I've tried Apple Music twice, both on a free one-month trial offer. Both times I found the product to be so frustrating that I stopped using it within the first day.
To me, Spotify is the clear winner in streaming subscription services with a great UX and by doing a decent job of finding new interesting music. I'd rank Google Play second, followed by Amazon Music. Apple Music is the only one I truly dislike.
I love Apple music. For me the distinguishing feature is Beats radio.
Even though I don't listen live, I regularly listen to various programs to find new music. Since the music is picked and narrated by various DJs (Mike D of the Beastie Boys, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, etc.), it has a far less algorithmic feeling and there are fun stories in between, etc. Also, the different programs serve far more diverse audiences than mainstream radio.
The UX doesn't matter so much to me because I spend so little time using it. I've never cared about the social features in any music service. I either want to listen to something specific that I search for and play, or just play Beats 1 or another radio station.
Spotify does a great job generally but they lost me as a customer because they keep testing removing the Discovery functionality. I don't understand why that's a section they want to kill, but so be it. I canceled in 2016 after a year of being annoyed by the on again-off again presence of the Discovery section. It looks like the same game is still going on.
I tried Google, Amazon, and Apple's offerings and went with Apple Music since I'm a Mac, iPhone, Apple TV user. Couldn't be happier. Should Apple remove their discovery section I'll find a different provider. Rinse, repeat. I've found a lot of awesome bands that way without any effort on my part.
This also drives me crazy. Maybe not exactly the discovery feature, but how flimsy the UX feels. Features disappear and reappear all the time.
I've listened to a Spotify people brag about their A/B testing efforts. It is absolutely crazy how many different variants they have at any given time. A/B might be valuable, but to me it should be conservative.
> I've listened to a Spotify people brag about their A/B testing efforts. It is absolutely crazy how many different variants they have at any given time.
Yeah, I once "decompiled" the Spotify desktop app (it’s mostly a bunch of zip’d web apps glued together), and found details about ad targeting and A/B identifiers. I had 20+ identifiers, most of them regarding ads (i.e. named `ads_<something>`), but also some with weird names like `liar_detective_rollout_Exposed`.
I never honestly noticed the difference here, but now you point it out... it looks like they're pushing advertising no matter what kind of user you are.
What made me notice that is how subtle the payola is. I follow my best friend's Discover Weekly playlist too because we share similar tastes, and every now and then I would spot that we get the exact same songs (typically some new release but not always from a big band), at the exact same position in each of our playlists.
I still enjoy Spotify greatly, but it's a shame that they're trading serendipity for marketing. The Release Radar thing is practically useless.
My interpretation of a similar scenario (my girlfriend and I both followed & listened to each other's Discover Weekly) was that Spotify noticed that traffic and started assuming our tastes were converging (they were).
I already had iTunes Match, and then Apple Music launched first in my country, I tried Spotify but when they finally launched but their catalog was worse, and syncing your existing library of music never worked well (network error? let's delete everything!).
Apple Music's killer features for me are the iOS integration and cloud sync+playback of your existing library of MP3s and iTunes purchases. Also as bad as the iTunes UI has gotten, my experience with the Spotify app was even worse.
Apple Music seems to be the only service that handles uploaded music and syncing well, integrating uploads seamlessly into your library. I think it has an edge with anyone who downloads albums that are too obscure to get licensed to the streaming service or unofficial releases. It probably partly accounts for the popularity of Apple Music with younger hip hop heads who need to integrate mixtapes in their libraries.
The same here, being half an Apple Fans I would have put up with minor annoyance, in the hope they will improve one day. But no, it was another iTunes.
They may succeed in US or EU, but I would bet $100 they won't succeed in Asia + Japan Region.
I'm an Apple Music user. On my iPhone, it's very good. performs well, features that weren't there 3 months ago have been added (like when I select the album/artist on the now playing it asks if I want to go to that album or the artist, for example.)
Apple Music on the desktop has been functional but like iTunes (I'm on Windows) it's not quite as fluid. Having said that, trying Spotify after using Apple Music has been awful. The UI to me is very clunky. It's slow. And I find its classical music collection (a big piece for me) is woefully lacking.
I've never tried spotify but I'm very happy with Google Play. It's worth the money and it has led me to discover many artists and genres that I didn't know I liked.
I still feel like Pandora does the best job of finding similar new music to an initial set of tracks, but other than that I like most aspects of spotify better.
I stumbled across a great Spotify feature the other day. If you right click on a playlist, there is an option called "Create similar playlist". I did this with a playlist I had created from a bunch of random tracks. It basically went through track by track and found similar songs. It was a bit hit or miss on some songs, but a neat feature. I think Spotify does a great job because they give you so many options for finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig into the UI to find them.
It's very subjective, but I've been comparing the "create a station" from a spotify playlist to Pandora for a while, and just find more music that I both like and have never heard of from Pandora than spotify. Then I generally add the tracks I like best to a spotify playlist.
On the other hand, Pandora, it feels like has recently been making picks that somewhat mush your likes and seeds from all your stations together.
> I think Spotify does a great job because they give you so many options for finding new music, but sometimes you have to dig into the UI to find them.
While this is true it's ridiculous how often, at least for me, Spotify creates a playlist with songs that I've listened to hundreds of times already.
At least 70% of my discovery weekly playlist is a song I've already heard. If I create a "Similar playlist" it stuffs it with songs that I listen to regularly. It's deeply disappointing.
Discovery playlists filled with songs I've already 'liked' or added to my library. Discovery playlists with duplicates. And in other playlists, having to 'do not play' songs I don't actually mind because they are generally popular and the algorithm thinks I want to hear it three times a day, every day. A great way to kill your love of a song.
While I love the concept of Spotify, I'm certainly not going to pay for it and eagerly waiting for competitors to be available in my regions.
It should be a real ease to create good music discovery/curation for spotify since they acquired the echonest.
It it really simple to add similar music to what you are currently listening to, too a rolling playlist.
Unfortunately, the way they fo it feels like promotion instead of individual curation.
It was easy when I created trushuffle some 8 yrs ago (before Spotify aquired echonest) and it should be even easier for a multi billion company.
I'm the other way, I can't stand Pandora. I suppose it's probably good for finding the popular songs of the genre, but I feel it always ends up playing the same small set of songs pretty quickly regardless of what I put in. Spotify gives me much more variety and of people that would be much harder to discover myself.
Spotify is great if I want to hear a specific song, but I've managed to curate Pandora over many years that I almost never hit the down thumb. I haven't tried the Spotify equivalent. But SoundHound and Spotify is a pretty great experience.
I had the same experience with Apple Music. Apple should know what music I enjoy listening to. Spotify rarely disappoints. Apple Music disappointed right out the gate. This completely ignores the confusing nature of Apple Music. Couple that with no ability to import playlists from Spotify, I don't see the benefit.
I had the exact opposite experience - when I used Spotify, I never got good music recommendations, and every 'radio' station I created eventually devolved into horrible music of a genre that I actively dislike. Apple usic on the other hand does a much better job for me of playing music that I like, and the human-curated playlists are excellent.
I had them all and in different countries. Apple Music had lost me forever when day after day for a month they has been suggesting Heavy Metal albums and playlists to me - genre that I do not listen too which is obvious based on my music library and habits.
Spotify is getting on my nerves due to caned music in curated playlists. But I have free subscription as part of family package.
> Is Google Play Music anything more than the audio from YouTube uploads?
Yes, Google Play Music is a regular “official digital content from music publishers” streaming service.
The All Access bundles commercial-free YouTube access and if the same song has an official video on YouTube you can switch to it instead of the audio directly from the GPM app, but the catalogs are separate.
To me, Spotify is the clear winner in streaming subscription services with a great UX and by doing a decent job of finding new interesting music. I'd rank Google Play second, followed by Amazon Music. Apple Music is the only one I truly dislike.