spotify has a free version. Apple Music does not. There are a ton of can't download things, you can't control other devices. There's so many limits,
but still having a free tier is a benefit for Spotify. But aside from the free tier, in pretty much every other tier, Apple Music is going to be cheaper. Individual plans are $13 on Spotify, $11 for Apple. Monthly plans
for students are $7 on Spotify, $6 for Apple. There's a duo and a family plan. Again, more expensive on Spotify than Apple. Generally, you're going to pay an extra couple dollars per month. Spotify sometimes has some bundles with like
Disney Plus or Hulu. Uh it depends on, you know, when you subscribed, but Apple Music takes that to the next level. They have what's called Apple One, which for an individual gives you 50 GB of iCloud, gives you Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple
Arcade, and it does all that for $20 a month. And it scales up for families, 200 GB and you get five additional family members at $26 per month. Or they even have a premier plan, which is for a whole family and gives you 2 TB plus
everything I mentioned along with Apple Fitness Plus and News Plus. So, the Aside from the free tier, Apple is the cheapest across the board, mainly profitable ecosystem and do not necessarily need to make as much money
just on the music app. But I think you'll see hints of that throughout this video. Apple is a big ecosystem and Spotify just does this one app. So, when I wanted to make sure Apple had the best chance possible. So, I wanted them to
suggest the right songs and I went into settings, tapped on song shift, and copied all of my albums and playlists from Spotify. It wasn't hard to do, it realistically, you can transfer from Apple Music to Spotify or the other way
around fairly easily with one of these tools. And that brings us into probably the two of them, which is going to be playlists and discovery. So, playlists that you know and you want to find, they both have a search feature. And with
can look up the albums, the artists, you can even look up the lyrics. So, for friend, it knows you're talking about the song Blowin' in the Wind and it as well as playlists and stuff like that. The search results, you'll notice,
are going to be quite different on these because Apple Music is almost exclusively music, whereas I'll talk about this later, but Spotify has there. They both have over 100 million songs. I didn't count them, but they
have a lot of songs. And when I look up music on both of them, you might find differences in live albums being on one or not the other, but it seems to be a pretty even trade-off and it doesn't seem like either platform has more music
that I'm looking for. So, if I search for an artist, as I'm typing, it pops Spotify, they're going to show me the band that they think I'm looking for, it's a little bit quicker to get into that. If I had enter on the search,
the same stuff, as well as some some playlists that they recommend that a really wide variety of what you could have the option to toggle between what specifically looking for. Are you
looking for artists? Are you looking for playlists, profiles, uh you know, all select exactly what you're looking for. It's a little bit clunky, but it in my opinion it does a really good job uh on Spotify. On Apple Music, as you type it
in, they show anything that starts with Goose, like Goosebumps for example is a song. And so, that could make a lot of sense, but if I hit search on just Goose, they do a really similar thing to what Spotify did, where across the top,
you can say, all right, I'm looking for songs or playlists or radio episodes, uh down and they've got Goose Essentials, and they've got different bands that are that right here. The search results are fairly similar in both of them. That's a
your playlist. On Apple Music, I can add right to a playlist, or I can play it next. Same thing on Spotify, you can add it to your library, you can play it next, you can download to this device or
you could, you know, start a jam. There's a lot of other things I'll talk far as the social aspect, that's why there's more things there, but you can see the UI looks fairly similar, although, you know, more color on Apple
Apple has that set up to match the background. We can add things to liked songs, so any songs that you're going through on a radio station, if you enjoy songs, you can add it to playlists, um but there's a lot of social stuff on
an entire chapter of this video just talking about social, so we'll get to that later. But, we also have suggested songs for making playlists. So, in a playlist I have, just a bunch of old
to. At the very bottom, they have suggested songs, and they both do this. Although, uh right now, it seems like they're generally doing a pretty decent job. I almost always find Spotify does a better job of having more relevant music
algorithm seems to struggle a little bit. Like, some of these songs do make sense. Uh Billy Strings doesn't really make sense here for a classic rock style Billy Strings, so I think that makes sense why they're recommending it. It
just isn't necessarily as hyperrelevant, and I think Spotify's algorithm does shine with that. Spotify also has an AI DJ. Um so, if back in the beginning, if with the green circle, it brings you into uh your DJ X, and um
mixed feelings on this. One, it kind of just plays the same songs every time. you've been listening to recently," which is the last thing it played last lazy and I just want to drive somewhere,
lot better where you can tap on the little DJ guy in the corner, and you can looking for. You can say, "Hey, I'm looking for more of a vibe of like road trip in the evening in the summer with a lot of like Wilco type stuff." And it'll
do that. And it does a really good job of that. It's something that Apple hasn't really implemented the AI to that level yet. Spotify also has, of course, Release Radar. In fact, let's go over to search. I'll go down to
uh let's see, Made for You. And then in here, all of this is very impressive you've got the daylist, something that updates several times per day. It's going to have fresh new music. It's kind of the opposite of Spotify's AI DJ,
You've got things that are based on your Wrapped is a really big thing, but they also have, you know, not just for an you've been listening to, like top charts ever for you, or your summer
rewind. You've got things that you listen to a lot. All that's listed at based on concerts that are around you. Down here, you have the ability to that later. I think that's an awesome feature. It generates mixes based on
genres you listen to, artist mixes, decade mixes. There's a lot of mixes down here, but what I really like is at the very bottom, release radar. This is really long time. Sometimes they are just like
They publish them again. It's not actually new stuff, but most of the time your favorite artist newest music without always having to like read blogs and find that. Spotify also has six daily mixes. So, you know, just totally
prompted playlist. You could tell it kind of like what I showed you the AI playlist. You could say I'm having like a 2006 middle school dance theme for my birthday party. Make a playlist based on that. And it'll it'll do that. It does
it surprisingly well. Spotify also has playlists that are like for fans of. So, whatever. And they'll have a playlist that is really just for that. And that's Of course, they've got plenty of other playlists. You can find other people's
playlists very easily. You can see top charts. You've got things that Spotify curates. And if you look up anything, Spotify also kind of makes playlists for energizing workout, you'll see energizing workout mix Spotify made for
on songs that you've listened to before that are going to be more of a workout style playlist. So, that's really impressive that Spotify does that. Apple, however, has some advantages as well. They have actual radio stations
for you stations. That's going to be kind of like the the daily mix essentially from Spotify. They've got different moods. So, they'll slide across and just kind of pick from things on the top. They've got Apple
Get Up. You've got your discovery station. And then over there, Keith So, I think that right there is irrelevant. Maybe Apple's pushing that. I'm not sure why that is really showing up up there. But then down below,
Spotify has as you scroll down, just like suggestions. So, different playlists, different genres, different stations, different moods. And then of there. Another Keith Urban thing. I don't listen to him. I don't know why
recommendations based on bands. So, remember I said like fans of Goose on one thing, fans of James Gang, a band that I just was listening to yesterday. things that you might like to discover there. So, Apple Music definitely has a
little while to really get it to be a little more curated to to my style of music. Um but it does a pretty decent job. Just nowhere near as good as Spotify in my opinion. Apple does let you use Siri to add songs to your
generally, I think it's pretty agreeable among most people, Spotify has a like what the heck was up with this? I was making a playlist. I had seven songs in there. They were all jam band songs, and then all of a sudden it's suggesting
a Cardi B song. Nothing against Cardi B, but like that's a completely different recommend that? Nonetheless, like I said, Apple is improving. That's just one of the first quirks I found. So, as far as playlist mixing goes, of course
you could shuffle it. But there's two other things you could do. So, on Apple Music and on Spotify, they have seamless transitions. So, they call it if you go settings, they call them song transitions. And same thing, if you go
you go to playback, and they have gapless playback as you can see right there. Now, Apple Music, you do auto mix or you can do cross fade, same thing on is like, all right, the last 5 seconds kind of fade together. And then auto mix
right time and make it a little bit more like a DJ kind of mix. But speaking of that, what Spotify does really well is they have this new feature called mix. So, this is basically like a full DJ mixing. It's obviously not as
table. But looking at this, if I just go me how many beats per minute every single song is. You could rearrange them easily. It shows you like 10B, 12B, 4B, so you can arrange things pretty easily
like that. And if I tap on the transitions, right now it says auto for actually have a surprising amount of controls to customize how the transition want. You can choose what the fade is going to be if you want it to rise,
blend, wave. There's so many different things, and you have volume EQ and do with that. I think that's so impressive. Uh you could save it. I'm going to disable mix on this playlist. But that's such a cool feature if you're
going to host a party. Now, next chapter is going to be audio quality. This is just sounds better to me. That's people say, which I'm not disagreeing with, but there's a couple main reasons. One, Spotify automatically normalizes volume
range, so all songs sound approximately the same volume. Apple Music on the other hand has a feature called Sound Check for audio normalization, but you can easily have that set on or off, and you end up prioritizing dynamic range.
Some songs are more quiet, some are more loud. And so, by default, a lot of people hear that, and they think Apple Music does sound better. Spotify, though, has recently added lossless the highest,
but on some songs, you can enable it, and it's definitely a huge step up from other hand, does have significantly higher 192 kHz on some songs. Uh so, Apple also has spatial audio, Spotify does not. From the audio quality
doubt Apple does give you more flexibility and can sound significantly choose what the quality is going to be like on Wi-Fi, on cellular, and when you your data. Now, I can already hear all the people in the comments being angry
like, "Oh, what about YouTube Music or Tidal?" I mean, yeah, I'll make this video, we're talking about these two to see which one's actually better. which one you like, and whichever one gets the most comments, I'll make that
subscribed to the channel, please consider subscribing so you don't miss concluding audio quality, yeah, Apple Music's definitely better. I think most people listening to Bluetooth earbuds with like an SBC codec, you're just not
capable of hearing that difference because of other limitations. But, if you have a good setup and you're not already using downloaded files, then edge there, especially for spatial audio if that's what you like. As far as
social goes, this is one thing that I really noticed after using these two apps, or really using Apple Music for the past month and Spotify for like 10 years before that, Apple Music feels a lot more alone. You feel like you're in
you're in a studio just like hanging out listening to music, picking out CDs and what you want. But, Spotify feels more like a party with your friends, easier to discover new music. Spotify has a lot of social aspects here. They have
Spotify Wrapped, which is incredibly shareable. I hate how many people share this, but I love seeing my own Spotify Wrapped, and it's so tempting to send it your top artist, who was your top song, and stuff like that. Spotify also has
top song leaderboards for you to see which songs you've listened to the most. You can follow people. There's public and private playlists. So, if I go to go to playlist, a lot of these are not even for me. Like this one, for example,
made a playlist that I really enjoyed. So, I followed it, added it to my collaborative playlists on Apple, finally, but you've been doing this on like, you know, a friend and I want to add five songs per week to a playlist,
some new music, and it's just like a book club style thing. It's fun to do, now on both platforms. That's a big positive. But, Spotify goes even further. And on Spotify, they actually
then you go down to made for you, they have what's called blends. So, you can create a new blend. So, you can choose a friend, you invite them to the blend, game-changer for road trips with my wife. We both have slightly different
pressure on me to just like pick the songs, and she might not like it. I is, but a blend is great. It takes both of our tastes, finds a lot of overlap or two songs, you know, every other couple songs uh that maybe she likes or
maybe that I like, and it just makes the overall playlist way better. And there's because you know Spotify picked these, and if you don't probably going to like most of the same stuff in this playlist. You can also
listen together with a jam, which means everyone can add to the queue. This is great for parties and road trips, uh and it's really a convenient feature, honestly. You have friend activity, where you can literally listen to what
other people are listening to in real time. If I go down, I can see what my right now, and uh 12 minutes ago at least. So, I could I could just hit play, and everything that he plays next is going to be playing on my phone. You
something you have to have on. It is on by default. I don't know if most people you're listening to like some Hilary Duff jams, you can just disable that if though. Apple Music, like I said, recently added collaborative playlists,
well. Kind of gives it like an iMessage feel, so a little bit more of a social aspect in there now, uh but otherwise, like I said, I would say Apple feels a studio picking out CDs and playing them. Whereas Spotify, you can either listen
privately like that, or with a lot of friends to discover new music. So, for the social and music discovery reasons mentioned, Apple Music can be hard to build a library and even discover new music, even if you import from
songs that it knows you're going to like. Sometimes it completely misses and recommends things very unrelated, but I think that that's where Apple Music in I don't want this to sound like I'm just like a huge fan of Spotify and not Apple
about Spotify. We'll get to some in a minute. But talking about other media, are kind of a little bit of a downside and an upside for Spotify. It's mixed in. So, sometimes if you're searching for things, podcast pop up and it's like
somebody uploaded a live music track, but they called it a podcast and that interface and and you'll see it recommends a lot of episodes as and not there. So, I kind of wish you can customize the home screen a little bit
more. Apple has a separate app for podcast. So, there are no podcasts at all on Apple Music. It's just music. As far as videos go, I mean you've got like video type things on on both the apps, but really not nearly as much on Apple.
Spotify is pushing videos a lot more trying to be sort of like YouTube. Like up there last week. I'm not really into that. I'll go to YouTube if I want to watch a video, but I do appreciate a good podcast with a video. So, sometimes
podcast with videos kind of a big positive. As far as audiobooks go, that's another thing that pops up it on Spotify if I'm looking for a podcast, tells me I have to pay extra to listen to it. Again, Apple Music doesn't do
well. If you go to an individual artist page, both platforms do show you for example Billy Strings has an upcoming concert uh on Spotify. They've got music, clips, events, and merch. So, it's kind of nice you can also find
if you go to events, they have a list of them. I could uh on it's a little upcoming events and concerts down there on Apple Music. So, you can see all of them. Like I said, on both of them find one that's near you. You can also choose
your location on Spotify and that's going to show you what's nearby. But I'm toss up between them. As far as the mobile UI goes, in my opinion, Apple Music is much more minimal, much cleaner, a little bit less stressful,
where you just find your music. It shows you, you know, very nice, clean, minimal colors. Spotify can be a little bit cluttered. There's a lot going on here. Spotify feels kind of like a radio with tons and tons of stations, whereas Apple
feels like your dad's old CD collection. You just pick one, relax, and listen to it. It's clean, less overwhelming, and certainly a lot of simpler. Now, when lyrics. By default, they show you the album cover bigger on Spotify and lyrics
bigger on Apple Music, but the lyrics are, as you can see, right below the album cover. But if I scroll down, you'll see lyrics can be an entire page. I can make that full screen, and now we see lyrics. But Apple Music has this
earlier in the video, if you're going to do karaoke with this, which, honestly, a lot of people actually do, you can tap on this little magic microphone button there on the Apple Music app, it will turn the vocals down and just have the
music playing. And you can choose, by swiping up and down on that, how much of the vocals you want to come through, and it does a phenomenal job. I'm so impressed by how well that actually performs. Then just tap it again to
disable that. They both have a home tab, they both have a search tab. On Spotify, search tab is like a full discover tab, where they show you, you know, all types kind of showed you throughout this video, as well as categories down there,
on the camera to scan uh either Spotify codes for, you know, artists or other easily, finding other profiles and becoming friends. We've got a library tab on both of them, of course, which is going to be, you know, all of your
stuff. If I go to library on both of them, so like albums, artists, playlists, all that's showing up there. We have a new tab here on Apple Music, again, it's not really catered to me. Like I don't listen to Jay-Z at all. I
don't like Jay-Z, and somehow it's all over. Jay-Z's popping up all over the top. We've got best new songs, that's kind of like charts. New this week, again, not not relevant to me until you get down to recent
releases. And then these are some of the bands that I actually listen to. So, that makes sense. They also have updated playlists. Nothing against like Buzz's Infinity Jams. I'm sure they're awesome, but again, not really relevant to me.
specifically. And then on Spotify, the last thing we have is the create. And playlist, collaborative playlist, mixed playlist. All those are kind of the same thing, really. You've got blends, prompted playlists, and jams. If you
start all of that from the plus button on the bottom. But, little downside on talking about things not being custom, on Spotify, if I swipe down, I really, screen more. There's just too much stuff that I don't like. For example,
on here. I wish this would just go away. Get rid of the audiobooks thing for me personally. So, I'll scroll down, it'll it'll recommend podcasts. And there's the Acquired podcast, listen to that all the time. But then it'll show like the
Peter Attia podcast. I listened to that one or two times months and months ago. I'm not the biggest fan of Peter Attia, and I I can't remove that. I can't say don't recommend this podcast. It just always pops up there, and I think that's
really annoying. Also, like I said, there's just so much going on here. top. I really like these. They do a great job. They've got the next episode makes sense. And the recommendations all make sense, but there's subtle things
that, like for example, across the top, you can tap on music. You can just tap brings up things that are more relevant to you, but you kind of have to know to that it's really hidden in my opinion. Same thing with the DJ stuff. You can
ask for some music right there, but it's a little bit more subtle, a little bit noisy interface. I'm not saying I don't like it, but there is just a lot going on here. Whereas Apple, much, much more simple. Just you're opening this to play
music. As far as the desktop interface goes, these both do have a web player from whatever browser you want, and they also you can download these on Mac or Like, it works well on there. I like how that's set up, and you know, it's very
different from the mobile app, but still very usable. Offline music varies a lot between these. Apple limits you to 100,000 songs across 10 devices. Not much of a limit, that's really high. Spotify 10,000 songs, so significantly
ever download, but that's spread across five different devices. And as far as before, Spotify really sucks for this. Like, you can't you can't really play any local files. Like, you kind of could at some point upload some files and play
them on the same device, but it basically doesn't work. Apple has two things. One, they've iCloud music library, so it's kind of like a music like a locker. You can upload your music and listen to it on your own devices
using Apple Music, and Apple Music is also the default player for local files on macOS. So, you can already play local files with the same music app there. As far as supported devices go, inter-device connectivity is a big win
for Spotify. You can control other devices. Like, for example, if my phone is connected to a Bluetooth speaker on my laptop, then I could play, pause, skip tracks, add to the queue. I can manage all of what my phone is playing
from a different device. It syncs very easily between all the devices on my account. Apple Music does not do this. Each device is pretty much independent. Also, a lot of devices have the Spotify tap feature. If you've got some Sony
them or whatever, it'll fire off your Spotify playlist right away. Apple Music is already on a lot of Apple devices, so that's kind of a positive, but Spotify wins with a lot of non-Apple devices. For example, if you have a Garmin watch,
and you want to download music and run without your phone, well, Spotify is your option there, not Apple Music. Most smart speakers do work with both, but they generally again work better with Spotify. And Apple HomePods work with
Apple Music really well and not really as well with Spotify unless you're doing AirPlay from another device. Spotify also integrates deeply with other things like Android Auto, Google Maps, Waze, but Apple of course integrates deeply
with the Apple ecosystem. I don't think the ecosystem should dictate which music switching between them, like I said, is really easy. You can import your playlist and everything from one to the other with very little effort at all.
ethics standpoint, if you care about how much your favorite artist get paid, Apple supposedly pays two to three times more on average than Spotify. I buying merch and going to their concerts, but in conclusion, there are
other options too, not just Spotify and Apple Music, but I surveyed people and of people in second place are using Apple Music. YouTube Music, Amazon Leave a comment letting me know which comparison I should make, but Apple
Music lets you upload your music, has spatial audio, higher resolution audio, less cluttered interface. It's more of a music purest app and it's also cheaper. But my overall opinion, Spotify for me is more fun to use. The discovery
algorithms are superior, the social aspect is fun and collaborative, and different offerings on the app. The feature set is just far more extensive on here and the audio quality has improved. It's still not the best, but
there just aren't enough reasons for me personally to permanently switch to Apple Music. So, no disrespect to Apple Music, it is a fantastic platform, but Spotify is my choice.