4 Spotify options Apple Music wants to repeat ASAP

Like quite a lot of you, I’ve issues with Spotify as a enterprise. It nonetheless would not pay artists effectively sufficient; it isn’t 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 ultimately appear to budge on points, however you’d suppose it would not be that tough 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 swap to an alternate like Apple Music, however since I stream music nearly all day — at work, on my EUC, and at the gym — with the ability to pay attention 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, not less than for now.

Spotify Join

No gadget is an island

There is a stunning variety of Apple gadgets 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 fitness center 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 simple technique to swap between all of my output gadgets 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 state of affairs.

Spotify Join helps you to swap output to any gadget the service is operating on. If my Echo Studio is appearing up, for example, I can at all times 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 quite a lot 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 fitness center 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 regularly getting higher at personalised playlists. Apart from 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 gradual 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 meanwhile 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 fully completely different. I could placed on Launch Radar, an album, a customized playlist, or a Every day Combine if I am within the temper for one thing particular, however the Daylist has me lined the remainder of the time.

Spotify can 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 have the ability to spawn unique playlists primarily based on textual content prompts and emoji. So whereas the corporate may very well be doing a greater job at curbing low-effort AI “artists,” it is not less than it is introducing you and I to people who might use the publicity.

Apple Music retains a heavy deal with 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 think about 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 — other than belonging to a $3 trillion megacorporation — is that each long-term buyer is a paid one. You’ll be able to doubtlessly pay attention 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, nonetheless: capturing clients 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’ll be able to afford it, reminiscent of ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However understanding Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you’ll be able to’t immediately be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the hire and grocery payments briefly took precedence. While you’re again in your toes, then you’ll be able to fear about catching up on Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, or eliminating that O’Reilly advert jingle.

Offline Backup

One thing is healthier than nothing

Credit score: Spotify

It is taken without any consideration 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 obligatory, 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 decide playlists forward of time. You’ll be able to in the event you like, however Offline Backup is at all times obtainable in your telephone or pill, utilizing some kind 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 will surely be sufficient to get me via the worst components of a drive from Austin to Houston.

It is not excellent, in fact. 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 comparable, acknowledging that not everybody lives in an space fully blanketed by 5G and Wi-Fi. Even in the event you do, some suppliers proceed to impose information caps, and I might slightly pay attention to some outdated tunes than threat apps like Google Maps being throttled.