Full Disclosure:

Everybody will have different experiences based on their preferences, their familiarity with one product or another, as well as what hardware they’re using. In the interest of transparency, this is my brief history and a list of test devices. I’ve been a member of Spotify Premium since July of 2011 and I’ve never really had any issues with it or a desire to try to find anything better. On the other hand, I do like Apple products so I had to give Apple Music a shot. The ‘test devices’ that were used for my comparison of Spotify and Apple Music are the following: iMac, Macbook Pro, iPhone 6+, iPhone 4S, iPad 3rd Generation and iPod Touch 5th Generation. There will be a lot of comparisons to Spotify since that service is obviously Apple’s biggest competitor.

The Good:

The actual presentation of both the desktop and mobile versions of Apple Music are beautiful.  On the desktop, the streaming albums integrate flawlessly with any purchased/ripped music that is already on your iTunes. The only way to tell the difference is the little cloud icon with an arrow through it that lets you know that you can download the track for offline use. The integration doesn’t stop there, though. When you select an individual artist there are a few new features that pop up. The most noteworthy is the addition of three tabs at the top of the band page. The first is ‘My Music’ which is exactly what you would expect — all of your personally owned music and any streaming albums you’ve added. What you might not expect is that, in addition to your music, there will most likely be an artist biography, a list of similar artists, and even a list of ‘Influencers’ or bands that influenced the artist that you’re currently browsing; some of the bigger artists even have a banner at the top of their artist page. The second tab is listed as ‘All’. Clicking that tab takes you to the Apple Music band page which will list all of that band’s albums making it very easy to add new music to iTunes. In addition to albums, there is often high definition music videos. The final tab is the ‘Connect’ tab. This is Apple’s way of letting artists connect directly with fans if they have any desire to. Of course, depending on the artist, not all of these features are available. It seems, though, that even the underground artists will at least have a biography and ‘Similar Band’ section. The mobile version of Apple Music looks just as beautiful and has the same features. Whether it is being used on a full size iPad, a tiny iPhone 4s or a stretched 5th Gen iPod Touch, the interface looks great.

The Desktop App (Click for Full Size Image)

In comparison, the Spotify service uses a totally separate app. The main issue with that is having to bounce between your purchased music and the streaming service. For example, you can see from the picture above that I own most of the Metallica discography, but not Kill Em All. So, if I’m listening to …And Justice For All and decide I need a bass solo to make up for Justice’s total lack of bottom end, I have to leave iTunes, open Spotify, navigate to the Metallica page and find the album — it’s like pulling teeth (that’s right, I went there). In fact, the integration between the streaming and the locally-stored music is the main draw of the Apple Music service.

The Mobile App - Artist Page, Library Page, Connect and For You (Click for Full Size Image)

The different radio stations (including one with live DJs) are no different than any other online/satellite radio and can’t really be considered a selling point. Apple’s internet radio has definitely improved since they first entered the arena, but it’s still nothing special. Personally, I don’t pay for a streaming service so that somebody else (real or programmed) can pick my music for me. The same can be said for the ‘Connect’ feature. Apple would have been better off if they had just let bands integrate their Facebook pages, since that is essentially what Connect is (except without nearly the same participation). The ‘For You’ section isn’t bad either, but it often lists the same bands/albums that I already own.  The better place to find new music was in the ‘Similar Artists’ section of individual band pages. All of these additional features work as advertised — with the ‘For You’ section being questionable — but they definitely aren’t anything that would convince me to purchase a subscription. Again, the main selling point for Apple Music is its integration with iTunes and your locally-stored music.

Other than the integration, a lot of the positives are pretty identical between Spotify and Apple Music. Spotify has a recommendation section that is just as hit-and-miss. Also, both services seem to carry about 98% (number pulled from my ass) of the same music. For example, both services carry Morbid Angel but they’re both missing Domination. As for actual sound quality, while Apple uses 256kbs AAC and Spotify uses 320kbps mp3 (for premium users), there is really no difference in sound quality. When there are differences between the two services they’re pretty minor. For example, it seems that Apple has some high profile releases (Dr. Dre, Taylor Swift) that Spotify is missing while Spotify seems to carry more underground releases (Mechina, Jakub Zytecki) that Apple hasn’t bothered with. Basically, when it comes to the actual look and feel of the streaming services, Apple has a solid lead over Spotify but in most other positive areas the two services are fairly similar.

I own almost all of these albums... thanks for the recommendations, Apple. (Click for Full Size Image)

The Bad:

When you first start the Apple Music trial, it asks if you want to enable ‘iCloud Music Library’ which is described as, “Access Your Songs and Playlists From All Your Devices.” Why wouldn’t you want to have the option to sync all of your songs and playlists? After a four-hour process of scanning my Desktop music library, I noticed that all of my music was definitely listed on my phone… all of it. In fact, there was more than ‘all of it’ because there were a ton of songs that I had purchased though iTunes that had since been deleted or at least had the metadata altered. That means I suddenly had stuff that I no longer wanted as well as duplicate albums simply because iTunes couldn’t tell that they were the same damn release. There’s no real warning that this is going to happen and it sets the stage for a steamroller of additional problems.

The problem is that I don’t want all of my music on my phone (even if it isn’t taking up hard drive space), and I certainly don’t want to have my disappointing past purchases coming back to haunt me. I have a playlist that syncs to my phone that is full of 4-Star-and-above ratings and another playlist with albums released in 2015, and that is all that I wanted from my personal collection. I was going to augment those playlists with Apple’s new streaming service (in place of the Spotify app), and have the best of both worlds on one app. In the long term, this issue of having all of my music (plus some) forced onto my phone didn’t seem like it was going to be much of a hassle to fix because I could always choose to only sync certain playlists and be done with it… except you lose that option if you use the iCloud Music Library.

With iCloud Music disabled, the world is full of choice. (Click for Full Size Image)

With iCloud Music enabled, Apple knows best. (Click for Full Size Image)

Of course, the work-around seemed to be so obvious; turn off iCloud Music and just sync every device manually. Except, that with iCloud Music turned off, you do not have the option to create streaming playlists. You can only stream directly from the individual band pages. There’s absolutely no reason to pay for a streaming service if I can’t organize the music into playlist form. So, essentially I was going to be stuck with an all-or-nothing scenario — but I couldn’t even get that lucky. It turns out that Apple only allows 25,000 songs to be on the iCloud Music library at any given time (not counting music purchased through Apple). Between my own music and streaming playlists, I have over 25,000 songs and Apple arbitrarily decided which ones weren’t going to make the cloud. That means there are playlists on my mobile devices that are missing songs and there’s no easy way for me to get them back on there. I could go through and delete certain tracks from iCloud and then manually upload the missing songs back to the cloud, but why should I have to do that? Also, once you hit that magic number, you can no longer add anything more from Apple Music to your playlists. When this happens, there are no errors telling you that there’s an issue, the songs you’re trying to add just don’t appear — and if you try to manually add one of your own songs to the cloud after hitting 25,000 it will literally kick you from the cloud; which causes all the streaming songs to fade out until you manually reconnect to iCloud music. So, the closer you are to 25,000 songs when you start, the less usable iCloud Music becomes (even without the other issues).

All I tried to do is add a song to the cloud... (Click For Full Size Image)

That’s not the worst part about this whole mess. While you’re busy trying to figure out what music is missing from your mobile devices, why iTunes won’t add anything else to playlists, and what exactly you’re doing to make iCloud continually drop its connection, iCloud Music is busy altering all of your purchased/ripped music without your consent or knowledge. That’s right, this streaming service jumps right in and alters the album artwork and other metadata of your personal musical collection. I lost album art, genre designations and ratings after enabling iCloud Music. It turns out that Apple Music has a tendency to randomly replace your information with its own (especially on the mobile devices). In addition, if you accidentally delete a song you own, make sure that you restore it from a personal backup because if you just use the cloud button to re-download you’ll end up with a copy-protected version that will leave as soon as you stop paying.

Notice it replaced the original albums' artwork with the remastered albums' art (Click For Full Size Image)

The Conclusion:

Apple Music looks beautiful, but it is a mess. For $9.99 a month ($14.99 for a family) you’ll have two options. One: Don’t enable iCloud music and have no ability to create streaming playlists, but also retain the ability to decide what goes on your mobile devices. This option basically means you’re paying entirely for the ability to stream through iTunes instead of a third party application. In order to have that ‘luxury’ you’ll give up the ability to create and organize streaming playlists (I know that I’ve already said that, but it must be stressed in order to prove that option one is pointless). Option Two: Enable iCloud Music in order to be able to create streaming playlists that sync across multiple devices, but open up your person music and mobile devices to Apple. That means you’ll be flooded with any purchased music from Apple that you’ve previously altered or deleted. It means Apple will most likely jump into your locally-saved music with reckless abandon, changing metadata to match its servers (but not in any consistent way). If you begin with a large music library, it means you’re probably going to cap-out out 25,000 songs in the cloud; songs that will be arbitrarily decided upon by Apple — which also means no more ability to add streaming music to playlists and no ability to add any new purchased/ripped music to your mobile devices until you manually start removing other stuff from the cloud. It also seems to mean that iTunes will run much slower than usual as it updates any changes through the cloud.

Spotify might not be integrated with your locally saved music, but that’s hardly an issue when this is the alternative. Apple is supposed to ‘just work’, but it is Spotify that just works. Spotify syncs seamlessly across devices. When you change a playlist on one device, the change is nearly instant across the rest of them. I’m not saying that Spotify doesn’t cap the amount of songs you can keep on the app (because I don’t know), but I can say that I’ve never ran into that issue. On the other hand, Apple Music is virtually unusable. What makes Apple think that a streaming service has any right to alter locally saved music? What makes Apple think they should take away one’s ability to easily dictate what is and is not on their own mobile devices? Why should I get penalized because of the amount of music I already own, making the streaming part useless due to the inability to add any more music. Don’t get me wrong, this service could be great one day, but it is going to require changes. The integration between streaming and locally-owned music is awesome, but they need to leave the local stuff alone. They also need to allow us the option of opting out of putting all of our music in the cloud while still doing basic things such as creating a streaming playlist. They also need to bring back the ability for us to pick which playlists to sync to our mobile devices while pairing them with the streaming service playlists, instead of the all-or-nothing approach they’re using right now.

At the risk of my sanity and personal music collection, I’m going to let the three month trial run its course. I’m going to hope that things get better, and I’m going to stick with this in order to provide updates (if required). I’m also going to hold on to my Spotify account, though, because things will have to get a lot better for me to leave them. For those of you that are currently trying to decide on Apple Music, don’t jump in just yet. Apple has a lot of work to do before there’s any reason to make them your default streaming service. At the very least, wait for an update that puts you back in control of your music and devices.