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 nicely 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 strain, the corporate does ultimately appear to budge on points, however you’d suppose it would not be that arduous 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 just about all day — at work, on my EUC, and at the gym — with the ability to hear how I would like issues nearly as a lot as what I am listening to. Under are just some of the issues which might be retaining me hooked, not less than for now.

Spotify Join

No system is an island

There is a shocking 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 couple of Macs, Apple TVs, and HomePod minis, plus the Apple Watch I take advantage of to trace all that fitness center time.

You’d suppose that may make me a great 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 straightforward method 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 for those who’re utilizing the Android app, however that does not assist a lot in my state of affairs.

Spotify Join enables you to swap output to any system the service is operating on. If my Echo Studio is performing up, as an example, I can at all times fall again to listening on my iPad with a couple of clicks. I might additionally push music to my TV’s soundbar, or play it on each Echo in my house 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 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 complete advantages.

Tailoring playlists to your tastes

That je ne sais quoi

To Apple’s credit score, it has been steadily getting higher at personalised playlists. Other than artist, style, and new launch picks, you get your personal station, and even a Discovery Weekly equal known as the Discovery Station. However in order for you 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 intervening 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 example, 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 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 enviornment. There is a DJ mode in order for you a radio-like expertise, and relying in your nation, you could already have the ability to spawn unique playlists based mostly 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 concentrate on curated playlists. That would 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 take into account 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 — other than belonging to a $3 trillion megacorporation — is that each long-term buyer is a paid one. You possibly can doubtlessly hear for a couple 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 finances 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 possibly can afford it, comparable to ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However figuring out Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you possibly can’t instantly be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the hire and grocery payments briefly took precedence. Once you’re again in your ft, then you possibly can 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 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 instances when web entry is interrupted or impractical. After I was residing in Texas, for instance, saving offline playlists was nearly 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 simply need not decide playlists forward of time. You possibly can for those who like, however Offline Backup is at all times out there in your cellphone or pill, utilizing some kind of sorcerous algorithm to serve up tracks with out consuming a ton of additional space for storing. My very own backup is 2 hours lengthy, which will surely be sufficient to get me by way of the worst elements of a drive from Austin to Houston.

It isn’t good, 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 higher 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 for those who do, some suppliers proceed to impose knowledge caps, and I might fairly hear to a couple outdated tunes than threat apps like Google Maps being throttled.