I’ve always been an early adopter in the world of digital music. I had some of the earliest MP3 players, pre-iPod. I used (gasp) Napster and Limewire for a period before I began DJ’ing, until when the quality of the audio became more important (and noticeable) to me. Most of my music I then bought through iTunes, and some through Beatport. Leading us to the most recent years when streaming has become the main thing in town.
Being largely tied into the Apple ecosystem, I moved right into Apple Music. Sure, I sort of looked at Spotify, and didn’t see any major differences, so I just kept things simple and stuck with what I knew, until just a couple of weeks ago.
Through my continued reading, and listening, and research, Spotify is definitely the main game in town. And as an aspiring career musician, it has become clear that it’s not something to ignore any longer. Given that they offer a three month trial, and that there are nearly no barriers of entry and exit, I presently am operating both Apple Music and Spotify.
Not that the interface is by any means difficult to familiarize one’s self with, but once I quickly learned my way around, subtle yet significant differences began to emerge between the two. Firstly, and strangely, I found myself only wanting to search for and play very specific genres of electronic music in Spotify, eager to see its algorithms at work, and hoping that it would help me discover copious amounts of new music and artists that I would fall in love with. On the flip side of that, when I did want to search or play something non-electronic, and would jump into Apple Music to do so, many of these subtle differences became ever-increasingly obvious.
Perhaps on paper it will mean little to some, but for myself, and especially in my current perspective, Apple Music felt much more cold, impersonal, and empty; it is empty of personality, imagery, concert listings, social links, merchandise, and statistics . Oh statistics, I love my statistics! How many times has this track be listened to (at roughly $0.007 per stream)? How many monthly listeners does this artist have? Where do most of the listeners of this artist come from?
You might think all of these ‘extras’ (relative to Apple Music) would make Spotify too busy and noisy. However their design has largely avoided that potential pitfall, keeping the interface quite streamlined and minimal. In hindsight, one of the only major features that they share are their recommendations (which I generally love in both instances) - the ‘Similar Artists’ section at the bottom of an Artists page on Apple Music, or the ‘Similar to’ suggestions in Spotify.
But yet again, I feel that Spotify does this better, and with more of it. The main page of Apple Music, in fact, is like reading the front page of the newsletter. All the biggest artists and their new releases. All the main Apple Music and Beats radio stations. In my case, almost all the things that generally don’t seem to interest me. And unfortunately Apple Music doesn’t adapt to the fact that this doesn’t interest me, and just keeps it there, throwing it in front of my face every time I open the desktop app.
Meanwhile over at Spotify, your home page has some recently played items, some custom curated playlists based on historical listening (including a weekly Release Radar playlist matching artists you follow our similar to and new releases, as well as a Discover Weekly mixtape of all tracks historically that Spotify thinks you would enjoy). In fairness, some of Apple’s ‘For You’ section also does this quite well, but there is something about Spotify’s layout that seems to work better. Either that or it’s still a novelty from only a few weeks of usage.
All in all, Spotify is winning me over. I have discovered a great amount of new music that I am loving - possibly thanks to the fact that I’ve limited artists I follow and the music I listen to on the platform to be of very few specific genres. I have heard Spotify described a few times in the last couple of weeks as being more democratic. Once I heard that description, I couldn’t unhear it, and I agree it is one of the best ways I can describe how I feel about it as well.