Spotify vs Apple Music vs YouTube Music: Which is Better?

Choosing a default music streaming service is tricky when there are many options available, each with a unique benefit. Spotify is popular for its music discovery algorithm. Apple Music is known for its variety of features and audio quality. And YouTube Music has the benefit of an extensive catalog of old and new songs plus videos uploaded to the platform.

Here we’ll compare the three streaming services based on user interface, audio quality, and additional features to see which one is right for you!

Plans and prices

You’ll find three basic plans with each service: Individual, Family, and Student, with similar pricing. But if these don’t meet your needs, Spotify and Apple each offer an additional plan, which may better suit your needs. For Apple, that’s the Apple Music Voice subscription; for Spotify, it’s the Duo plan, ideal for couples.

If you don’t mind the occasional ad between songs, Spotify and YouTube Music also offer a free plan that gives you free access to their catalog.

We’ve detailed the plans and pricing for each service in the table below:

Subscribing to the Student Plan on Spotify and Apple Music also gives you access to some video streaming services. Spotify’s Student plan gives you access to Hulu’s ad-based streaming plan and SHOWTIME, while Apple Music gives you access to Apple TV+.

Sound quality

In addition to finding the ideal music streaming plan, it’s important that you have access to good quality audio output. And of the three services, I feel like Apple Music has quite a head start.

The service’s output to my AirPods Pro and Sony WH-1000XM4 is significantly louder and has much more detail. Instrument separation is very important to me when listening to music and the service delivers on that. YouTube Music comes right after Apple Music and sometimes matches loudness and detail. Unfortunately, Spotify’s output doesn’t match either service.

Apple Music also offers high-res lossless audio, but it’s currently impossible to take full advantage of this feature on wireless earbuds. But for those with the right hardware, the availability of these higher quality master files is a huge added value. Spatial audio on the service also adds an extra layer of fun when you find a song that’s mixed well.

To sum it up, for those who appreciate more detail, go for Apple Music or maybe YouTube Music; Spotify still has a way to go.

Winner: Apple Music

Follow discovery

But while audio quality is something Spotify falls behind, it has some of the best algorithms when it comes to track discovery and recommendations.

Each new song I found and liked led me to a collection of music I hadn’t heard before. Yes, over time, the recommendations become repetitive, but the gap between the emergence of such a situation was much longer when using Spotify.

I’ve been cycling between YouTube Music and Apple Music for all my music for the past six months. And I found that discovering with YouTube Music was great for the first few weeks, but once the repetitive suggestions started, it became difficult to get new songs to appear. As for Apple Music, I couldn’t find it suggesting new songs often, and even if it did, they weren’t quite what I expected.

But within my first half hour back on Spotify, I already had a few new songs in my library that none of the other services had pointed me to. So if you’re looking for new music and trying to update your library, choosing Spotify won’t disappoint.

Winner: Spotify

Application UI

When I want to listen to music, I approach it with the idea of ​​hearing a mix of familiar songs and new options that share some aspects with my library. When it comes to this, the layout of the streaming app plays a key role, and here we’ll take a look at how these apps fare.

youtube music

Of the three services, YouTube Music makes this experience the simplest. It picks some of your recently played music – and songs played a few days ago – and allows you to start a “radio” based on them with just one tap. It puts this at the top of the app’s home screen.

On the play screen, if you pull the “next” card from the bottom, you can play familiar music or discover new songs with a button.

The submenu behind the three-dot button in the application also has several buttons to add songs to your library and learn more about the artist.

Apple Music

Unlike YouTube Music, which uses a bottom shelf with three buttons, Apple Music offers its users five options: Listen Now, Browse, Radio, Library, and Search. Each section has a unique purpose, but to quickly jump to a music session, you can tap on the suggested tracks Listen Nowwhere you’ll find custom mixes and even new releases.

But what hurts the experience here is adding songs to the queue and stating if you’re a fan. You have to go to a submenu to tell the algorithm that you like a song instead of being able to hit the heart button quickly. Adding music to the queue also requires you to search for the song through the Search menu or in your library. The first option is slow if you’re looking for a less popular artist or if you haven’t searched for the song before.

Spotify

In recent years, Spotify has made significant investments in podcasts and therefore focused on creating an application that seamlessly combines the two types of content. This made the application feel cluttered, but it recently started rolling out a new user interface, which creates segregation between music and podcasts.

While there are tiles that let you quickly jump into an algorithm-based mix of music, tap the songs button at the top of the home screen takes you to a special space for songs from different artists – some well-known and others that Spotify thinks you might like.

At the time of writing, users in the United States and Canada will also see TikTok-esque short videos or images pushing small parts of songs, podcasts, and other shows featured on the service to help you discover more content.

Since I mainly use Spotify for music and not podcasts, the buttons at the top make it easy to choose what to listen to or discover new artists. The application also has the most intuitive set of gestures and buttons to add songs to the queue and indicate that you like them.

But overall, the simplicity of the YouTube Music application, which puts music first, makes it a better option out of the three.

Winner: Youtube music

Device compatibility

All three services are available on a wide variety of devices as you can use them on iOS, Android, tvOS, Google TV, PlayStation 5 and Xbox One via downloadable apps. Note, however, that YouTube Music must be accessible through the YouTube app on all platforms except iOS and Android, where a dedicated app exists.

Play across devices (Spotify only)

Spotify surpasses Apple Music and YouTube Music for a seamless user experience as it allows you to control playback from any device signed into your profile via Spotify Connect.

Synced Lyrics (Apple Music and Spotify)

All three applications offer the ability to view lyrics, but only Spotify and Apple Music display synced lyrics for the track that is playing. You see it as a scrolling animation and tapping on the lyrics will take you to that point. On YouTube Music, users can only see the lyrics.

iCloud Music Library (Apple Music only)

If you have a library of songs that you’ve built up over the years, especially before streaming services were mainstream, Apple Music also supports iCloud Music Library. This feature allows you to sync a library of up to 100,000 songs across all Apple devices signed in to your account and access them easily even if they are not available as part of Apple Music.

Apple Music Sing (Apple Music only)

Finally, for those users who like to visit a karaoke bar, Apple offers a feature called Sing Apple Music which allows you to enjoy a karaoke-like experience at home with compatible devices. You can lower the volume of vocals in a song and then sing along with synchronized lyrics.

Spotify is the King of Discovery, while Apple Music pioneers quality

To summarize this article, you have two choices when choosing a streaming service: a platform that prioritizes audio quality or one that satisfies your desire to discover new music.

If you fall into the former category, Apple Music is the ideal choice as the audio files are noticeably better in quality and offer Spatial Audio mixing. Plus, iCloud Music Library lets you take your collection to the party.

But if you like to hunt for the next hip song or a track that suits your taste, then Spotify is a clear choice. YouTube Music is a service that falls somewhere in between the two.