> The desktop app for Apple Music has been updated with the newer versions of Mac OS and performs well<p>It abbbsolutely does not. Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify <i>just</i> because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used- certainly the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used. It is shockingly, shamefully bad for what's supposed to be a flagship service of one of the worlds richest companies.<p>And to be clear, I'm not one of the people on here who's always complaining about various apps. I think Slack is mostly fine. I think Electron apps are generally a positive thing. But the desktop Apple Music app is an abomination. If you don't use an iOS device for the majority of your listening, steer clear of Apple Music.
I’m winding down my reliance on subscription based services. There’s been a noticeable shift in the world when it comes to ownership; specifically the media and housing market space. Perpetual renting seems to be the way of the future. While I have my own opinions on that, I think it’s important to (at the very least) own your media library. Not only does it benefit artists and studios more, you will not be subject to any drama. Streaming has done good things for the industry, but I think we’ve swung too far.<p>With that said, I own stacks blu rays and CD’s that can easily be imported into my NAS and then attached to servies like Plex[1] or Navidrome[2]. I can even share those libraries with friends and family which is an added bonus. Navidrome also exposes a subsonic api that clients can connect to. PlexAmp can also import your music library.<p>With the exception of Plex, I think we’re entering a golden age of open source software to allow this type of thing. Setting up these services is fairly straightforward and maintenance is also pretty easy.<p>Pure bliss.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.plex.tv" rel="nofollow">https://www.plex.tv</a><p>[2]<a href="https://www.navidrome.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.navidrome.org</a>
Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no.
Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists.<p>Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc.<p>Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'd be interested to know if one of them actually has a more extensive collection.
My pet-peeves about Apple Music:<p>- Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere"<p>- No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy.<p>- Do note that fixing this makes it difficult to easily listen to your favorite songs by artist. E.g, now you can go to "my fave songs" list and search for Michael Jackson, and voila, you have a temp playlist of all your favourite MJ songs!<p>- When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs"<p>- It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else.<p>Some life hacks for Apple Music:<p>There's a lot of stuff you can do on Apple Music on your Mac, that you can't do on your phone. for example, in a playlist you can choose when a song should start and end (so you can cut off an unnecessary intro, or "hidden track") and this will follow into your phone.
I can attest to Apple Music recommendations having improved drastically. I’ve used it for probably 6 years now and only in the past 2 years have the personalized mixes become comparable to Spotify’s. One feature I think really deserves a lot of praise for discovery, is continuous play. The infinity icon will cause Apple Music to suggest a list of next songs based on your currently ending song, playlist or queue. This makes it easy to select one or a few songs, or a short playlist, and let it continue that vibe.<p>The live Apple Music stations are great when you find a diamond in the rough. They let you save and like songs from the live stream. It can be a little tough to find a radio show that jibes with your taste, but there are some excellent artists and DJs on there, and most of the live shows are playable on-demand.
At least where I live Apple Music has a much better catalog for what I like. Nobody else has the same amount of Japanese music without going through the hassle of using a VPN/Japanese account. It also applies to buying too which is frustrating as iTunes doesn't work well under WINE and Apple STILL doesn't have a web interface to buy/download from for some reason.<p>I don't even want to give Apple money but it's either that or pay like $40 for an imported CD...
There’s no way to delete or modify your listening history on Apple Music, and thus no way to get rid of unwanted recommendations AFAIK. At least with Spotify you can just create a new account, but your Apple Music account is tied to your appleid, so that’s not really feasible if you’re a heavy Apple user. I just try to find the service with mostly the same features but with the least intrusive recommendations and use that, which at the moment is Qobuz.
I guess the author doesn’t use windows because otherwise they would’ve acknowledged iTunes during the application and user experience section. I tolerate it since I only use windows for gaming but if windows was my main OS the app experience would be enough to choose Spotify.
Anecdotally, Apple Music sounds much better than Spotify, but I had to unsubscribe because it didn't work on a flight earlier this year (2022). All music was downloaded in lossless, but I guess some small bit still required network access.
Sheesh, this guy is concerned about exactly which codec is used, so I hope he also has one of those $10,000 home speaker systems with gold wiring because the placebo effect is really strong with that stuff.
Do Spotify and Apple Music have artist bio's and related bands / albums?<p>Those (and the spotify-style mixes) are my favorite features of Tidal.<p>I had mixed luck with Spotify years ago, and never looked back.
> While AAC and OGG codecs are very similar on paper, the way they compress music is very different as AAC uses psychoacoustics to encode music which retains more audible parts of the track.<p>It’s about this point in the article where I lost trust in the author. A ‘psychoacoustic model’ was used for MP3, a codec built in 91. Exploiting human perceptual traits for better compression isn’t novel to AAC, though admittedly it’s slightly better in very low bandwidth applications vs OGG. Can’t say any audiophile would stream below 128k though
Also worth mentioning (not discussed in the article) the awful, memory-hogging Spotify Electron app on MacOS.<p>(For clarification, I meant the <i>performance</i> of the desktop app isn’t discussed).