Comparative Essay Between Apple Music and Spotify

Magdalena Ortiz

ENGLI-1101-AFT41

M. Cicchetti

Essay 4: Compare and contrast

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Battle of the bands: Spotify and Apple Music

Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Sound Cloud, Tidal, Rhapsody… The list of music streaming services appears to be never-ending. While they all share the same market, only two of them sit at the top of the music streaming industry: Spotify and Apple Music.

Sweden’s Spotify officially launched on October 7th, 2008 through an invitation-only access and by December 2014 its user base was of 60 million globally according to Spotify’s “15 for ’15!” article (Spotify team). Seven years later, on June 30th, 2015 Apple launched its own music streaming service, Apple Music, which posed a serious threat to Spotify’s lead position, as not only was the new service backed by one of the most popular brands in the world, but it was also coming with the music baggage that was associated with Apple’s iTunes. Although Apple Music was strongly criticized at their launch for simply copying Spotify’s service and for its initially counter-intuitive interface, they grew rapidly and managed to obtain 10 million users in only 6 months according to Fortune (Addady).

        These two streaming services appear to be the same at a first glimpse: unlimited music and video streaming services available through different devices (phone, tablets and computers) which provide the ability to listen created, curated playlists, follow artists and download music features for offline listening. Even the user interface, although aesthetically different, aims at being easy to use and intuitive. Although they share some features and traits, their membership offer,  music discovery and social features mark important differences which has allowed Spotify to remain the leader.

        The first difference a user experiences occurs the moment they wish to access either service. Apple Music offers users three months of free usage before a paid membership is required, whether it is a single license, a family license or a student license. Spotify on the other hand is referred to as a “freemium” service, which means that basic features are available with advertisement for unlimited time, but paid memberships are available for features such as offline music listening, improved quality, skipping songs and no commercials.

        Once the way of accessing each service is chosen, the next step is actually using the service, typically through their mobile applications. On this point, users experience few differences among the services, other than Apple Music’s initial prompt to select preferred artists and genres. Beyond that initial difference, the experience is very similar. Both companies have achieved an intuitive and easy to use system: the moment the app is launched we are one “tap” away from the music we like. Spotify will show us the playlists we most recently listened to, and Apple Music will bring forward the music we recently added to our library. At the bottom part of the application, five small icons help us explore other options: our music library, a browsing option to search among all the music available to us, radio function, a search function and a section with music we recently listened to and music suggestions based on what we like.

        Despite this similarity on the user interface, the experience with each service is very different when it comes to music discovery. While both streaming services seek out to learn what music you prefer and suggest new content based on it, Spotify appears to be more successful in presenting new music to the user. Apple Music’s “For You” function will limit itself to suggesting different albums from an artist you have already listened to, or playlists where that artist is included. Although their approach is probably accurate, it does not invite the user to discover new music or step outside their already familiar artists. Spotify takes a different strategy. Its Discover function looks at the music you have listened to, and compares it to users that have listened to very similar music. Then, it looks at songs that these similar users have listened to, that you have not, and presents it to you under a playlist named “Discover weekly” which is updated every Monday.