Apple Music generates personalized music discovery, offers vast catalog

John Walker, Writer

It’s crazy to me that people still think Spotify Premium is better than Apple Music.

There’s no contest. Apple Music’s simple, sleek, user-friendly design separates it from all other music streaming apps; making it the superior music streaming service.

Everybody claims that Spotify is better for music discovery. Apple Music does it much better.

When users first join Apple Music, they fill out a survey that asks them for their favorite genres and artists. From the start, the app learns your music tastes from those answers to start recommending music you’ll love. Users can also delete artists and genres that they don’t follow regularly. Now, that one popular song you like doesn’t throw off what is recommended to you.  

Apple Music also has a whole page called “For You,” that’s all about music you’ll love. There are only three discovery playlists, instead of seven. They are the “New Music Mix,” “Favorites Mix” and “Chill Mix.” They’re 25-songs-long and about an hour and a half each– all with information that Apple thinks is relevant to you, like song lyrics to sing along with.

They also highlight five general playlists, four sets of four albums and six artist-specific playlists every day, and that’s it. It’s all music that you will actually want to listen to instead of what’s popular in the app. Spotify is like Netflix; there are two or three recommended lines of content you might watch, but you mostly get too many lines of content you would never watch.

Apple also knows that music discovery is not everyone’s thing, so the first page when you open the app is your personal library. You never have to see a recommended playlist or ever be on the “For You” page.

Apple Music’s two-library-system makes it easier to sort and find your saved music, downloaded or not. From the main page, you can see everything side-by-side. All the music that is in your cloud and downloaded library are on the same page, then there’s a tab devoted to your downloaded music. Users can also edit the list to sort their libraries by genre, along with the usual album, artist and song sorting.

Love music videos? Apple Music loves them too. You can find any artist’s music videos and save them to your library. This app blended the best of YouTube and Spotify for music lovers.

Apple Music has three convenient features that make the app more user-friendly. Users can search their library, making it easier to find exactly what they’re looking for. Siri, which helps users find and add music to their queue. And users can search by song lyrics; so that one line that is stuck in your head can easily be found on Apple Music.

Apple Music’s user interface music discovery and music videos make the app a giant step above Spotify, and honestly, separates it from all other music streaming apps. Sorry that Apple does everything better, don’t @ me.