Spotify vs Apple Music vs Tidal vs YouTube Music

Instead of giving you options like "Mix 1" to "Mix 5", "Discover", and others, making you wonder what to tap on, Apple Music proudly greets you with just one main playlist — a station based around your interests. Of course, you can also jump in and create a station around a favorite band, if you are in a particular mood.

I appreciate this a lot — getting a bunch of hard-to-choose-from playlists at the start is not how I want to kick off a listening session. And, a lot of the times, my Apple Music station hits the nail right on the head and offers a good bit of "discovery" sprinkled in, with new songs or bands I haven't heard. But, I found that my playlists are sometimes a bit too… wide-swinging, or — dare I say — pretentious. You can’t play me a Slipknot song and then immediately follow it up with an old-timey jazz piece, Apple Music. I am not that broad-minded.

Aside from the weird surprises from time to time, I would say the Apple Music discover does a good job.

Apple Music is pretty but a bit sluggish and cumbersome

The app looks pretty and has a very beautiful synced lyrics feature, with a soft glow appearance and a karaoke scroll.


But then, getting around the app is a bit of a drag. I mean, it has this weird delay when — for example — you choose to dive deeper into a song’s details and tap “show artist”? There’s like a half a second delay, then the app starts flipping through multiple pages until it gets to the artist page. And then it takes another breath to load it. And that’s on an iPhone 11 Pro and iPad Pro (2020).

Not to mention that if I want to “like” a song that’s currently playing, I need to go into Apple Music, tap the triple-dot menu next to the song, and scroll down to find the “Love” option. Like… what happened to a simple thumbs up? Spotify lets you “like” or “dislike” a song straight from the persistent notification, and it’s not that hard to do the same on Tidal and YouTube Music. On Apple Music, I just rarely bother.

Apple Music will also mix all your iTunes purchases together with all the songs you can stream, bringing all of your music neatly in one place — that's assuming you were a big iTunes shopper to begin with.

Lastly, and I truly do not get this — considering that Apple prides itself on having a wide range of devices that “just work” with each other… The Apple Ecosystem, right? Why is there no cross-device talk? I could be listening to a pretty awesome playlist on the iPad. But when I decide it’s time to go and I want to resume that very same playlist on the iPhone — nope. No multi-device hopping.

Kind of weird that Spotify has this down, but Apple doesn’t. Yes, I know you can tap a HomePod Mini and transfer your playback that way, and then control it remotely. But this is strictly limited to one product — what about the Mac, iPad, iPod, and Android phones (yes, Apple Music is available for Android)?

Apple Music tops out at 256 kbps, but it uses an Apple-made AAC codec, which is superior to the free Ogg Vorbis codec utilized by Spotify. So, despite having a slightly lower bitrate, Apple Music will sound crisper to you. Provided you are listening the right tracks through the right gear to even be able to perceive the difference.

Third place: Tidal

Tidal is pretty solid, but I have to say, I absolutely dislike its “discover” capabilities. Or, to be more exact, the seeming lack of a “discover” feature.

Upon entering the app, you are greeted by 5 different playlists, bundling up your favorite artists in their respective styles. There's no "master radio station" that you can just play and be done with it. These mixes are very "safe" and rarely offer something you haven't heard. To discover new music, you need to go out of your way and browse through the suggested artists that pop up further down the main page.

Tidal looks basic, but works really solid

But, the app is snappy and robust and I’ve no complaints about the UI. Yeah it doesn't look shiny, but it is definitely functional, at least I found it to be so. Tidal was also testing a lyrics feature some time last year, but it is still a legend that we’ve seen no proof of.

Tidal Premium already gets you 320 kbps, AAC codec, which is pretty crisp digital audio. Of course, Tidal also offers the HiFi package with “lossless” quality streaming, Dolby Atmos surround, and 360 Reality Audio for Sony headphone owners. I am not super-sold on these features — I consider myself to have a good ear but can’t for the life of me hear those “compression artifacts” that people claim are present 320 kbps AAC tracks. As for 360 Reality Audio — tracks need to be re-mixed and re-mastered to be 360 Reality-compatible, so you can guess that there are not many songs that support the feature yet. And I am not sure I liked the effect on the ones that did.

Fourth place: YouTube Music

At the start of this list, I mentioned that Google Play Music used to be my favorite music streaming platform. So, how did YouTube Music end up being last, isn’t it the spiritual successor of the former?

I hoped it would be. But it really is not. See, YouTube Music takes your musical tastes, which you provide when registering, and then mixes them up with the hodgepodge of “interests” that YouTube itself has gathered on you through your years of watching YouTube videos.

Turns out, the result might not be that great.

Upon entering the app, you are greeted by one Supermix playlist, then 4 more mixes based on favorite artists, and then a "New Releases" and "Discover". Mostly, I just use the Supermix, because — duh, I don't want to think right now. And this is where some really weird things start popping up.


I consider “music” to be a separate art from whatever my favorite vloggers are doing on YouTube, right? If I sit down to listen to music, it’s either there to help me concentrate, help me unwind, or provide some tone-appropriate background.

Here’s how YouTube Music gets this wrong — If I’ve watched a few YouTube commentaries, I might end up having a couple of meme songs in my playlist. I watched a few covers to “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” back when it was hot, and today — YouTube Music still offers me some covers to check out. I followed the whole Last of Us II debacle in 2020, and now I sometimes get tracks from the game's soundtrack.

The good news is that the "discover" feature that used to work so well in Play Music seems to have carried on. There's just a lot of "noise" introduced by your video interests as well. Maybe it'd be better if I register for YouTube Music on a "clean" account, instead of my main Google one.

The app is "YouTube" first, "Music" second

The app prioritizes the YouTube music videos library, so you might end up finding the shortened, censored, and lower-quality “radio edits” of the songs you are looking for as a top result, which is always annoying. But the full songs are on there — you just need to look down at the results.