Like quite a lot of you, I’ve issues with Spotify as a enterprise. It nonetheless would not pay artists effectively sufficient; it is not doing sufficient to fight AI slop; and till lately, it was internet hosting ICE recruitment adverts within the US. Underneath sustained stress, 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 cause: 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 on the gymnasium — with the ability to hear how I need issues virtually as a lot as what I am listening to. Under are only a few of the issues which might be retaining me hooked, no less than for now.
Spotify Join
No system is an island
There is a stunning 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 gymnasium time.
You’d suppose that will make me a super candidate for Apple Music, however that is the place you would be incorrect. 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 Forged in case you’re utilizing the Android app, however that does not assist a lot in my situation.
Spotify Join is genuinely multi-platform, so I haven’t got to lock myself into an ecosystem to get the complete advantages.
Spotify Join permits you to swap output to any system the service is operating on. If my Echo Studio is performing up, for example, I can at all times fall again to listening on my iPad with a number of clicks. I may additionally push music to my TV’s soundbar, or play it on each Echo in my dwelling concurrently. Are you able to inform I’ve reviewed quite a lot of sensible dwelling gear?
The tech does have issues sometimes, most notably the limitation on one stream per account, no matter the place it is enjoying. For some time there, my son had a nasty behavior of hijacking my gymnasium 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 regularly getting higher at personalised playlists. Other than artist, style, and new launch choices, you get your individual station, and even a Discovery Weekly equal referred to as the Discovery Station. However if you would like 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 fully totally different. I’ll placed on Launch Radar, an album, a customized playlist, or a Each day Combine if I am within the temper for one thing particular, however the Daylist has me coated the remainder of the time.
Whereas the corporate may very well be doing a greater job at curbing low-effort AI “artists,” it is no less than it is introducing you and I to people who may use the publicity.
Spotify can be making some good use of AI on this area. There is a DJ mode if you would like a radio-like expertise, and relying in your nation, chances are you’ll already be capable of spawn authentic 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 no less than it is introducing you and I to people who may use the publicity.
Apple Music retains a heavy concentrate on curated playlists. That might 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 contemplate switching.
A free fallback
No must panic when cash is tight
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 may probably hear 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 clients who in any other case could not afford something. Opposite to what many tech CEOs suppose, not everybody has an infinite funds for subscriptions, and one of many first sacrifices anybody goes to make is leisure.
It means you may’t all of a sudden be locked out of your music assortment as a result of paying the lease and grocery payments briefly took precedence.
From a listener’s perspective, there are many causes to improve to Spotify Premium when you may afford it, similar to ad-free listening, audiobooks, and offline caching. However realizing Spotify Free exists is reassuring. It means you may’t all of a 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 may 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
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 instances 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.
Offline Backup makes use of a sorcerous algorithm to serve up tracks with out consuming a ton of additional storage.
The distinction with Spotify’s Offline Backup is that you just needn’t decide playlists forward of time. You may in case you 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 would definitely be sufficient to get me by the worst components of a drive from Austin to Houston.
It is not excellent, after all. It gravitates in the direction of 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 better storage most computer systems have. Nonetheless, Apple may stand to implement one thing comparable, acknowledging that not everybody lives in an space fully blanketed by 5G and Wi-Fi. Even in case you do, some suppliers proceed to impose knowledge caps, and I might relatively hear to a couple outdated tunes than danger apps like Google Maps being throttled.
