Wrapped: Music App Edition

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons between Apple Music and Spotify, to finally settle the debate and determine which audio streaming service has better value considering its price and quality. 

Apple Music features a variety of assets, including their library size of over 100 million different songs as well as 5.3 million podcasts, and ability to download up to 100,000 songs. Spotify stills provides fair competition with benefits such as offering a free plan (with ads and limited song skips), suggested playlists based on your music preferences, better social features, and good layout design.

Both do have some disadvantages. 

Those of Apple Music include its lack of free plans, its demand of different apps just to listen to podcasts, and its required login with an active Apple account in order to listen. 

However, Spotify has a smaller music library with 20 million less songs, and is also more expensive per month for a yearly plan.

Financially, the prices are similar, but Spotify has a better monthly value, since it only costs $9.99/month compared to Apple Music’s $10.99/month.  However, Apple Music offers a $109 yearly plan, which is a better value overall. 

Furthermore, the main area in which Apple Music is clearly one step ahead is the sound quality in terms of kilobits per second (kbps).  Apple Music uses 9,216 kbps compared to Spotify’s 320 kbps, displaying a drastic difference between the two. 

In conclusion, Apple Music is overall better than Spotify because of the modernized and reasonably priced yearly plan, as well as the superior quality of music and podcasts due to the increased number of kbps used on the app.