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Top 10 Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify in 2024

by Dave Johnson

Here are all the advantages of Apple Music over Spotify in 2023.

When it comes to choosing a service, it’s a close race between Spotify Premium and Apple Music, but Apple Music has several benefits over Spotify premium. This is thanks to hi-res lossless and spatial audio albums, and the deep integration with Apple ecosystem. Let’s check all the advantages of Apple Music over Spotify in details.

Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify

Here are 10 reasons why Apple’s audio service has a lot of big advantages over Spotify and other popular competitors:

1. Advantages of Apple Music over Spotify: Music library

Apple Music and Spotify both feature massive libraries, but Apple claims the advantage with “over 100 million” songs to Spotify’s “over 80 million.”

One hundred million songs — it’s a number that will continue to grow and exponentially multiply. But it’s more than just a number, representing something much more significant — the tectonic shift in the business of music making and distribution over these past two decades.

2. Advantages of Apple Music over Spotify: Lossless Audio

One area where Apple Music has big advantage over Spotify is in sound quality. Apple Music offers Lossless Audio. Spotify doesn’t.

There’s a difference in terms of quality for listening to that music if you look at bitrates. Spotify’s apps offer an Ogg Vorbis stream quality equivalent to 160kbps for free users, while its premium service goes up to 320kbps.

Apple Music’s standard bitrate is lower at 256kbps for AAC streams, but it’s not the end of the story. There’s Lossless to take into account.

Apple launched Lossless as its high-definition audio option, which offers music at a higher fidelity than normal. This includes two quality levels: 24-bit/48kHz Lossless and 24-bit/192kHz Hi-Res Lossless.

To chuck around these higher quantities of bits means a higher amount of bandwidth is required. For Apple Music Lossless, that means a bitrate of up to 1,411kbps, much higher than usual.

The major caveat here is that you need the proper hardware to listen to Lossless audio. Lossless doesn’t work over Bluetooth, and even Apple admits that even its super-expensive AirPods Max headphones won’t support it, even when connected with a wire. That said, even when listening primarily on wireless earbuds while using an iPhone, I found that most songs sounded louder and brighter on Apple Music compared to Spotify.

Spotify did say it would introduce a similar high-fidelity service, named Spotify HiFi, but it failed to launch despite its promotion, and it was delayed indefinitely.

3. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Spatial Audio

Another advantage of Apple Music over Spotify is Spatial Audio. Apple Music offers Spatial Audio. Spotify doesn’t.

This works like a surround sound system in your earbuds, with the audio mapped out in the physical space around you. Apple is working with artists to specifically engineer their songs to take full advantage of the vast soundscape provided by the clever tech. Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos is included at no extra cost and automatically kicks-in whenever you’re listening with a Spatial Audio-compatible device, including the new third-generation AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods Max.

4. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Cloud locker

Apple Music’s biggest special feature is the iCloud Music Library, accessed through iTunes, which allows collectors to access their libraries of tracks in AAC 256kbps wherever they go when signed in with the same Apple ID. Apple Music has a key advantage over Spotify in that you can combine the songs you already own with the Apple Music streaming catalog.

If you turn on iCloud Music Library within Apple Music, you can access your personal library of tunes across all your devices (from the PC to the phone). This feature “matches” songs in your library with those in the iTunes catalog, or uploads them if the song isn’t available, so you can listen to your music wherever you’re signed in with your Apple ID. You can store up to 100,000 songs.

Note that iTunes Match is also available even without an Apple Music subscription for $25 a year.

Spotify also lets you play music from your device in the Spotify app, but it only works for local files so they aren’t stored in the cloud. So it’s a less elegant solution.

5. Advantages of Apple Music over Spotify: Cool ways to dive deep on an artist

While Spotify is pretty easier to navigate than Apple Music, the Apple Music app has few advantages that will make your inner music nerd happy. Certain album pages feature animated artwork, and some are even accompanied by a full article that provides a deeper dive on the music straight from the artist. When browsing an artist’s catalog, you’ll also see links to any Apple Music Radio shows they’ve been featured on.

Speaking of which, Apple Music Radio is one of the service’s best features. You’ll get live radio shows from top industry personalities like Zane Lowe and Ebro as well as no shortage of on-demand interviews to discover from artists big and small. Spotify offers auto-generated radio stations based on specific artists and genres as well as prerecorded podcasts with songs mixed in, but it doesn’t quite have the same type of live content — or the same big names.

6. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Apple Music is a good value

Apple Music starts at $9.99 per month, which is pretty standard for a music streaming service. But it’s an especially great value if you get an Apple One bundle, which gets you Apple Music, Apple TV , Apple Arcade and iCloud with 50GB of storage for $14.99. If you own an Apple device and plan on using the company’s various subscription services, it’s a no-brainer.

Apple Music and Spotify’s family plans are generally comparable, letting up to six users share an account for $15 to $16 per month. But if you want more than just music for your money, Apple’s got the best deal out right now.

7. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Videos

Apple does a lot more with video, offering music videos alongside tracks, documentaries, and other content. Spotify does provide limited video, such as video podcast playback and some exclusive content, but it’s certainly not as far along as Apple’s offering.

8. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Integration with Apple’s ecosystem

As you would expect, Siri works with Apple Music so you can ask her to play today’s hits and she will do just that. You can ask Siri to “play the top songs from 2021”, “play more songs like this”, “add the new Drake album to my library”, “play all songs by Drake” (to listen to all of Drake’s music, even if it’s not in your library), and “play my music by Drake” (to hear Drake’s songs that you have saved to your library). You can also ask Siri to shuffle the songs in an album or playlist. There are also a new range of playlists coming that can be controlled via Siri. For these, you could ask Siri to plan music for a dinner party, for example.

While Siri does work with Spotify, Siri is part of iOS, and can thus take advantage of iOS and all aspects of it.

Aside from the aforementioned Siri support, Apple Music provides a relatively large collection of features that could benefit users.

The deep integration with Apple’s ecosystem also helps the service a lot, such as enabling Siri queries to play back anything in the catalog. Accessing the music across all Apple devices, and to hand off between items, such as an iPhone to a HomePod mini, gives even more control over how a user listens to their music.

9. Advantages of Apple Music over Spotify: Social sharing

Both services let you follow your favorite artists to keep up to date with their posts and latest releases.

You can also follow friends. On Spotify, you can see what song your pals are listening to in real-time (if they choose to share this detail) on the desktop app.

Spotify Codes are a way to share tracks, albums and playlists among friends. It’s kind of like a custom QR code that you can scan with the camera in Spotify if you’re listening in the same location, or share through messages if you’re apart.

Many popular musicians seem to be more active in posting updates on Apple Music and it’s easier to find that content than it is on Spotify.

Naturally, you can also follow your friends and see what they’re up to across both platforms. While it’s much easier to find profiles on Apple Music than it is on Spotify, you do have to already have your friends in your contacts list (or on Facebook) to follow them.

10. Advantages of Apple Music Over Spotify: Music Discovery

Everyone has heard big things about Spotify’s algorithm that helps its users to discover new music. It’s been a huge hit amongst its users and results in new playlists every week that are tailor-made around the listening habits of a particular user.

However, Apple Music has another approach in which instead of using an algorithm to create playlists for you, it employs real people to do the hard work.

This may well appeal to those of us out there who prefer a human touch when it comes to having our music selected for us.

Apple Music is proud that the curated playlists that they provide have been designed by actual people instead of machine learning algorithms and it’s clear that many users prefer their method.

Conclusion

Apple Music has many advantages over Spotify. Apple has a huge music catalog and integrates seamlessly with other music libraries, has an enormous subscriber community, and delivers a great sound quality.

If you’re an Apple user with lots of music in your library, Apple Music offers a great experience and you’ll prefer the continuity in interface.

Tags: Apple Music, iPhone Tips
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Apple Music keeps stopping on iPhone? Fix

by GeeksModo Staff

I’m a huge fan of Apple Music, but I recently encountered a really annoying—and apparently common—bug. No matter what playlist, artist, or album I was listening to on my iPhone, Apple Music would pause every song or two, and I’d have to tap Play for it to continue.

Apple Music is undoubtedly an excellent music streaming platform with millions of users worldwide. Having said that, Apple Music is not flawless as many users encounter a variety of problems when streaming with this platform. Apple Music keeps pausing is among the most common issues encountered by its users. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to keep pressing the Play button after every song?

To get a better experience when streaming with Apple Music, you need to know how to get rid of this issue. So if Apple Music keeps pausing on you, there are several solutions that can help you regain the excitement of listening to Apple Music. Ranging from the simple restarting the music app to resetting Network Settings, let’s get to know more here!

See also: Clever iPhone Tricks Make Your Music Louder – so you can use it as a speaker

Force-Quit Apple Music App

Most of the time, merely force-quitting an app can end up resolving lots of minor issues associated with it. The same goes for the Music app.

Start by swiping up from the bottom of your iPhone’s screen to bring up the App Switcher. Then, swipe up on the Music card to remove it.

Follow by relaunching the Music app and start playing a track or album. If it continues to pause a lot, move on to the next solution.

Check the Apple Music System Status

Issues with the Apple Music servers can also cause sudden pauses while streaming music. To check if that’s the case, load Apple’s System Status page and check the status next to Apple Music. If you notice an outage, stay patient until Apple sorts things out. Usually, you won’t have to wait for long.

Restart Your iPhone

Sometimes, restarting your iPhone is all it takes to fix any underlying issues causing songs in Apple Music to pause randomly.

Go to Settings > General > Shut Down to turn off the iOS device. Then, follow by holding down the Side button to reboot it.

Troubleshoot Wi-Fi Woes

If Apple Music continues to cut off regularly over Wi-Fi, you’re likely dealing with a spotty connection. Here’s what you can do to fix that:

  • Activate and deactivate Airplane Mode
  • Renew the IP lease
  • Reset the router
  • Switch to another Wi-Fi network
  • Switch to cellular data

If you switch to using cellular data, go to Settings > Music > Cellular Data and ensure that the Music app has the permissions to stream and download tracks over cellular data.

Disable Low Data Mode

Low Data Mode on the iPhone helps conserve bandwidth, but it can also cause issues while streaming content over Wi-Fi or cellular data. So if you’ve activated the functionality, try disabling it.

Here’s how to do that for Wi-Fi and cellular.

Wi-Fi: Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and tap the Info icon next to the active Wi-Fi connection. Then, turn off the switch next to Low Data Mode.
Cellular: Go to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options and deactivate the switch next to Low Data Mode.

See also: Best iPhone & iPad Apps To Download Free Music

Deactivate Low Power Mode

Low Power Mode (which turns the iPhone’s battery icon yellow) is another reason that can prevent apps from working correctly, especially when they continue to run in the background.

If Apple Music pauses a moment after switching to another app or shutting down the display, go to Settings > Battery and turn off the switch next to Low Power Mode.

Disable Automatic Ear Detection in AirPods

If you use a pair of AirPods, you may experience random pauses because of a feature called Automatic Ear Detection. It’s helpful if you want the music to stop as you take off your wireless earbuds. But it can also work against you if you fidget with them a lot.

To turn off Automatic Ear Detection, go to Settings > Bluetooth and tap the Info icon next to your AirPods (you must have them connected). Then, disable the switch next to Automatic Ear Detection.

See also: 20 Best Tips And Tricks For Getting The Most Out Of Your Apple AirPods

Download the Track or Album

If the issue continues to occur while streaming a track or album, downloading it may help fix the problem. To save an individual song to local storage, tap the three-dot icon next to it (or long-press the track) and select Download.

To download an album, tap the Download icon to the top-right of the screen. Or, long-press the album and select Download.

Delete and Redownload Track or Album

If a downloaded track or album ends up pausing randomly, it’s likely corrupted. Try deleting and redownloading it.

To delete a downloaded track or album, tap the three-dot icon next to it and select Remove > Remove Download/Downloads.

Reset the iPhone’s Network Settings

If none of the solutions above fixed your Apple music issues on iPhone try resetting the network settings on your phone. To do that, go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset Network Settings.

After the network settings reset, reconnect to Wi-Fi manually (the reset procedure deletes all saved Wi-Fi networks) or use cellular data to listen to Apple Music.

Apple Music keeps stopping on iPhone still

The fixes above should’ve helped you get back to chilling out to your favorite Apple Music tracks without any annoying pauses.

However, if Apple Music keeps pausing, check for any pending updates to the iPhone’s system software and apply them. To do that, go to Settings > General > Software Update and tap Download and Install. Aside from fixing any known audio-related problems in iOS, that should also apply the latest performance enhancements to the Music app.

Additionally, you can choose to perform a complete setting reset to revert any corrupt or conflicting system-related configurations to their defaults. To do that, go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.

Tag: Apple Music
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Clever iPhone Tricks Make Your Music Louder – so you can use it as a speaker

by GeeksModo Staff

NOT satisfied with your iPhone’s loudness? It’s pretty easy to crank up the volume with settings tweaks – and some real-world tricks.

If you want to know how to make iPhone music sound better, then this article is for you. We’ve explained some of the easiest ways to make your music louder so you can use that iPhone as a speaker.

And yes, one way to make iPhone speaker louder involves putting your device in a bowl.
Let’s get started:

How to make iPhone music louder

Here are all the ways you can make your iPhone music louder:

Turn off iPhone volume limiter

To start off, you need to turn off the volume limiter. This feature is designed to prevent you from hurting your ears by playing music in high volume. Of course, it’s not essential – and will be excessive for most people so feel free to turn it off.

  1. Start the Settings app and go toMusic.
  2. Scroll down to Volume Limit.
  3. Toggle it off and you’re ready to go.

Adjust iPhone EQ

Your iPhone features an equaliser that balances out the sound of your music. iPhone EQ are turned off by default, but they needn’t (and shouldn’t) be.
Here’s how to make iPhone speaker louder in settings:

  1. Start the Settings app and go to Music.
  2. Tap on Music EQ and turn it on.
  3. Check out all of the new equaliser settings you can use.
  4. Select the Late Night setting, which cranks up the volume of quieter sounds, making the overall music louder.

It’s the easiest way to boost your music’s loudness.

Put your iPhone in an empty bowl

Another way to make iPhone speaker louder is putting it on an empty bowl. This cool hack basically creates an echo chamber, which will amplify the sound. Be sure the bowl you put your iPhone in is empty and its speakers are facing downwards. If you don’t have a bowl, try using a mug.

Use your hands

Holding your iPhone and want it to sound louder? Well, try cupping your hand around the speaker.

This should in turn direct the sound towards you.

Wall method

  1. Try holding or putting your iPhone next to a wall.
  2. Ensure that it’s at a 45 degree angle.
  3. The sound will then reflect off the wall and come on louder.

Upside down iPhone

Another way to make iphone speaker louder when listening to music, is by turning it upside down so the sound is reflecting upwards. This is because iPhone speakers are fitted at the bottom of the device. Propping up your iPhone and using certain cases can also muffle the sound from these speakers.

iPhone tricks to try today

Here are the best iPhone tips and tricks you should try:

  • Typing cursor – When typing, press down the space bar to turn your keyboard into a trackpad, letting you navigate to any part of the text easily
  • Close all Safari tabs – To do this at once, simply hold the overlapped squares in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, and tap on close all tabs
  • Delete multiple photos quickly – Hold down on a photo and then drag your finger diagonally in Photos to select multiple images at once, then tap on delete
  • Convert currency quickly – Swipe down from the center of your Home screen (or swipe left to right on an iPhone X), then tap on the search button and type a currency (like $100) and it will automatically covert to your local currency
  • Check if you need a battery replacement – Batteries inside smartphones degrade over time. Simply head over to Settings > Battery > Battery Health, and check out the Maximum Capacity of your iPhone’s battery. Generally a battery is considered significantly degraded when you’re down to 80% capacity. If you’re below, consider and battery replacement from Apple
  • Move apps around faster – touch and hold an app until it starts jiggling, then (while still holding) tap other apps, causing them to stack so you can move them around at once.

We think you might also like these amazing iPhone tips and tricks

Tags: Apple Music, iPhone Tips
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