Lately in the newsroom, the conversation of music streaming services has been one of debate and dispute.

Most of the staff vouched for Spotify as the best streaming service app, with two people disagreeing, claiming Apple Music is superior. 

This led my mind to wonder which streaming service is better, and why people are so picky about where they get their music from. After all, it’s just music, so it’s all the same, right?

First off, I feel it is important to stress what each of these streaming services is by definition, so that we can all know and dissect the very essence of these apps.

Apple Music is a music, audio, and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. 

Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on April 23 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.

Though this does not tell us which one is better, it does give an insight on the obvious differences. Both services were created by two different companies/people, who had diverse outlooks on the way online music should be heard and designed.

For instance, hence the name Apple Music, this service is only available to people who have an iPhoneor Apple products. Since it is only for this group of people, others who do not have an Apple product are not able to have Apple Music.

The most recent study to display how many people have an iPhone to how many people don’t, was in 2021, stating that 3 billion people in the world do not have an iPhone.

This means that these people do not even have the option to use Apple Music, so they must resort to another way of listening to music.

The prices of each of these steaming services also will have a hand in what a person will choose. Even people with an iPhone have Spotify, and prefer it and enjoy it more.

If you have Apple Music, the only way that you will be able to utilize the app is if you pay the monthly fee of $10.99. This price is sometimes in a person’s opinion too much money, which is why they will not choose this streaming service.

If you have Spotify, it is actually free. Though that may seem like a perk, you are not able to download any music or podcasts, as well as having a limited amount of skips on a song per hour, and constantly hear ads. Sometimes if you click on a certain song you would like to hear, it will actually not play that song, but a potential playlist it could be on. 

If someone would want to avoid all of these things, they could pay a monthly fee of $9.99 a month to have Spotify Premium. 

With there only a one-dollar price difference between the two services, there are some other features of the apps that go into consideration which is the best.

A survey was recently sent out by the newspaper to get people’s opinion which app they would prefer to use.

Lots of people said that they both differed by saying one is more user friendly and the other has more options as far as music goes.

Of the 47 students that completed the survey, 39 people said Spotify is better, and the other 9 said that Apple Music is better. 

The majority of people who answered in Apple Music’s favor said that it simply came with their phone plan and that’s why they use it.

The majority of people using Spotify said that they like the design, sound, and quality of the app better. 

Not to mention the infamous Spotify Wrapped that all app users get at the end of the year in December.

“I’ve always listened to Spotify for as long as I can remember. That, and my family makes a summer playlist every year on Spotify,” freshman Charles Cline said.

Some other people in the survey also expressed that they listen to Youtube Music and/or SoundCloud.

So the question still lies, Apple Music or Spotify? If we are going by our school wide survey, then yes, Spotify wins.

But in reality, these apps really all do the exact same thing: allow us to listen to our favorite artists, music genres, and podcasts.

We should all be very aware that these two streaming services are not the only ones, and there are so many other ways to listen to music.

The debate will continue on until the end of time, and maybe one day we will have a new popular streaming service come along in the future.