I have been a Spotify user for years. I was there before they got rid of Car Thing (any of you remember that?) I loyally used the free version until my last year of high school. For a long time I took advantage of being able to play on demand with Daily Mixes and clearing the app to eliminate advertisement interruptions. I knew all the little workarounds. Eventually I could no longer tolerate the advertisements and limitations of the free version. I hated having only six song skips per hour. It was awful. I finally broke down and upgraded to the paid Premium plan.

The Spotify experience has been so much better with the Premium subscription. As much as I listen to music I think it is so worth the money. I love all of the features from the curated playlists to the music library interface. I love having so many actions in the music player. You can add to a playlist, hide a song, add to queue, share a song, etc etc. All the things. As a third party app, Spotify is integrated into so many devices which can function as a speaker. Whenever I am tired of listening to music I can listen to podcasts within the same app. All my listening activity is in one place.

Spotify has created an exclusive culture and a sense of missing out if you don’t use the platform. Yeah, they got me there. The highly anticipated Wrapped, posting lyrics, and just even saying you use Spotify seems to label you as “cool.” The majority of people in my circles use Spotify (I know this is relative). That was not the initial reason why I use Spotify though.

A couple of my friends used Apple Music and told me they preferred it. (It is funny to mention here that they have since then switched to Spotify.) I decided to give Apple Music a try and began a free trial. One thing I immediately noticed was the sound quality which is so much better than Spotify’s. Apple Music also offers the Dolby Atmos listening experience on some songs which significantly enhances the song. I liked this feature but felt it was overwhelming for everyday listening.

I love that Apple pays artists more per stream than Spotify. Overall I wish artists were compensated more for their work. I don’t like the way streaming platforms give artists little for their work. The best way to support an artist is to buy their merchandise and attend their live shows.

While trying Apple Music I noticed that the Apple Music platform seems to focus more on music and artists and only that for its users’ listening experience. They have separate apps for classical music and podcasts. Spotify tends to stray from its original purpose and focus on podcasts, audiobooks, videos and other mediums that do not relate to music. 

One major gripe I had with the Apple Music app was the user interface and menus. Navigation seemed clunky to me. The process of adding and removing songs from playlists was not as user-friendly as Spotify. I acknowledge I have used Spotify for years and am experienced with its interface. But if I had no prior interaction with the Spotify app I think I would still prefer Spotify’s interface to Apple Music’s.

I have been on Spotify for so long and would rather not leave all my playlists and saved songs. Some of the ones I still use are years old. We go way back. I also have my library organized the way I like it. I don’t want to start over. After considering the pros and cons of both platforms I chose to remain loyal to Spotify. The pros outweighed the cons for me. Maybe I’ll give Apple Music another chance someday but for now I’m sticking with Spotify.