Samuel Axon
Today, Spotify is the dominant streaming music platform in various regions, including the United States. But lately, there has been a lot of interest among Spotify users to try something new.
Some are just curious to see what else is out there as they have been using Spotify for a long time while the competitors have matured. Some are trying to make a change because of controversies surrounding the platform’s deal with podcaster Joe Rogan or its financial relationship with artists.
Whatever your reasons, there are several established competitors that offer many of the same features as Spotify. We’ll soon run into what sets them apart.
We’re going to keep our focus on Spotify’s real competitors, so we’re looking at services that let you stream on demand pretty much any song at any time. That specifically excludes popular radio-focused services like Pandora that aren’t focused on a la carte song selection. It also excludes many smaller services that just can’t offer the same amount of content as Spotify, even if they offer similar features.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but these are the services we think are good enough to not make a switch from Spotify feel like a downgrade.
The big
Apple Music
Subscriptions: $10/month (individual), $15/month (family), $5/month (voice, student)
This is an obvious choice, and for good reason. Apple Music is Spotify’s biggest competitor and the overall user experience is as close to Spotify as possible.
The main difference between the two is that while Spotify’s music discovery has an important algorithmic recommendation component (like the Discover Weekly playlist), Apple Music is much more focused on professional human curation, either in handcrafted playlists or pre-Internet-like radio streams with live DJs.
Yes, there are professionally curated playlists on Spotify and algorithmic radio stations on Apple Music. But Apple puts a lot more effort into the hand-picked stuff, while the algorithmic recommendations and associations aren’t nearly as strong.
Jimmy Iovine announces Apple Music in 2015.
Each emphasis, of course, has advantages and disadvantages. But the two services have the most important thing in common: each has a similarly huge library of individual songs spanning many genres and eras. You can listen to songs à la carte and sort them into playlists as many times as you want.
Notably, Apple Music doesn’t have ad-supported free tier like Spotify does. So if you don’t want to pay the $10 a month it charges for a subscription, this isn’t the service for you.
For some content, Apple Music also offers higher quality audio (via lossless and Dolby Atmos), and it also gives artists a slightly bigger slice of the financial pie.
Pros
- Higher sound quality for certain content
- Better human curation and live radio shows
- Compensates artists a little better
- Tighter integration with Apple hardware, software, and services (if that’s your ecosystem of choice)
- Stronger integration of your personal music library
cons
- Notably, worse algorithmic features and recommendations
- While there are Android and Windows apps, Apple Music doesn’t always play well with smart speakers or other products not made by Apple
- Smaller podcast selection
