Both offer early access to certain albums from time to time and Apple Music sometimes offers exclusives for certain music videos. If the highest audio fidelity is really important to you, consider another service that supports lossless streaming like Tidal.Īpple Music has a larger library for tunes, topping 50 million vs. Unless you’re a serious audiophile, you probably won’t notice much difference between the highest-quality Spotify and Apple Music streams of the same song. You can also adjust the equalizer in both to suit your preferences (although you’ll find Apple Music’s EQ setting outside of the app, within the Settings > Music section on the iPhone). To find out more about bitrate and audio quality, read this in-depth comparison of sound quality between Apple Music and Spotify. If you listen on Spotify’s web player or via Chromecast, it streams in AAC at 128kbps for free users or 256kbps for premium. Desktop playback is at 160kbps or 320kbps for premium users. On mobile you can choose what bitrate to stream, in increments up to 320kbps, which is handy especially if you’re worried about using up too much mobile data. In terms of stream quality, Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis format. The caveat (aside from the interruptions) is that many albums and playlists require you to listen in shuffle mode rather than sequential play and there’s a limit of six skips per hour.Īpple Music only lets free users stream Beats1 Radio, or you can listen to songs from your iTunes library. Spotify is also the only one of the two music services with a free, ad-supported tier, so even if you don’t want to pay for the premium version you can still listen. With the premium version, you can stream any song from the catalog on demand, plus listen to songs offline.Ī Spotify Premium subscription will also give you access to Hulu’s (ad-supported) video-streaming plan through June 10 at no extra cost. It costs $5 for students or $15 for family plans. Up to 320kbps Ogg Vorbis, or AAC (see section below)īoth Spotify and Apple Music offer a free trial period for their premium services, which normally cost $10, £10 or AU$12 a month.

Apple music vs spotify music discovery