Day 4 with Apple Music
August 29th, 2024
Around a week ago, I got an email about my Spotify student plan. I was not longer eligible for the discount after four years. Without anyone to share a family plan with, I decided to explore my options a bit.
I've been wanting to try out Apple Music for the longest time. With supposedly much better streaming quality and a three month free trial, I decided to try it out. The draw of Spotify to me is its discoverability features, fun branding, and stalking your friends playlists. But with all the new UI changes within Spotify, a lot of the ease of use and social aspect has died.
I'm only a couple days into my free trial with Apple Music, but so far the music quality is a confirmed to be a nice added bonus and the the music player UI is more aesthetically pleasing in my opinion. But what I do find lacking is the discoverability features and the feeling of being catered to. To summarize what I'm feeling, it feels very rigid even with it's nice UI. Spotify, while it feels like a whole big jumble at times, feels a lot more fluid and personal to the user. While the music quality is superior with Apple Music, only time will tell if it is a significant enough bonus to pledge my allegiance to their platform.
In all honesty, my feelings of stiffness may just come from my lack of familiarity with Apple's platform. After the three months, I'll come back around and do a direct comparison of the two streaming giants from the perspective of a designer and a consumer. Stay tuned for that!
memos