Written by Morgan Forbes; edited by Ellie Henderson
The title of this piece may be one of the most controversial things I’ve ever written. The Swedish streaming service Spotify, originally founded in 2006 and now boasting almost half a billion users, is probably the biggest and most recognisable platform for music in the world. Slightly less than half of those 500 million users pay to use the site’s premium services each month, and in February I finally became one of them. But I seem to be the only person I know who is less than impressed.
I love throwing money at streaming services, and I say this without a hint of sarcasm. A decade ago, it wasn’t unusual for music fans to suffer through an endless stream of ads and poor sound quality on YouTube, for example – the idea of paying a monthly fee to easily access music through an app was ludicrous. But eventually, most people came around to the idea of having access to any song, anywhere, at any time. Paying for this luxury now no longer seems far-fetched. And as I became an adult with my own income, I decided to treat myself and sign up for Apple Music. As a student, it was less than five pounds a month, but I quickly realised I’d be happy to pay twice that for the convenience of the service. I chose it over Spotify or anything else simply because, at the time, it bragged about a feature that no other competitor had – the ability to search for songs by lyrics (if I were less lazy, I could’ve used Google for this).
It was an easy option, anyway. I was (and still am) part of the Apple Cult. I’m well aware of the delusional mentality Apple fans can fall into thinking it’s Apple or nothing. Some of us spend an unreasonable amount of money on the newest iPhone every year (despite the fact that other companies produce objectively ‘better’ mobile devices), and we sync them up with our rose-gold iPads, MacBook Pros, customised Apple Watches, and more. Apple has a monopoly over the tech world in many regards, but many people are happy buying into it without a second thought. Before I had Apple Music, I had a music library on iTunes full of my parents’ uploaded CDs, purchased singles, and that one U2 album nobody could shake. Before that, I searched through thousands of my favourite songs on YouTube to convert them into MP3 files free of charge and download them onto the family computer – a boxy old iMac. I customised artist names and album art. This method wasn’t at all practical and consumed far too much of my time, but God forbid I consider any competitor’s version of an Apple storage system.
But then there was a new cult: Spotify users. Everyone claimed it was the best, but I had been an enthusiastic Apple Music user for years and had no intention of making the switch. I loved Apple’s aesthetic, the sound quality, and the fact that I had accumulated so much music made it tiresome to consider the effort of moving it all. Then, slowly, the devil on my shoulder made some good points: Apple Music was now a pound more expensive each month; every year, my friends shared screenshots of their Spotify Wrapped (Apple Music does have Rewind, but we all know it’s not the same); I would be able to search for my own playlists at parties or in the car on someone else’s phone. The last straw was a coworker suggesting an app that specialised in transferring music between streaming services. Fine. I would see what all the fuss was about.
The first problems arose as I was transferring my music library, and this is because Spotify doesn’t actually have a music library the same way Apple Music does. The transfer app I used offered a few different ways of swapping over my music – through playlists, albums, or individual songs. Unfortunately, I discovered I couldn’t use the latter option and just dump all of my songs in one go, because you can’t save a song without adding it to your ‘liked’ list or another playlist. I ended up relaying each playlist and full album I had, then creating a playlist titled ‘SONGS WITHOUT A HOME’ (it’s almost 150 hours long, by the way). I considered the possibility that there’s a more efficient way of doing this, but I haven’t found it yet. After all, it would take time to get used to a brand new streaming service.
After the transfer was complete, I tried to search for random songs within my library to check that it had worked and that there was nothing missing. Except nothing came up. I could search for playlists, albums, artists, and podcasts within my library, but not songs. This isn’t a massive hindrance; you can simply search for songs using Spotify’s general search option. This does mean, however, that you will be browsing the entirety of Spotify, and while your downloaded content will be the first to appear upon searching, you could be looking through remastered versions, covers, and songs titled the same thing by different artists. It’s a little messy.
There are some other comparisons worth noting. Apple Music has the advantage of a larger music library with over 100 million songs, while Spotify offers over 80 million — still nothing to turn your nose up at. Apple Music has better sound quality achieved through lossless and spatial audio, going up to 24-bit/192kHz; however, it’s your headphones and speakers that will notice the difference here. Spotify certainly has its advantages: more users to share content with, more podcasts available on the same app (Apple Podcasts is a separate entity), and a better system for suggesting new music according to your tastes. Although both services can be accessed through gaming consoles, Spotify is available on a few more. There is also the issue of free vs. premium use; while new users can trial Apple Music free of charge for up to six months — much better than Spotify Premium’s one month — you’ll have to pay up at some point. As long as you’re content with ad breaks and skip limits, you can make do with the free version of Spotify.
I won’t say that I’ve regretted making the switch from Apple Music to Spotify – yet. You should always allow yourself an adequate amount of time to get used to a new user interface, and though I’m not the biggest fan of the neon green highlights, they could grow on me. I spend an excessive amount of time as the passenger in my fiancé’s car, scrolling through Spotify on his phone to play music; at least now I can find my own playlists. I can’t convince him to switch over to Apple Music’s family plan, but I know which service I’d prefer.
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