Streamline Spotify is superior to Apple Music

Zach Farrell '21, Photo Editor

Throughout my seven years with an iPhone, I have tried almost every music streaming service out there. I’ve cycled through Soundcloud, Tidal and even had a subscription to Apple Music for a year, but time and time again I have gone back to Spotify– my tried-and-true favorite streaming service.

The main feature that makes Spotify so appealing to me over the others is the “Daily Mix” playlists generated by the app. One of my favorite pastimes is trying to find new music to listen to, on a constant hunt for my new favorite song. Spotify will look for new music for you. The service analyzes the different types and genres of music you listen to and formulates playlists full of fresh, new music for your consumption. As you listen through these generated playlists, you can “like” and “dislike” specific songs through the app to hear more or fewer songs of that style.

When compared to Apple Music, the Spotify interface is incredibly streamlined. It is simple and easy to navigate. The main “home” tab shows your most relevant playlists (based on what you have been listening to most lately), radio stations that will shuffle your saved music, and trending music. There is a search tab, where you can look up any song your heart desires, or, if you hear a song that you like but you don’t know its name, you can press the microphone button and Spotify will tell you what song is playing and the artist. The next tab contains all of your saved music and playlists, conveniently organized for easy access.

Because I listen to so much music, I have endless playlists I’ve put together over the years I’ve had the app. However, most of the time, I would rather listen to my playlist from the last month, rather than the one I made in summer 2016. Spotify does the work of sorting these playlists for me, showing me my most relevant and recent playlists first, but allowing the option to sort by “oldest”, just in case I’m in the mood for some throwbacks.

All of these life-simplifying features are especially important for choosing music while in the car– it even has a feature (which can be easily turned off) that detects when you are driving and makes it incredibly easy to quickly select music while keeping your eyes on the road. This is great for newer drivers like myself who love to blast music while driving but are poor at multitasking.

There is simply no other streaming service that can hold a candle to Spotify. Apple Music is far more expensive– Spotify’s family plan includes five accounts at $3 each per month, while Apple Music’s is $10 per account– and offers far fewer features than Spotify. As long as I listen to music, I will never make the switch from Spotify to Apple Music.