4 Spotify options Apple Music wants to repeat ASAP

Like lots of you, I’ve issues with Spotify as a enterprise. It nonetheless does not pay artists effectively sufficient; it isn’t doing sufficient to fight AI slop; and till just lately, it was internet hosting ICE recruitment advertisements within the US. Underneath sustained stress, the corporate does ultimately appear to budge on points, however you’d suppose it would not be that onerous to get issues proper from the outset.

I proceed to make use of Spotify for one overarching purpose: practicality. I would love to have the ability to swap to an alternate like Apple Music, however since I stream music just about all day — at work, on my EUC, and at the gym — having the ability to hear how I would like issues virtually as a lot as what I am listening to. Beneath are only a few of the issues which are protecting me hooked, no less than 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 gymnasium time.

You’d suppose that may make me a perfect candidate for Apple Music, however that is the place you would be fallacious. 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 straightforward option to swap between all of my output units with Apple Music, since more often than not, Apple forces AirPlay for casting. You do get Google Forged in the event you’re utilizing the Android app, however that does not assist a lot in my situation.

Spotify Join enables you to swap output to any machine the service is operating on. If my Echo Studio is performing up, as an illustration, I can all the time fall again to listening on my iPad with a number of clicks. I might additionally push music to my TV’s soundbar, or play it on each Echo in my dwelling concurrently. Are you able to inform I’ve reviewed lots of smart home gear?

The tech does have issues often, most notably the limitation on one stream per account, no matter the place it is taking part in. For some time there, my son had a foul behavior of hijacking my gymnasium 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 total advantages.

Tailoring playlists to your tastes

That je ne sais quoi

To Apple’s credit score, it has been progressively getting higher at personalised playlists. Except for 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 in the mean time is the Daylist. This analyzes your hourly habits, and generates an ever-shifting playlist meant to final a whole day. As I write this, as an illustration, it is promising me a “dungeon synth martial industrial tuesday morning.” If I tuned in later, the style mashup would look utterly totally different. I could 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 enviornment. 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 to spawn authentic playlists primarily based 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 no less than it is introducing you and I to people who might 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 have to see higher parallels with Spotify earlier than I take into account switching.

A free fallback

No have to 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’ll be able to doubtlessly hear for a number of months free throughout your trial, however after that, it is strictly pay-to-play. Lots of Spotify’s listeners are solely producing advert income.

There’s a strategic benefit to that, nevertheless: capturing prospects who in any other case could not afford something. Opposite to what many tech CEOs suppose, not everybody has an infinite funds 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, corresponding to ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However figuring out Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you may’t out of the blue be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the lease and grocery payments briefly took precedence. Whenever you’re again in your toes, 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 as a right that any streaming service will allow you to cache materials for offline listening, since even in 2026, there are nonetheless loads of instances when web entry is interrupted or impractical. Once I was residing in Texas, for instance, saving offline playlists was virtually 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 just need not choose playlists forward of time. You’ll be able to in the event you like, however Offline Backup is all the time obtainable in your cellphone or pill, utilizing some form 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 the worst components of a drive from Austin to Houston.

It isn’t excellent, after all. It gravitates in 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 better storage most computer systems have. Nonetheless, Apple might stand to implement one thing related, 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 would relatively hear to a couple outdated tunes than danger apps like Google Maps being throttled.