The beginning of December is unmistakable: wreaths line the neighborhood doors, Pillsbury cookie dough flies off store shelves, and Instagram stories spam the annual end-of-year report: Spotify Wrapped. This highly-anticipated receipt of users’ personal listening habits (including their most-listened-to artists, songs, and albums) is one of the main ways Spotify keeps its listeners hooked on the platform — and its success is undeniable. Right now, the popular platform has a staggering 713 million active users around the globe. In contrast, Apple Music reported a mere 93 million users. While Spotify is the clear winner of the more popular platform, the real.question is: Is it really the better one??
One of the key deciding factors is their free versions. As a frequent user of Spotify’s gratuitous programming, I’m often subjected to the six-skips-an-hour limit with advertisements that play almost more often than the songs. On the other hand, while these annoyances can be a pain, Apple Music has no free option at all. Therefore in this area, it’s Spotify who tops the charts. . .
While a free trial is offered,it’s the same old “give us your credit card to try Apple Music for three months.” Spotify, on the other hand, allows you to listen to unlimited music for no cost. As long as you listen to countless ads, which is annoying, but can ultimately be worth it for free music. Both streaming services do offer a discounted rate for students, which are $5.99. However,for the normal paid versions, Apple Music is admittedly cheaper. Their website offers an individual plan for $10.99 a month, while Spotify’s individual plan is $11.99. Although this is just one dollar more per month, it certainly adds up. I’ll admit that Apple Music’s paid plan is a little cheaper, which is probably a better option if you’re looking for a paid version. But Spotify has a very important option that Apple Music doesn’t have: a free version. Because of this, I’d say that Spotify easily wins on accessibility.
Another important factor to consider is the actual quality of the audio. I’ve heard Apple Music boast their Dolby Atmos audio, which is pretty impressive to me, as it is the same quality sound that they use in movie theaters. To top it off,, according to Moon Audio in April 2025, Apple Music has higher resolution quality and maximum signal integrity, which translates to them having superior audio quality – in this case, it’s Apple Music who hits the high note..
Now I’d like to look at the actual content of the streaming services; that includes music, audiobooks, podcasts, and live radio. Apple Music offers live radio, which Spotify doesn’t have. Although this is an advantage for Apple Music, it’s not super significant as I personally have never had the desire to listen to live radio. On the other hand, Spotify has audiobooks included, and Apple Music doesn’t. I actually didn’t know this until I checked Apple’s website, where I found out that audiobooks are not included, and are in fact a separate subscription called Apple Books. I think that audiobooks are great, so I’m going to say that this is a big win for Spotify, as they have over 350,000 audiobooks. However, this vast selection of reads is only made available to Premium users who pay for a subscription. In addition to audiobooks, Spotify also has way more podcasts than Apple Music: almost 7 million, to be specific. In contrast, Apple Music only has a little over 2.5 million. This means that Spotify has almost three times the amount of podcasts, which once again makes it the clear winner.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are some great offers from both of these streaming services. The first one being that they both give you opportunities to discover new music you might like. Apple Music has their discovery station, which can help you find new and interesting music to listen to in all sorts of scenarios and various genres. On the other hand, Spotify has their Discover Weekly playlist, which gives you new songs every week that you might like based on your listening habits. I’ve used this Discover Weekly playlist many times, and I’ve even found some of my favorite songs from it.
Although I admit that Apple Music does have a lot of great features, I think it’s pretty clear that Spotify is the superior platform. Sure, the audio quality may be topped by Apple Music, but the free version of Spotify, along with its podcasts and audiobooks, are some features that Apple Music simply cannot beat.
