Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition | Hacker News Reader

Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

wireshock.com

23 pointsksubedi48 comments

> The desktop app for Apple Music has been updated with the newer versions of Mac OS and performs well

It abbbsolutely does not. Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used- certainly the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used. It is shockingly, shamefully bad for what's supposed to be a flagship service of one of the worlds richest companies.

And to be clear, I'm not one of the people on here who's always complaining about various apps. I think Slack is mostly fine. I think Electron apps are generally a positive thing. But the desktop Apple Music app is an abomination. If you don't use an iOS device for the majority of your listening, steer clear of Apple Music.

> the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used

Try opening Apple Mail and searching for an email you know is there.

> Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used

Agreed, though I suspect the grass is not much greener on the other side.

iTunes became worse and worse over time, but the worst of iTunes was 100 times better than Apple Music on Mac. A total embarrassment and work of utter incompetence. I'd take iTunes back any day.

Have you tried https://cider.sh ? I use it and it’s great, but I haven’t tried the AM mac app since I don’t use a mac

I think I tried this one several months ago and it had too many problems of its own; nicer in some ways, but with some features missing entirely. I ended up switching back, but maybe it's improved since then?

A few months ago it was in Alpha (and it might still be idk) so that makes sense

I’m winding down my reliance on subscription based services. There’s been a noticeable shift in the world when it comes to ownership; specifically the media and housing market space. Perpetual renting seems to be the way of the future. While I have my own opinions on that, I think it’s important to (at the very least) own your media library. Not only does it benefit artists and studios more, you will not be subject to any drama. Streaming has done good things for the industry, but I think we’ve swung too far.

With that said, I own stacks blu rays and CD’s that can easily be imported into my NAS and then attached to servies like Plex[1] or Navidrome[2]. I can even share those libraries with friends and family which is an added bonus. Navidrome also exposes a subsonic api that clients can connect to. PlexAmp can also import your music library.

With the exception of Plex, I think we’re entering a golden age of open source software to allow this type of thing. Setting up these services is fairly straightforward and maintenance is also pretty easy.

Pure bliss.

[1]https://www.plex.tv

[2]https://www.navidrome.org

I don't get how this enables music discovery, which is one of the biggest draws of Spotify

I don't see where GP claimed that it does.

I mean if you're weighing in on a discussion of Spotify and Apple and sharing your alternative, I think it would be fair to think about drawbacks or missing features along with the pros of anti-subscription life

How did you discover music pre-streaming? Either go back to that, or use something like Last.fm which is far superior for music discovery and also gives you listening stats. In addition, there are plenty of YouTubers who love talking about music and reviewing albums. I've discovered far more artists through them than Spotify. Curation will always be better than algorithms, which is why some people prefer Apple music more.

As far as drawbacks are concerned: - Requires some technical know-all

- Maintaining your services - though this is fairly minimal

- UI not as polished as Apple or Spotify

- Takes time to import your media

Obviously, its not for everyone and streaming services aren't going anywhere soon. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

I use to be a big fan of Spotify but they keep showing me similar songs that I just happened to listen to. My weekly lists contain synth, down tempo, and if I’m very lucky a pop song.

I don’t mind these genres but looking at my personal collection I have 400 gigs of rock, 500 gigs of rap, and 800 gigs of jazz. None of these three genres ever appear for me on Spotify. Spotify is by far the worse way for me to discover music because it’ll never show me something new or different; just the same song several dozen times.

The best way to find music is talking to people. Before what.cd shut down they had collages that I’d make heavy use of, basically lists of songs and artists for a variety of genres or feelings. One I’d heavy contribute to was jazzy hip hop. This one genre would encapsulate 30-60 artists which I’m sure that Spotify would put in separate worlds.

There has never been a “recommendation” service that I have found more useful than talking to someone.

Bandcamp has Bandcamp radio. It's very good.

Bandcamp is great as well! I'm really curious how Epic handles it as an acquisition.

Likewise. I've been running my own Jellyfin server and listening to media using Sonixd and FinAmp since the beginning of this year. It was surprisingly easy to set up on my raspberry pi, and I'm really enjoying no subscription and no dark patterns in my music apps.

It really bothers me how companies convert people to subscription services, then twist the knife in ever deeper with scummy dark patterns. I would have been happy with Spotify's old app from 2015 or so pretty much indefinitely... but they just have to shove podcasts in every crevice of the app in the name of profit. And the app continues to get laggier and buggier every month (oh, how I grew to loathe that spinning green circle).

I understand that they're trying to survive, but when I can literally run a more reliable music streaming stack from my living room with FOSS, I question their technical prowess. And boy does it make me wonder what those thousands of engineers are up to.

Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no.

> Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no

The reviewer begins by giving a rundown of quite a range of equipment they use, their knowledge and enthusiasm about music technology, and how important sound quality is to their listening experience.

But you think they didn’t do the simplest and most obvious thing to maximize the sound quality on Spotify?

It's worth asking, sometimes people miss the obvious

> sometimes people miss the obvious

I agree. But one of my (many) bugbears with Spotify is the poor audio quality of their ‘best’ setting.

I haven’t tried Apple Music, but if Apple allowed access to their uncompressed stream through an API (currently only via AirPlay) to devices like my BlueSound Node then I would switch straight away.

Compared to CD, the best streaming quality from Spotify is pretty abysmal.

It's also highly questionable if anyone complaining about the audio quality would do that in an AB test. See gold plated cables etc.

Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists.

Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc.

Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'd be interested to know if one of them actually has a more extensive collection.

Out of curiosity, how is Apple Music better integrated? Spotify seems just as well integrated, especially now that Siri can treat it like your default music app. (E.g. “Hey Siri, play Novo Amor” starts a song by that artist in Spotify.)

Curious if there are other things I’m missing

Having never set Spotify to my default, I have no idea how well it integrates with Siri. Does it get any better integrated with the song identification features if you make it the default?

You have to connect your Spotify account with Shazam in the Shazam app option and disconnect Apple Music for that. Then the integration is on par.

Apple makes it really annoying to avoid their subscription services and use alternative apps. That’s the main point on which they are clearly inferior to Android.

The biggest technical difference between the two that actually made me switch from Spotify to Apple Music is that Spotify has a 9,999 song limit for songs stored in your library, whereas Apple Music has no limitation.

My music library is around 18k songs, so not being able to store them all in my library on Spotify was not tenable.

Spotify works perfectly on my iPhone -- what you do is hit the icon to open the app, then hit the play button. Pretty slick integration, if you ask me.

My pet-peeves about Apple Music:

- Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere"

- No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy.

- Do note that fixing this makes it difficult to easily listen to your favorite songs by artist. E.g, now you can go to "my fave songs" list and search for Michael Jackson, and voila, you have a temp playlist of all your favourite MJ songs!

- When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs"

- It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else.

Some life hacks for Apple Music:

There's a lot of stuff you can do on Apple Music on your Mac, that you can't do on your phone. for example, in a playlist you can choose when a song should start and end (so you can cut off an unnecessary intro, or "hidden track") and this will follow into your phone.

> Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere"

Yes you can. Selecting My Library and putting the song will have the song show up and you can filter the results via the segmented-ish menu directly under the search bar.

> No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy.

You select the song and enable shuffle. This will persist until you turn shuffle off.

> When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs"

Continuous mode should feel this niche but maybe not.

> It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else.

I listen to one song all the time by searching it putting it on repeat, or turning off continuous mode. This doesn’t work on playlist though.

Last I checked, Spotify has this issue too

I can attest to Apple Music recommendations having improved drastically. I’ve used it for probably 6 years now and only in the past 2 years have the personalized mixes become comparable to Spotify’s. One feature I think really deserves a lot of praise for discovery, is continuous play. The infinity icon will cause Apple Music to suggest a list of next songs based on your currently ending song, playlist or queue. This makes it easy to select one or a few songs, or a short playlist, and let it continue that vibe.

The live Apple Music stations are great when you find a diamond in the rough. They let you save and like songs from the live stream. It can be a little tough to find a radio show that jibes with your taste, but there are some excellent artists and DJs on there, and most of the live shows are playable on-demand.

At least where I live Apple Music has a much better catalog for what I like. Nobody else has the same amount of Japanese music without going through the hassle of using a VPN/Japanese account. It also applies to buying too which is frustrating as iTunes doesn't work well under WINE and Apple STILL doesn't have a web interface to buy/download from for some reason.

I don't even want to give Apple money but it's either that or pay like $40 for an imported CD...

There’s no way to delete or modify your listening history on Apple Music, and thus no way to get rid of unwanted recommendations AFAIK. At least with Spotify you can just create a new account, but your Apple Music account is tied to your appleid, so that’s not really feasible if you’re a heavy Apple user. I just try to find the service with mostly the same features but with the least intrusive recommendations and use that, which at the moment is Qobuz.

If you scroll up in the queue you get your history and a Clear button. Not sure if it affects recommendations

I guess the author doesn’t use windows because otherwise they would’ve acknowledged iTunes during the application and user experience section. I tolerate it since I only use windows for gaming but if windows was my main OS the app experience would be enough to choose Spotify.

Anecdotally, Apple Music sounds much better than Spotify, but I had to unsubscribe because it didn't work on a flight earlier this year (2022). All music was downloaded in lossless, but I guess some small bit still required network access.

I think this usually happens if your wifi/cellular is still on and connected but there is no actual data connection (ie AM thinks it can contact the server but it actually can’t, so it waits forever). Usually can be fixed by just turning on/off work/cellular and making sure it’s off. I download all my music on AM in lossless and haven’t had this issue once I turn off wi-fi/cell

Sheesh, this guy is concerned about exactly which codec is used, so I hope he also has one of those $10,000 home speaker systems with gold wiring because the placebo effect is really strong with that stuff.

When a song has a groove you dig, it sounds good even without the lossless codec and the gold-plated wires. But when you're listening to traditional Chinese music you're better served with a speaker system that has had the wires chewed through by mice.

Do Spotify and Apple Music have artist bio's and related bands / albums?

Those (and the spotify-style mixes) are my favorite features of Tidal.

I had mixed luck with Spotify years ago, and never looked back.

Apple Music does have this on most artist pages, except for more obscure ones.

For every artist Spotify currently shows :

- Top 10 tracks.

- Artist posted playlist if any. (Only 1 is shown here, maybe the most popular one ?)

- Entire discography. (Singles, EPs, albums in chronological order)

- Spotify editorial playlists prominently featuring said artist.

- Merch.

- Bio.

- All artist posted playlists.

- Similar artists.

- Soundtracks or albums where the artist was featured.

What's Tidal's killer feature?

I've used Spotify, Deezer, currently Youtube Music because bundled with my premium. I don't like it, I'd like to move, but I'm not sure I can tell why Tidal would provide a better service that's worth the hassle of importing all my playlists. They're all a little crap in their own way.

FLAC audio is cool I guess, but honestly that would not be a good enough selling point for me.

I think Tidal's biggest feature is the HiFi audio that is included in their standard subscription. But aside from that, they do have a great app that does Chromecast (for me) better than YouTube Music even.

> While AAC and OGG codecs are very similar on paper, the way they compress music is very different as AAC uses psychoacoustics to encode music which retains more audible parts of the track.

It’s about this point in the article where I lost trust in the author. A ‘psychoacoustic model’ was used for MP3, a codec built in 91. Exploiting human perceptual traits for better compression isn’t novel to AAC, though admittedly it’s slightly better in very low bandwidth applications vs OGG. Can’t say any audiophile would stream below 128k though

Calling Tidal niche, and then opening with how important sound quality is to you seems disingenuous.

Tidal superseded Spotify a long time ago in features and quality. It's far from niche

Also worth mentioning (not discussed in the article) the awful, memory-hogging Spotify Electron app on MacOS.

(For clarification, I meant the performance of the desktop app isn’t discussed).

Same on Linux. Electron apps are often so memory-hogging and not that fast. That's why i switched to a TUI spotify player and except that i can't see album covers there is nothing that i miss.

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