4 Spotify options Apple Music wants to repeat ASAP

Like plenty of you, I’ve issues with Spotify as a enterprise. It nonetheless does not pay artists effectively sufficient; it is not doing sufficient to fight AI slop; and till just lately, it was internet hosting ICE recruitment adverts within the US. Beneath sustained strain, the corporate does finally appear to budge on points, however you’d assume it would not be that onerous to get issues proper from the outset.

I proceed to make use of Spotify for one overarching motive: practicality. I might love to have the ability to change to another like Apple Music, however since I stream music nearly all day — at work, on my EUC, and at the gym — having the ability to hear how I need issues nearly as a lot as what I am listening to. Under are just some of the issues which might be maintaining me hooked, a minimum of for now.

Spotify Join

No machine is an island

There is a stunning variety of Apple units in my home. My son, spouse, and I all have iPhones and iPads, even when none of them are new. We even have a number of Macs, Apple TVs, and HomePod minis, plus the Apple Watch I exploit to trace all that health club time.

You’d assume that may make me a perfect candidate for Apple Music, however that is the place you would be flawed. My work machine is a Home windows laptop computer, and more often than not, I am listening to music on an Amazon Echo Studio paired with an Echo Sub. There’s simply no simple option to change between all of my output units with Apple Music, since more often than not, Apple forces AirPlay for casting. You do get Google Solid in the event you’re utilizing the Android app, however that does not assist a lot in my state of affairs.

Spotify Join enables you to change output to any machine the service is working on. If my Echo Studio is performing up, for example, I can at all times fall again to listening on my iPad with a number of clicks. I may additionally push music to my TV’s soundbar, or play it on each Echo in my residence concurrently. Are you able to inform I’ve reviewed plenty of smart home gear?

The tech does have issues sometimes, most notably the limitation on one stream per account, no matter the place it is enjoying. For some time there, my son had a foul behavior of hijacking my health club soundtrack throughout his bathtime. Nonetheless — Spotify Join is genuinely multi-platform, so I haven’t got to lock myself into an ecosystem to get the complete advantages.

Tailoring playlists to your tastes

That je ne sais quoi

To Apple’s credit score, it has been steadily getting higher at customized playlists. Other than artist, style, and new launch picks, you get your individual station, and even a Discovery Weekly equal referred to as the Discovery Station. However if you’d like a gentle dose of selection and new-to-you content material, Spotify wins, and the competitors is not even shut.

Maybe my favourite playlist on Spotify for the time being is the Daylist. This analyzes your hourly habits, and generates an ever-shifting playlist meant to final a complete day. As I write this, for example, it is promising me a “dungeon synth martial industrial tuesday morning.” If I tuned in later, the style mashup would look utterly completely different. I’ll placed on Launch Radar, an album, a customized playlist, or a Day by day Combine if I am within the temper for one thing particular, however the Daylist has me coated the remainder of the time.

Spotify can also be making some good use of AI on this area. There is a DJ mode if you’d like a radio-like expertise, and relying in your nation, chances are you’ll already be capable of spawn authentic playlists based mostly on textual content prompts and emoji. So whereas the corporate could possibly be doing a greater job at curbing low-effort AI “artists,” it is a minimum of it is introducing you and I to people who may use the publicity.

Apple Music retains a heavy concentrate on curated playlists. That might change now that Google Gemini is being built-in into Siri and Apple Intelligence — however I must see higher parallels with Spotify earlier than I contemplate switching.

A free fallback

No must panic when cash is tight

Credit score: Alexander Gray / Unsplash

One of many causes Apple Music can afford to pay musicians higher — aside from belonging to a $3 trillion megacorporation — is that each long-term buyer is a paid one. You may doubtlessly hear for a number of months free throughout your trial, however after that, it is strictly pay-to-play. A lot of Spotify’s listeners are solely producing advert income.

There’s a strategic benefit to that, nevertheless: capturing clients who in any other case could not afford something. Opposite to what many tech CEOs assume, not everybody has an infinite price range for subscriptions, and one of many first sacrifices anybody goes to make is leisure.

From a listener’s perspective, there are many causes to improve to Spotify Premium when you may afford it, similar to ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However realizing Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you may’t instantly be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the lease and grocery payments briefly took precedence. If you’re again in your ft, then you may fear about catching up on Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, or eliminating that O’Reilly advert jingle.

Offline Backup

One thing is best than nothing

Credit score: Spotify

It is taken with no consideration that any streaming service will allow you to cache materials for offline listening, since even in 2026, there are nonetheless loads of occasions when web entry is interrupted or impractical. After I was residing in Texas, for instance, saving offline playlists was nearly necessary, since there have been surprisingly lengthy stretches of freeway with little to no mobile sign.

The distinction with Spotify’s Offline Backup is that you simply needn’t choose playlists forward of time. You may in the event you like, however Offline Backup is at all times out there in your telephone or pill, utilizing some type of sorcerous algorithm to serve up tracks with out consuming a ton of additional cupboard space. My very own backup is 2 hours lengthy, which would definitely be sufficient to get me by means of the worst components of a drive from Austin to Houston.

It is not excellent, after all. It gravitates in the direction of just lately or heavily-played tracks, and as I discussed, it is mobile-only. You are out of luck if you wish to apply it to your laptop computer or desktop — which appears ridiculous given the larger storage most computer systems have. Nonetheless, Apple may stand to implement one thing comparable, acknowledging that not everybody lives in an space utterly blanketed by 5G and Wi-Fi. Even in the event you do, some suppliers proceed to impose information caps, and I might reasonably hear to some previous tunes than threat apps like Google Maps being throttled.