Apple vs. Spotify vs. YouTube Music (2023)
The first music streaming service I paid for was Rdio, and I used them until they shut down in 2015. I loved its clean interface and great discovery options (like the ability to set how ‘familiar’ a radio station should be). After that, I bounced back and forth between Apple Music and Spotify. Today, I mostly use Spotify, though I’ve experimented with YouTube Music a bit.
The 2023 Spotify Wrapped really ignited a fresh “Apple Music vs. Spotify” debate, with a little “what about YouTube, guys” thrown in. I’ve tried to write down my thoughts about music streaming before and I’ll admit it’s not an easy task. But I’m going to try again.
Spotify
We’ll start with Spotify because it’s my streaming service of choice today.
What’s great
- Spotify Connect is a killer feature. Being able to remotely control playback is infinitely better than AirPlay. My AV receiver can directly stream songs from Spotify while being controlled from any Spotify app.
- Spotify kills it on apps and integrations. There’s an app for PlayStation, an app for Roku, an integration for Discord. Spotify is remarkably cross-platform.
- I feel like the availability and curation of instrumental recordings (house, jazz, etc.) is better than anywhere else. This is what I listen to during focus work or quiet hours.
- The interface is better than Apple Music or YouTube Music, in my opinion. Spotify honestly feels like the only app made by a team that actually enjoys listening to music, either on their own or with others. One important example: Spotify is the only one that gets queue behavior right.
What sucks
- Even though they finally added an explicit content filter, they continue to hide ‘Clean’ versions of songs and albums unless you specifically dig for them. Apple Music readily shows both in a search.
- They push podcast and audiobook content, which I completely and unequivocally do NOT care about. Let me hide podcasts and audiobooks forevermore.
- They test out new features on people without any obvious way to turn it off.
The CarPlay app is kinda lame. For example, artists are not sorted alphabetically, but by recency.
Apple Music
Since it’s the other major streaming service, and only one I’ve had extensive experience with, we’ll talk about Apple Music next.
What’s great
- For people who think it matters practically, Apple Music offers lossless audio. (It doesn’t matter, in practice, for most people. Even people who claim to notice a difference probably don’t.)
- They pay artists more per stream on average.
- ‘Clean’ versions of music are treated equally to ‘Explicit’ versions, meaning they show up in search without having to append “clean” to the search term.
What sucks
- The interface is too sparse and feels like it was designed by someone who hates music.
- The discovery is abysmal. It is shocking when any of their mixes hit the mark.
- Limited apps and integrations. Yes, the Android and Windows apps are native and decent. Still an absolutely pathetic showing compared to Spotify.
YouTube Music
Next, we have YouTube Music which seems to have a small but loyal subscriber base.
What’s great
- YouTube Music is included with YouTube Premium at no additional charge. That means you get picture-in-picture from the YouTube app and an ad-free experience.
- The ‘Tune’ feature on stations lets you choose artists, artist variety, discovery mode, and apply a few filters.
- Chromecast integration.
- Podcasts aren’t shoved in your face as much as on Spotify.
- When you share a song with someone who isn’t subscribed, it seems like they can listen to the whole thing.
What sucks
- The interface, mostly.
- It uses the same awful “Play Next” and “Add to queue” implementation as Apple Music.
- The playlist covers look terrible.
- ‘Samples’ is totally unnecessary.