One area where Spotify has slipped behind its rivals in recent years is in sound quality. “The labels don’t seem to like it and ultimately it’s their content,” former Apple executive Jimmy Iovine admitted in 2017 (opens in new tab).

While Apple Music originally tried to attract customers by way of exclusive tracks and albums, this is something that the company has backed away from in recent years. Though if you’re particularly keen on Neil Young or Joni Mitchell, you’ll want to put your money behind Apple Music, due to the two artists’ ongoing protest at Spotify’s podcasting operation (opens in new tab). In short, you should find both catalogues have everything that you’re looking for, unless your tastes are extremely obscure. Apple Music claims it has a library of “over 90 million” songs, while Spotify said last February that it had “ more than 70 million tracks (opens in new tab).”Ī win for Apple Music? Well maybe, but it’s doubtful, because reports claim that 60,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day (opens in new tab) and, if accurate, that means the company will have cleared that gap in the intervening year. You shouldn’t really have to worry about serious gaps in either library. Still, you can’t argue with the low price of ‘free’. You have severe limits on picking the songs you want to listen to, there are limited skips, reduced sound quality and frequent ad breaks. Spotify also has a free tier, but frankly it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience with limitations in place designed to get users to upgrade to a paid subscription. This behaves as you would expect, but has a nice extra where each partner’s top songs are pooled into a shared playlist for the pair to enjoy. For $12.99 per month, you can get a ‘Duo’ account aimed squarely at couples.

That’s the full list of Apple Music options, but Spotify has two more which might appeal.

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