I have been catching heat for my preference of Apple Music over Spotify as a music streaming platform for years. My reply to every ridicule was always the same: "learn aesthetics".
Look, I have never tried to argue that Apple Music has better music discovery algorithms. Nor have I attempted to defend its lack of community playlists or its terrible radio. Apple Music is my favorite music streaming platform for the simple reason that it is charmingly featureless. In a world where every app and platform is built to maximize engagement and keep you locked in for as long as possible, simple applications like Apple Music are refreshing. To use Apple Music, you must have good music taste and curation skills. You must learn aesthetics.
However, I was growing tired of defending Apple Music for these reasons alone and so, last November, I decided to commit to three months of strict Spotify usage. I fired up a premium subscription, spent the better part of a day manually transferring my best playlists and favorite albums to my new Spotify account, and settled into this foreign music landscape. It was exactly what I expected.
The autoplay features were nice and, for the first month, it did an incredible job of discovering new songs and artists that I loved. However, over time, it became too good at creating an echo chamber of related music and I could tell I was already losing my ability to discover new, different music, that I could mix and blend into curated playlists. By month two, I was over it. But I committed to three full months. When the time was up, I was so stoked to get back onto Apple Music
Did three months hard time on Spotify
— Sam Rapaport ✥ (@thesamrapaport) February 17, 2023
Great app for the infinite scrollers of music listeners. Horrible for the curators.
Apple Music we are so f*cking back
Burning down everyone’s aux this summer ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥 pic.twitter.com/U0z9Tcgj0s
Ultimately, there were a total of THREE songs that I discovered through Spotify's algorithm that I carried over into Apple Music. Worse, there were far more entire albums whose drops I missed thanks to Spotify's endless scroll of recommendations.
It's been almost a month since I switched back to Apple Music and it feels great. My conclusion: music listening is one of those experiences that, in terms of technology, should be charmingly featureless.
It seems that with Spotify's latest announcment, others are beginning to see the light.
The Spotify app announcement/direction seems like a perfect campaign to boost Apple Music.
— Karri Saarinen (@karrisaarinen) March 8, 2023
I’ve been on the fence for a long time but this might finally push me over to Apple Music.
As always, I'm 5 years ahead of the curve.