4 Spotify options Apple Music wants to repeat ASAP

Like a variety 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 advertisements within the US. Below sustained stress, the corporate does finally 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 another 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 pay attention how I need issues virtually as a lot as what I am listening to. Beneath are only a few of the issues which are retaining me hooked, a minimum of 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 number 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 will make me a really 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 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 Solid in case 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 system the service is operating on. If my Echo Studio is performing up, for example, 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 house concurrently. Are you able to inform I’ve reviewed a variety 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 total advantages.

Tailoring playlists to your tastes

That je ne sais quoi

To Apple’s credit score, it has been regularly getting higher at customized playlists. Other than artist, style, and new launch picks, you get your personal station, and even a Discovery Weekly equal referred to as the Discovery Station. However in order for you 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 mean time 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 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 lined the remainder of the time.

Spotify can also be making some good use of AI on this area. 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 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 a minimum of it is introducing you and I to people who might use the publicity.

Apple Music retains a heavy deal with 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 think about 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 possibly can 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 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’ll be able to afford it, reminiscent of ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However realizing Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you’ll be able to’t all of the sudden be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the lease and grocery payments briefly took precedence. While you’re again in your ft, 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 occasions when web entry is interrupted or impractical. After I was dwelling 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 simply needn’t choose playlists forward of time. You possibly can in case you like, however Offline Backup is all the time out there in your cellphone or pill, utilizing some form 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 via the worst components of a drive from Austin to Houston.

It is not 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 larger 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 case you do, some suppliers proceed to impose information caps, and I might reasonably pay attention to some outdated tunes than threat apps like Google Maps being throttled.