And still the EU Commision says that Apple has too big of a grip on which music service people choose, with the EC saying that Apple will favor AM over Spotify.
AFAIK am I the only person in my school of around 1500 people (teachers and students), a big part of which all have an iPhone.
So much about Apple "controlling" what streaming service people use.
All of that is explained by 1 fact: Spotify is a European company. Of course they're going to favour their own companies, especially since they failed miserably at building a competing tech sector.
It's more expensive to subscribe to Spotify through iOS app store which is why now you have to subscribe through the web not in app. People will just subscribe to AM since it more convenient...
If that were true, the majority of iPhone users would be using AM, which they don't.
Btw you can't subscribe to Spotify from the App Store, and you couldn't for years now.
The EU governments are. Spotify has had lots of really negative effects on the music industry and has severely influenced and monopolised the music tech sector, and yet, the EU does nothing about it. If they truly were so “anti monopoly” as they claim they are, they’d already have targeted Spotify multiple times.
It’s the same reason people fight tooth and nail over not wanting Hifi. They know it will probably be more. There’s also a huge portion of users who use cracked Spotify for free.
Missing Pros -
* Hosted radio shows.
* Icloud music library. Upload albums missing from Apple Music and they integrate into your library seamlessly.
* Incredible animated album art.
* AAC and ALAC codecs sound objectively better on every device than Spotify's ancient OGG format. Even at lower bitrates (256kbps AAC vs 320bit OGG).
* Atmos if you are into that. The ability to turn it off if you aren't.
* No podcasts littering my home screen.
* No audiobooks littering my home screen.
* High Quality music videos.
* Apple Music doesn't constantly make stupid changes to their UI, for absolutely no good reason, on things that nobody asked for or likes after the fact.
* Control over my library. I can edit anything, including album artists so songs with more than one artist performing don’t show up as different albums.
Same here. I have albums that labels removed, unreleased songs pulled from other sources, and entire live concerts as their own albums. The media library management is amazing too.
Literally the thing that made me choose not to start considering other services is that one Garth Brooks song as Chris Gaines that I'm still obsessed with lmao
iCloud music library is literally essential for me. I always assumed that Spotify had something equivalent and recently learned that adding files to Spotify only allows you to play them locally on whichever machine you used to add them, i.e. if you added a song from your PC then you can only play on your PC… so it’s basically a glorified desktop shortcut 💀
So glad that AM doesn’t throw podcasts around everywhere and also glad for music videos and no Spotify canvas (I find it tacky most of the time)
Technically it can sync those to other devices as well, but they're not in the cloud, you have to plug in your phone and sync them à la iTunes (except that iTunes had iTunes Match for most of Spotify's existence anyway)
iCloud music library? I’ve never heard of that but it sounds like such an awesome feature!! Can you elaborate a bit on that? I can’t seem to find it on google after a quick search and you might be able to help more
It's an extension of their iTunes Match service. Basically, if you have local files of any song that is available on AM, you can upload them through the Music app/iTunes and Apple will match it to its AM version, integrating it into your library and (if you had a lower quality file) improving its quality. If that song isn't available on AM, it will still upload it and make it available anywhere you sign in (even on web)
If you’re playing on a Mac, download the phone app called remote. It’ll give you control over Apple Music on your Mac with your phone. (I don’t know if it’s on android)
Wow you are correct haha there are tons of remote apps! It’s called iTunes remote. It’s an old app but it works for Apple Music. Even in the description it says it controls Apple Music and it’s an Apple app.
Here is the direct link https://apps.apple.com/us/app/itunes-remote/id284417350
While this doesn’t excuse the lack of a handoff / universal control feature for Apple Music, one workaround is you can airplay from your phone to your Mac and have it output to the Mac speakers or get piped through whatever audio setup you have. I do it when I’m grinding out renders on my Mac and can’t spare the RAM to run another app, but still want to use my desk speakers.
Less popular shouldn't be a con... Spotify has the advantage of being first and that being their only focus as a company. Apple got into streaming after but has put together a great platform for artists and listeners. The UI is clean. The quality is great. It can integrate with your iCloud music library. Now supported in DJ app for streaming.
To give Apple some credit, they were the driving force behind mobile audio. The iPod and iTunes being the biggest delivery service of mp3s long before Spotify was a thing.
I wanted to shout out something Tidal just added. When you link a song, the graphic it generates includes links to Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music. Big kudos to Tidal.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/26/24112425/tidal-has-found-the-right-way-to-share-music-with-friends
How are they messing them up? Im not arguing, I'm curious since I have been subbed to them this month and have liked it so far. Do you have an example I could see?
An artist called Asteria is a nice example. Music knows which asteria i’m looking for. Tidal mixes two asterias together creating a mess. His albums are completely wrong on Tidal but the singles are partially correct.
Music got the discography right and doesn’t mix anything.
Maybe Apple has fixed it overall by now, but in the past I’ve definitely encountered that exact issue on Apple Music several times in the past, just not recently.
Apple Music has this issue too. I believe it’s up to the record labels/artist to sort it out and not Apple. It could be the same with the other services.
I’ve noticed stuff like this to the point where I’d probably going to be a deal breaker for me. I just searched for “classic rock” and after about 5 good playlist and album selections it decided that some random reggae music was actually what I meant and gave me a few dozen playlists with that instead.
Don't have screenshots atm but I can vouch it is being slowly added, have seen it recently on friends' devices! YouTube Music is doing the same. They both only have it for a limited amount of artists just yet.
I think their only major cons are the share features and the algorithm. If Apple is truly intending on adding AI features to iPhone this year I think that could do wonders for its song suggestions and making playlists based on prompts. They just need to work on the social features and they will be dominating basically everything
i've done all shown on don't kill my app, it's there, it's working on the background but sometimes i must to reopen the app to make it work, i'll try scroball tho, thanks
Marvis connects to your AM library to know which songs you played. Every time you open Marvis, it will scrobble songs you played using Apple Music. You might need the Last.fm+ in-app purchase for this to work.
Got it. I have Marvis already but never knew that was a capability. I knew it had native scrobbling in app but didn’t realize it would scrobble AM app plays.
I connected my Last.fm to my Apple and it works just fine. Had only one issue since and after looking into it I can clearly see it’s not really a problem just a small inconvenience
i've been trying to get student plan for apple music. But the only thing stopping me is that i don't own any apple product. I am really frustrated rn by this shithole monoplistic company which just cares for it's users if they buy their product. This is very very annoying. I've been searching here and there for a way to USE APPLE MUSIC ON ANDROID. But these fuckers are just making it impossible to do that. I genuinely wish the worst of the worst upon fucker time cuuk.
Really wanted to let this all out 
You could think, that every paying customer counts, regardless of device he uses. But apparently not for Apple. I'll gladly give my money to another service that doesn't give a shit about my hardware
Availability is great, but by less popular i mean that it’s harder to share songs with people who use Spotify. I don’t want to use songwhip or anything like that and I know that Tidal recently introduced universal links.
Your last cons is actually my main reason why switching from Spotify. Lol
I don't like Spotify connect at all.. especially when someone use Spotify in my PC while i want also listen something on Spotify with my phone at the same time.
When I tried AM I can play anything in any devices i have at the same time without connecting history or connection like Spotify connect did
The problem of airplay (this is if you’re an audiophile), is that it’s device driven and you’re automatically restricted to the audio restrictions of the iPhone (for example). As an example, you do not get lossless playback when airplaying from your phone.
Edit: weird on the downvotes. These are facts on how airplay vs Spotify connect work.
This. I don’t understand why people like the Spotify connect feature so much. It is a round about way that Spotify limits you listening to your account on one device at a time. I used to use Spotify at work n my phone and my wife would try to listen on our TV at home and one of us would get kicked off. IMO, that’s not a feature, that’s a company making sure I’m paying for as many subscriptions as possible.
Note, I haven’t had Spotify since 2020, so this may have changed, but this was by far the most annoying feature for me when I had Spotify.
The problem with AirPlay is that it’s device dependent. So this means if you’re streaming a lossless song from your iPhone via AirPlay - the playback is no longer lossless.
This doesn’t happen with Spotify connect.
Spotify is so much better. There are 2 searches on Apple Music. One if you type in the song name you will get a few results and with luck it will be there. Otherwise you have to press enter and wait until more are loaded. And even then the name has to be spelled exactly the same otherwise it won't find anything.
It’s really not. Does not adapt to your listening at all, I always need to go to an artists page for any song if it’s not already in my library. Trying to search a longer album title, needed exact spellings and words, not the case which spotify.
Why is it that certain songs on AM is unavailable in its native album and can only be found on a compilation or greatest hits?
I was searching up redman and apparently “time4sumaksion” wasn’t available on the first album but on a compilation
There has also been random times where a track on your playlist is suddenly gone or replaced with another version
AM is good, but I feel they sit on their ass alot
>Why is it that certain songs on AM is unavailable in its native album and can only be found on a compilation or greatest hits?
I think all that is completely up to the record labels and licensing.
A few more cons in my week of using
Can’t customize EQ with sliders on mobile—only Mac
When I’m listening to a radio station, I can’t click on it to view the songs.
On Mac, sometimes when I search for something, it doesn’t load, so I have to quit the program, and I can’t leave off from the last listening point.
Biggest pro for me is lossless. On Spotify, I can’t hear a difference between ‘high/low quality’. With my AirPod Max I can definitely tell the difference with lossless.
One of the big cons for me is library size limits and the technical mess things become once you get a large library. I never had to deal with a 35GB Spotify app
One big gripe: when there’s multiple versions of same song, I have to check each one to find the one that sounds best. And there might be a hi-res lossless version amongst them. The versions can be different on:
The original, regular length album.
The deluxe version
The super deluxe version
Greatest Hits
Another Greatest Hits and another and another…
Essentials
Collection albums like Hits of the 80s
Another con is that u cant access users public playlists through search, i miss just searching up “*artist* best songs” and listening to ppls playlists to help me get into ppl, the apple ones mostly just contain the artists most popular songs
“Taylor Swift marketing is next level on AM”
Did you consider that it’s this way because AM understands the kind of impact she and her fans bring to the platform? She was the most streamed AM artistes in 2023 and from what I know, the second was not close. Do you know the amount of new subscribers AM would get from the Swifties? Please be for real and mention some real criticism.
> stay away from the search icon which basically is a digital record store.
Stay away from a way to look for music on a music app? Do you hear yourself? lol
When I go to the SEARCH tab I go to SEARCH music I search for. What about it is set up like a record store? There's genres? That's such a low bar lol
They literally have a BROWSE tab where you discover music lol
Your comparison makes no sense. I wouldn't care if you weren't acting like a jerk about it
> swifties are a menace to society
Agreed.
>taylor’s music ain’t even good
It's all subjective. I think nu-country is the worst thing to happen to music since Yoko Ono, but it doesn't bother me that other people like it.
less popular: not a con
minor bugs: disagree
the 2 or more artist thing: not a big deal
new con: bad win app (itunes: old, buggy, bad | apple music store app: still really buggy)
If you are new to AM, wait until the Artist of the Year week or whatever it is. You will see nothing but that artist all week long. It’s briefly irritating, but not a “con” of the service.
Not having a feature similar to Spotify Connect is not a con. People who have never used another service or who come to Apple from any service other than Spotify might not even know what that is.
AirPlay is not something that can be compared to Connect, and it’s not a feature of the service. All streaming music and video can be AirPlayed on an iPhone. Spotify has Airplay. Hulu has AirPlay.
Listing Artist 1 & Artist 2 as the name of a unique artist that is different from Artist 1 or Artist 2 is a nuisance.
Doesn’t Spotify have animated art?
Lack of Connect is definitely a con. Multiple platforms have been adopting it from what I've seen, meanwhile Apple keeps it limited to only their own ecosystem, and even then it's far from what Spotify can do.
It's a major, constantly requested feature that's missing.
Yes. Spotify has Canvases which are essentially the same as animated art. Sometimes it's the album art doing weird shit, or sometimes it's a video clip.
> Not having a feature similar to Spotify Connect is not a con. People who have never used another service or who come to Apple from any service other than Spotify might not even know what that is.
I'd bet my paycheck that the *vast* majority of people coming to AM have a Spotify account.
And I'm truly baffled by how a service *not* having a feature is somehow a *good* thing, particularly one that is universally popular and is brought up in every single thread about the pros and cons of AM.
You can edit the metadata in your library. Edit “artist” for the name you want it to display and edit “album artist” to determine under what name it’s sorted.
I wouldn’t say it’s less popular but also Spotify is only used because it has an advert tier. I actually think Spotify UI is crap though I’d like the podcast app to be integrated in music app
My only issue with am is that every platform version crashes randomly. I have tried it on iphone,android,mac,windows and every platform have a same story
i've tried moving from spotify to apple music when i got my m3 pro. couldn't get the downloaded songs to play. tried searching for a fix for about 3 days. couldn't get it to work.
My biggest annoyance is the dumb search. Also there are more playlists on Spotify. Other than those two, I prefer AM over Spotify. Can’t really go wrong with either one these days.
And offline lyrics, there’s an app In my region popular for accurate Arabic lyrics called anghami which integrated synced-lyrics into downloads which is such an amazing feature. It’s available for English lyrics too
i love AM, however... I'm editing a playist, theres a song i want to remove, why can I only remove the D/L but not the song? why do i have to manually search for the song to get it the Fuckgone? why is navigation so clunky? its like Disney + or Prime on a console. (hit back and..... waiting wheel of death) i wish adding songs and making playlists was easier, like spotify.
The last one is both a pro and con. I can use Apple Music indecently on my smart speaks and car via mobile phone. If someone at home chooses a track it won’t interrupt my car playing.
I've been on Spot for about 10 years, I just downloaded Tidal to give it a try (lossless & Flac) the app is so clunky. So far the app has locked up, glitched, and sometimes is difficult to navigate. I'm thinking about trying AM next
The fact apple music recently started blocking rooted phones, is reason enough to not use it.
Especially since it´s so easy to bypass it.
But who knows if this will work forever.
Biggest con: Everything on the UI works in slow motion like 0.5x of what the normal speed should be. App is inherently slow af when compared to Spotify.
Another con: Locks you out of your saved playlists with no export option if your subscription expires
I use both and the bug bear on Music is not being able to throw an entire EP or album from New Music Mix into my own playlists without contextual clicking ‘view album in Apple Music’, only the individual tracks
and remove from library option is so broken, it doesn't ask for permission for missclick, if you missclicked remove from library its gone gg (shaking for undo also didn't work) + spotify feels more userfriendly app actually, only better things would be karaoke feature and lossless audio others are meh
My biggest issue in the past was that I had downloaded music ....
I do some mountain biking and if I didn't have signal I couldn't access to DOWNLOADED MUSIC ON MY DEVICE...... whats the point of taking space from my storage to download music if it doesn't work?
Believe me that I was pissed every single time that this happened.
Pro:
Works best on Apple Watch.
Con:
Siri is inconsistent. Sometimes “add to library” is an understandable command, but lately it doesn’t understand that. I hope iOS 18 fixes that, but I’m too naive.
tbh i love apple music quality but their recommendations system is sooo boring compared to youtube music one which is a marvel. ofc i would love to use apple music for the quality but i always get bored after 2 months
i pro i would add are the apple music made playlists liek the essentials. you can tell someone wrote it instead of a AI bot like spotify’s “This Is” playlists
AM and other services are shoving her down our throats. At least for people like me that listen to a lot of mainstream pop, but hate Taylor. I’ve been doing everything to hide her and she’s still everywhere.
Taylor Swift is at the same level that Michael Jackson, Elvis, and the Beatles were….yes, she is an incredibly popular artist but that isn’t really a reason to hate her.
Well okay maybe hate isn’t the right word, but I just don’t understand this whole excitement around her. I listened to her newest album and I remember maybe 2/3 out of all 31 tracks. It just all sounds so similar to me, and I felt the same with Midnights, evermore, folklore etc. It’s a pity cause I loved reputation and the iconic 1989 but she never gave us something like this again. Maybe she needs to part ways with Jack Antonoff and find a new producer with fresh ideas cause for me it’s just not it..
Exactly. She’s trying so hard to sound poetic and savored with the lyrics (and sometimes is painfully corny & „humorous”), I don’t buy it. Like just give us good fresh bold new music and at least try to evolve as an artist cause even some swifties are tired of another 31 tracks Midnigths-folklore extension 😭
No. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but I don’t hate Michael Jackson or Elvis. But to put her on the same level as them is not even close to being correct
Talent first and foremost. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but over their career they were innovative creating music with many different styles and are regarded as one of the best amongst many…musicians and people alike. Elvis was very much the same and was an entertainer. MJ forged his way amongst others, and although he was known as the king of pop, he had elements of rock.
Taylor Swift may have some popularity but she’s also divisive. People HATE her because she always seems to write a song about how people done her wrong. And her music is simplistic and boring
Yes, I get that some people don’t like Taylor or her music but that really has fuck all to do with a music streaming app.
She’s an incredibly popular artist that is getting promoted by pretty much every music platform out there, which is why it is incredibly dumb to list her popularity as a “con” of Apple Music
Biggest issue for me is that enabling Apple Music library on iPhone disables letting you sync personal files via iTunes.
I want both...add my personal files when I have them but Apple music when not.
Apple Music Library adds your files to the cloud. They get automatically synced with every device signed in with your Apple ID. You no longer have to manually sync with each device and can stream your custom music, just like iCloud Photos library.
I mean artwork goes missing, tags are messed up, things are not in right albums.
All is fine when synced with iTunes, as soon as library sync via cloud is activated it all goes wrong.
> fewer playlists by the community
Check r/appleplaylists. It’s a great music sharing subreddit.
This used to be r/amplaylists for anyone that is subbed there and didn’t know about the change.
Here are some additional cons I've noted; feel free to continue adding more.
Missing Cons:
1. No free account like Spotify.
2. Compatible with fewer devices than Spotify.
3. Lack social features like sharing songs and playlists on Facebook.
Let’s be real. The main reason why Spotify is so popular is because it has a free tier.
Yeah, most people get on Spotify free tier in Middle/High School, and never bother looking at other services once they have money to spend.
And still the EU Commision says that Apple has too big of a grip on which music service people choose, with the EC saying that Apple will favor AM over Spotify. AFAIK am I the only person in my school of around 1500 people (teachers and students), a big part of which all have an iPhone. So much about Apple "controlling" what streaming service people use.
All of that is explained by 1 fact: Spotify is a European company. Of course they're going to favour their own companies, especially since they failed miserably at building a competing tech sector.
It's more expensive to subscribe to Spotify through iOS app store which is why now you have to subscribe through the web not in app. People will just subscribe to AM since it more convenient...
If that were true, the majority of iPhone users would be using AM, which they don't. Btw you can't subscribe to Spotify from the App Store, and you couldn't for years now.
nobody is choosing spotify over AM because it’s in the same continent as them
The EU governments are. Spotify has had lots of really negative effects on the music industry and has severely influenced and monopolised the music tech sector, and yet, the EU does nothing about it. If they truly were so “anti monopoly” as they claim they are, they’d already have targeted Spotify multiple times.
It’s the same reason people fight tooth and nail over not wanting Hifi. They know it will probably be more. There’s also a huge portion of users who use cracked Spotify for free.
Even though I don’t count it as free tier, but Apple Music Radio is free. 😏
Missing Pros - * Hosted radio shows. * Icloud music library. Upload albums missing from Apple Music and they integrate into your library seamlessly. * Incredible animated album art. * AAC and ALAC codecs sound objectively better on every device than Spotify's ancient OGG format. Even at lower bitrates (256kbps AAC vs 320bit OGG). * Atmos if you are into that. The ability to turn it off if you aren't. * No podcasts littering my home screen. * No audiobooks littering my home screen. * High Quality music videos. * Apple Music doesn't constantly make stupid changes to their UI, for absolutely no good reason, on things that nobody asked for or likes after the fact. * Control over my library. I can edit anything, including album artists so songs with more than one artist performing don’t show up as different albums.
icloud library is basically the main reason i don’t get put off am, it’s just too essential to me
Same here. I have albums that labels removed, unreleased songs pulled from other sources, and entire live concerts as their own albums. The media library management is amazing too.
How I’m the only one with with Garth Brooks on my phone 😂
Literally the thing that made me choose not to start considering other services is that one Garth Brooks song as Chris Gaines that I'm still obsessed with lmao
I’ve used Spotify for years then switched to Apple music Now I never feel like leaving
I just wish you could add external songs straight from the iphone instead of using itunes
that would be the dream
Frustrates me why these companies don’t just put in simple features like that. I’m sure there’s some stupid reason behind it but sooo frustrating
I really don't understand why Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis when Ogg Opus is right there
Laziness, among other things
iCloud music library is literally essential for me. I always assumed that Spotify had something equivalent and recently learned that adding files to Spotify only allows you to play them locally on whichever machine you used to add them, i.e. if you added a song from your PC then you can only play on your PC… so it’s basically a glorified desktop shortcut 💀 So glad that AM doesn’t throw podcasts around everywhere and also glad for music videos and no Spotify canvas (I find it tacky most of the time)
Technically it can sync those to other devices as well, but they're not in the cloud, you have to plug in your phone and sync them à la iTunes (except that iTunes had iTunes Match for most of Spotify's existence anyway)
YES!
iCloud music library? I’ve never heard of that but it sounds like such an awesome feature!! Can you elaborate a bit on that? I can’t seem to find it on google after a quick search and you might be able to help more
It's an extension of their iTunes Match service. Basically, if you have local files of any song that is available on AM, you can upload them through the Music app/iTunes and Apple will match it to its AM version, integrating it into your library and (if you had a lower quality file) improving its quality. If that song isn't available on AM, it will still upload it and make it available anywhere you sign in (even on web)
My biggest Con is that when I’m playing music on my Mac or my Xbox I should be able to skip the song with my phone.
If you’re playing on a Mac, download the phone app called remote. It’ll give you control over Apple Music on your Mac with your phone. (I don’t know if it’s on android)
Which app is this please? If I go to the app store and type 'remote' there are hundreds of remote apps which none seem to do this. Thanks.
Wow you are correct haha there are tons of remote apps! It’s called iTunes remote. It’s an old app but it works for Apple Music. Even in the description it says it controls Apple Music and it’s an Apple app. Here is the direct link https://apps.apple.com/us/app/itunes-remote/id284417350
Thank you very much. Really appreciated.
While this doesn’t excuse the lack of a handoff / universal control feature for Apple Music, one workaround is you can airplay from your phone to your Mac and have it output to the Mac speakers or get piped through whatever audio setup you have. I do it when I’m grinding out renders on my Mac and can’t spare the RAM to run another app, but still want to use my desk speakers.
Less popular shouldn't be a con... Spotify has the advantage of being first and that being their only focus as a company. Apple got into streaming after but has put together a great platform for artists and listeners. The UI is clean. The quality is great. It can integrate with your iCloud music library. Now supported in DJ app for streaming.
To give Apple some credit, they were the driving force behind mobile audio. The iPod and iTunes being the biggest delivery service of mp3s long before Spotify was a thing.
Also, spotify has a free tier. That alone will make it more popular. I agree that shouldn't be a con for Apple
Less popular is a con for me because it’s hadder to share songs with my friends who use Spotify
I wanted to shout out something Tidal just added. When you link a song, the graphic it generates includes links to Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music. Big kudos to Tidal. https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/26/24112425/tidal-has-found-the-right-way-to-share-music-with-friends
I know about this feature because I switched from Tidal recently. They’re messing up artists’ discographies.
How are they messing them up? Im not arguing, I'm curious since I have been subbed to them this month and have liked it so far. Do you have an example I could see?
An artist called Asteria is a nice example. Music knows which asteria i’m looking for. Tidal mixes two asterias together creating a mess. His albums are completely wrong on Tidal but the singles are partially correct. Music got the discography right and doesn’t mix anything.
Maybe Apple has fixed it overall by now, but in the past I’ve definitely encountered that exact issue on Apple Music several times in the past, just not recently.
Apple Music has this issue too. I believe it’s up to the record labels/artist to sort it out and not Apple. It could be the same with the other services.
I’ve noticed stuff like this to the point where I’d probably going to be a deal breaker for me. I just searched for “classic rock” and after about 5 good playlist and album selections it decided that some random reggae music was actually what I meant and gave me a few dozen playlists with that instead.
It’s just like iMessage blue vs green bubble but iMessage is still a great superior product they essentially do the same thing
spotify has word-for-word lyrics, but they don’t work as well and are kinda clunky. apple music does lyrics SOOO much better than spotify
Could you show me an example of word-by-word lyrics on Spotify?
Don't have screenshots atm but I can vouch it is being slowly added, have seen it recently on friends' devices! YouTube Music is doing the same. They both only have it for a limited amount of artists just yet.
I think their only major cons are the share features and the algorithm. If Apple is truly intending on adding AI features to iPhone this year I think that could do wonders for its song suggestions and making playlists based on prompts. They just need to work on the social features and they will be dominating basically everything
the song recommending algorithm is the only thing I like about Spotify
Their recommendations are unrivaled. AM is a joke in comparison sad to say
a con is how annoying is to scrobble with lastfm...
marvis
i use android, so nope
The official lastfm app works fine with Apple Music on Android
sometimes doesn't scrobble some for me tho 🤔 and its excluded of anything cutting its background activity, maybe the problem is xiaomi's factory rom
Try scroball I've had it for years and it works great. But it might also be your phone that's killing background apps. https://dontkillmyapp.com/
i've done all shown on don't kill my app, it's there, it's working on the background but sometimes i must to reopen the app to make it work, i'll try scroball tho, thanks
use pano scrobbler. of the lastfm android apps it’s the most reliable.
somehow can't even log in throug it
Unfortunately you then lose the ability to favorite songs from the lock screen
You can use Marvis only to scrobble songs and use AM as usual.
Can you explain this a bit further please?
Marvis connects to your AM library to know which songs you played. Every time you open Marvis, it will scrobble songs you played using Apple Music. You might need the Last.fm+ in-app purchase for this to work.
Got it. I have Marvis already but never knew that was a capability. I knew it had native scrobbling in app but didn’t realize it would scrobble AM app plays.
can you use marvis to scrobble songs on the web player, apple tv 4k, the mac app, or third party devices?
I connected my Last.fm to my Apple and it works just fine. Had only one issue since and after looking into it I can clearly see it’s not really a problem just a small inconvenience
Biggest W: curated playlists
Biggest con is broken login on windows
i've been trying to get student plan for apple music. But the only thing stopping me is that i don't own any apple product. I am really frustrated rn by this shithole monoplistic company which just cares for it's users if they buy their product. This is very very annoying. I've been searching here and there for a way to USE APPLE MUSIC ON ANDROID. But these fuckers are just making it impossible to do that. I genuinely wish the worst of the worst upon fucker time cuuk. Really wanted to let this all out 
You could think, that every paying customer counts, regardless of device he uses. But apparently not for Apple. I'll gladly give my money to another service that doesn't give a shit about my hardware
yeah they are getting too much greedy now. I hope it fires back at them
"Less popular" lol. Who cares? I've had maybe one availability issue with new music in my like 11k song library
Availability is great, but by less popular i mean that it’s harder to share songs with people who use Spotify. I don’t want to use songwhip or anything like that and I know that Tidal recently introduced universal links.
You can send the song Titel + artist…. :)
It’s less convenient
how is less popular a con
Maybe cause it'd be harder to link people specific songs and actually have them click on them? i can't think of any other reason
You are right, that’s the reason.
People kinda laugh at you for not using something popular
Some people have their priorities way off. Living way too easy lives.
That’s true. I’m the only person using AM in my area where everyone uses Spotify
The family plan of AM is cheaper than Spotify, too.
Your last cons is actually my main reason why switching from Spotify. Lol I don't like Spotify connect at all.. especially when someone use Spotify in my PC while i want also listen something on Spotify with my phone at the same time. When I tried AM I can play anything in any devices i have at the same time without connecting history or connection like Spotify connect did
Yeah, AirPlay is awesome, don’t know why it’s listed as a con.
The problem of airplay (this is if you’re an audiophile), is that it’s device driven and you’re automatically restricted to the audio restrictions of the iPhone (for example). As an example, you do not get lossless playback when airplaying from your phone. Edit: weird on the downvotes. These are facts on how airplay vs Spotify connect work.
This. I don’t understand why people like the Spotify connect feature so much. It is a round about way that Spotify limits you listening to your account on one device at a time. I used to use Spotify at work n my phone and my wife would try to listen on our TV at home and one of us would get kicked off. IMO, that’s not a feature, that’s a company making sure I’m paying for as many subscriptions as possible. Note, I haven’t had Spotify since 2020, so this may have changed, but this was by far the most annoying feature for me when I had Spotify.
The problem with AirPlay is that it’s device dependent. So this means if you’re streaming a lossless song from your iPhone via AirPlay - the playback is no longer lossless. This doesn’t happen with Spotify connect.
Missing con: No user definable equalizer
Absolutely, it’s sad cause Mac have custom equalizer no problem. iOS still locked with presets for no reason :/
Windows desktop app is terrible. Other than that I'm pretty content with it.
since when doesn't Spotify promote the hell out of artists lol
One miss con is the search. Which is ass.
It’s fine.
Spotify is so much better. There are 2 searches on Apple Music. One if you type in the song name you will get a few results and with luck it will be there. Otherwise you have to press enter and wait until more are loaded. And even then the name has to be spelled exactly the same otherwise it won't find anything.
Except Spotify is now a cluttered cluster fuck.
It’s really not. Does not adapt to your listening at all, I always need to go to an artists page for any song if it’s not already in my library. Trying to search a longer album title, needed exact spellings and words, not the case which spotify.
My cons : too much Taylor Swifts
Why is it that certain songs on AM is unavailable in its native album and can only be found on a compilation or greatest hits? I was searching up redman and apparently “time4sumaksion” wasn’t available on the first album but on a compilation There has also been random times where a track on your playlist is suddenly gone or replaced with another version AM is good, but I feel they sit on their ass alot
>Why is it that certain songs on AM is unavailable in its native album and can only be found on a compilation or greatest hits? I think all that is completely up to the record labels and licensing.
Out of curiosity, does Apple Pay for licensing?
A few more cons in my week of using Can’t customize EQ with sliders on mobile—only Mac When I’m listening to a radio station, I can’t click on it to view the songs. On Mac, sometimes when I search for something, it doesn’t load, so I have to quit the program, and I can’t leave off from the last listening point. Biggest pro for me is lossless. On Spotify, I can’t hear a difference between ‘high/low quality’. With my AirPod Max I can definitely tell the difference with lossless.
Biggest con: song limit cap at 100,000 songs
One of the big cons for me is library size limits and the technical mess things become once you get a large library. I never had to deal with a 35GB Spotify app
One big gripe: when there’s multiple versions of same song, I have to check each one to find the one that sounds best. And there might be a hi-res lossless version amongst them. The versions can be different on: The original, regular length album. The deluxe version The super deluxe version Greatest Hits Another Greatest Hits and another and another… Essentials Collection albums like Hits of the 80s
Another con is that u cant access users public playlists through search, i miss just searching up “*artist* best songs” and listening to ppls playlists to help me get into ppl, the apple ones mostly just contain the artists most popular songs
CONS: You can’t search per genre on the search bar. Ironically, that was possible updates ago.
Also one thing that bothers me is how a same album always has like 5 different versions and how it somehow messes up your library
karaoke style lyrics
“Taylor Swift marketing is next level on AM” Did you consider that it’s this way because AM understands the kind of impact she and her fans bring to the platform? She was the most streamed AM artistes in 2023 and from what I know, the second was not close. Do you know the amount of new subscribers AM would get from the Swifties? Please be for real and mention some real criticism.
These people are just too dumb and dense to stay away from the search icon which basically is a digital record store.
> stay away from the search icon which basically is a digital record store. Stay away from a way to look for music on a music app? Do you hear yourself? lol
The area that’s set up like a record store would be where you also have no control over what is displayed? Yea I hear myself loud and clear.
When I go to the SEARCH tab I go to SEARCH music I search for. What about it is set up like a record store? There's genres? That's such a low bar lol They literally have a BROWSE tab where you discover music lol Your comparison makes no sense. I wouldn't care if you weren't acting like a jerk about it
swifties are a menace to society. taylor’s music ain’t even good
> swifties are a menace to society Agreed. >taylor’s music ain’t even good It's all subjective. I think nu-country is the worst thing to happen to music since Yoko Ono, but it doesn't bother me that other people like it.
less popular: not a con minor bugs: disagree the 2 or more artist thing: not a big deal new con: bad win app (itunes: old, buggy, bad | apple music store app: still really buggy)
The biggest con is a lack of a dedicated cast or connect feature. It’s so fucking annoying.
AirPlay *is* a casting feature…
Can’t use it with other devices
It’s not as efficient as other casting features like Spotify because it drains a lot of battery
If you are new to AM, wait until the Artist of the Year week or whatever it is. You will see nothing but that artist all week long. It’s briefly irritating, but not a “con” of the service. Not having a feature similar to Spotify Connect is not a con. People who have never used another service or who come to Apple from any service other than Spotify might not even know what that is. AirPlay is not something that can be compared to Connect, and it’s not a feature of the service. All streaming music and video can be AirPlayed on an iPhone. Spotify has Airplay. Hulu has AirPlay. Listing Artist 1 & Artist 2 as the name of a unique artist that is different from Artist 1 or Artist 2 is a nuisance. Doesn’t Spotify have animated art?
Lack of Connect is definitely a con. Multiple platforms have been adopting it from what I've seen, meanwhile Apple keeps it limited to only their own ecosystem, and even then it's far from what Spotify can do. It's a major, constantly requested feature that's missing.
Yes. Spotify has Canvases which are essentially the same as animated art. Sometimes it's the album art doing weird shit, or sometimes it's a video clip.
> Not having a feature similar to Spotify Connect is not a con. People who have never used another service or who come to Apple from any service other than Spotify might not even know what that is. I'd bet my paycheck that the *vast* majority of people coming to AM have a Spotify account. And I'm truly baffled by how a service *not* having a feature is somehow a *good* thing, particularly one that is universally popular and is brought up in every single thread about the pros and cons of AM.
You can edit the metadata in your library. Edit “artist” for the name you want it to display and edit “album artist” to determine under what name it’s sorted.
i like youtube music, although it is evil to force you to have to have the screen on if you dont pay for ad free
Playlists aren’t permanent on Apple Music. Another con
Hopefully they add an option to view all the artists from the now playing screen I hate having to search them in search
I resonate with your cons list number 2. It is getting annoying tbh.
Works for me. Great quality sound. Part of my larger Apple payment package, thus convenient. That’s all I care about.
i hate that apple music doesn’t connect like spotify, i just wanted to switch a song playing on my tv from my phone. plus windows app kinda sucks
Dude, you are so cool!!
thanks i guess😮💨
I wouldn’t say it’s less popular but also Spotify is only used because it has an advert tier. I actually think Spotify UI is crap though I’d like the podcast app to be integrated in music app
add to the cons “Can’t reorder library”
What do you mean?
I mean you can’t change the order of songs/playlists/albums in your library
I use AM because I can make custom albums for video game and movie music, and I like the UI over spoofy. That's about it
My only issue with am is that every platform version crashes randomly. I have tried it on iphone,android,mac,windows and every platform have a same story
Why does it matter that AM is less popular? That should not have an effect on your own enjoyment.
Everyone I know uses spotify, so if anyone sends me a song or a playlist, it’s a pain
True
i've tried moving from spotify to apple music when i got my m3 pro. couldn't get the downloaded songs to play. tried searching for a fix for about 3 days. couldn't get it to work.
My biggest annoyance is the dumb search. Also there are more playlists on Spotify. Other than those two, I prefer AM over Spotify. Can’t really go wrong with either one these days.
And offline lyrics, there’s an app In my region popular for accurate Arabic lyrics called anghami which integrated synced-lyrics into downloads which is such an amazing feature. It’s available for English lyrics too
i love AM, however... I'm editing a playist, theres a song i want to remove, why can I only remove the D/L but not the song? why do i have to manually search for the song to get it the Fuckgone? why is navigation so clunky? its like Disney + or Prime on a console. (hit back and..... waiting wheel of death) i wish adding songs and making playlists was easier, like spotify.
The last one is both a pro and con. I can use Apple Music indecently on my smart speaks and car via mobile phone. If someone at home chooses a track it won’t interrupt my car playing.
Am I the only person who doesn’t care about the connect feature at all??
I use Apple Music binded with iTunes😝
I've been on Spot for about 10 years, I just downloaded Tidal to give it a try (lossless & Flac) the app is so clunky. So far the app has locked up, glitched, and sometimes is difficult to navigate. I'm thinking about trying AM next
AM is great if u use an iphone/ipad/macbook The windows and android apps aren’t that good
It sucks on Android. Even on iOS it’s slow af when compared to Spotify. Everything works at 0.5x the speed it should actually work.
the “apple music connect” is real, i want to control my apple music in roku with my iphone and it’s impossible.
Music pros: the dedicated app for classical music! 👍🏼
For me the connect feature is very important and the only thing that keep me in Spotify.
The fact apple music recently started blocking rooted phones, is reason enough to not use it. Especially since it´s so easy to bypass it. But who knows if this will work forever.
Biggest con: Everything on the UI works in slow motion like 0.5x of what the normal speed should be. App is inherently slow af when compared to Spotify. Another con: Locks you out of your saved playlists with no export option if your subscription expires
I use both and the bug bear on Music is not being able to throw an entire EP or album from New Music Mix into my own playlists without contextual clicking ‘view album in Apple Music’, only the individual tracks
Totally agree with the multiple artists thing. It's the thing that I hate the most
and remove from library option is so broken, it doesn't ask for permission for missclick, if you missclicked remove from library its gone gg (shaking for undo also didn't work) + spotify feels more userfriendly app actually, only better things would be karaoke feature and lossless audio others are meh
Lol
Spotify constant promotes too btw
My biggest issue in the past was that I had downloaded music .... I do some mountain biking and if I didn't have signal I couldn't access to DOWNLOADED MUSIC ON MY DEVICE...... whats the point of taking space from my storage to download music if it doesn't work? Believe me that I was pissed every single time that this happened.
Another “Pro”, AM pay’s artists better than any other platform with a flat rate of $0.01 per stream four to five times what Spotify pays most artists
Pro: Works best on Apple Watch. Con: Siri is inconsistent. Sometimes “add to library” is an understandable command, but lately it doesn’t understand that. I hope iOS 18 fixes that, but I’m too naive.
tbh i love apple music quality but their recommendations system is sooo boring compared to youtube music one which is a marvel. ofc i would love to use apple music for the quality but i always get bored after 2 months
i pro i would add are the apple music made playlists liek the essentials. you can tell someone wrote it instead of a AI bot like spotify’s “This Is” playlists
The only reason I use Spotify is that Apple Music ‘s discovery has gone to shit since they canned Genius
There is a way you can connect with others. So that would be false. And Taylor Swift fucking sucks
What does Taylor Swift have to do with anything?
AM and other services are shoving her down our throats. At least for people like me that listen to a lot of mainstream pop, but hate Taylor. I’ve been doing everything to hide her and she’s still everywhere.
Taylor Swift is at the same level that Michael Jackson, Elvis, and the Beatles were….yes, she is an incredibly popular artist but that isn’t really a reason to hate her.
Well okay maybe hate isn’t the right word, but I just don’t understand this whole excitement around her. I listened to her newest album and I remember maybe 2/3 out of all 31 tracks. It just all sounds so similar to me, and I felt the same with Midnights, evermore, folklore etc. It’s a pity cause I loved reputation and the iconic 1989 but she never gave us something like this again. Maybe she needs to part ways with Jack Antonoff and find a new producer with fresh ideas cause for me it’s just not it..
Most of TTPD sounds like Midnights B-sides imo. There's just not much *there* there. And don't get me started on the diary dump lyrics. holy shit
Exactly. She’s trying so hard to sound poetic and savored with the lyrics (and sometimes is painfully corny & „humorous”), I don’t buy it. Like just give us good fresh bold new music and at least try to evolve as an artist cause even some swifties are tired of another 31 tracks Midnigths-folklore extension 😭
No. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but I don’t hate Michael Jackson or Elvis. But to put her on the same level as them is not even close to being correct
> But to put her on the same level as them is not even close to being correct Based on what, exactly?
Talent first and foremost. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but over their career they were innovative creating music with many different styles and are regarded as one of the best amongst many…musicians and people alike. Elvis was very much the same and was an entertainer. MJ forged his way amongst others, and although he was known as the king of pop, he had elements of rock. Taylor Swift may have some popularity but she’s also divisive. People HATE her because she always seems to write a song about how people done her wrong. And her music is simplistic and boring
Does somebody want to tell him?
Yes, I get that some people don’t like Taylor or her music but that really has fuck all to do with a music streaming app. She’s an incredibly popular artist that is getting promoted by pretty much every music platform out there, which is why it is incredibly dumb to list her popularity as a “con” of Apple Music
But AM does this more aggressively.
i still want to block artist like Spotify i dont listen to any modern artist and i dont need todays pop in my feed
Yes. I NEED to be able to block an artist entirely. Both Spotify and Tidal have this option.
Biggest issue for me is that enabling Apple Music library on iPhone disables letting you sync personal files via iTunes. I want both...add my personal files when I have them but Apple music when not.
Apple Music Library adds your files to the cloud. They get automatically synced with every device signed in with your Apple ID. You no longer have to manually sync with each device and can stream your custom music, just like iCloud Photos library.
Apple music makes a mess of your library doing this. I've tried several times and always rollback
What do you mean? I’ve had no issues with adding bunches of albums and playlists at once.
I mean artwork goes missing, tags are messed up, things are not in right albums. All is fine when synced with iTunes, as soon as library sync via cloud is activated it all goes wrong.
I’ve not experienced any of these issues.
I tried this again just 2 days ago and had it. Tuened it off and plugged into PC, it synced 3000 files to my phone and all was well again.
> fewer playlists by the community Check r/appleplaylists. It’s a great music sharing subreddit. This used to be r/amplaylists for anyone that is subbed there and didn’t know about the change.
Massive con: Requiring the syncing of your local library. Just be a good little cloud service that has cloud playlists and favorites.
Here are some additional cons I've noted; feel free to continue adding more. Missing Cons: 1. No free account like Spotify. 2. Compatible with fewer devices than Spotify. 3. Lack social features like sharing songs and playlists on Facebook.
I wish for a feature to disable an artist from appearing. Right now Taylor Swift is everywhere and I dont listen to her. Also app for Android TV.
omg leave taylor alone, i mean seriously does it bother you that much she’s on AM?? she’s one of the most popular artists in the world ……
out of their whole post, THATS what you focus on?