Apple Music vs. YouTube Music: Which One to Choose?

by Kay Lee

Recently, more and more users have been switching to music streaming services, and this is quite logical and good. You get access to a million tracks for an adequate cost and can legally listen to them both online and offline. Today, we are comparing the two most popular music streaming services – Apple Music and YouTube Music.

Apple Music

The app is installed on iPhones by default. Apple did an excellent job working on the interface of Apple Music’s system. Its distinctive feature is the Connect function, which allows you to track the release of new tracks from your favorite artists.

Apple Music has three types of subscriptions:

  1. Individual for $9.99/month.
  2. Family for $14.99/month.
  3. Student for $4.99/month.

The main advantages of Apple Music:

  • Beautiful and, most importantly, user-friendly interface.
  • Three months of free trial subscription.
  • It fits harmoniously into the Apple ecosystem.
  • The desktop version of the app is available.
  • The web version of the app is available.
  • An application for Android devices is available on Google Play.
  • It is possible to use an individual subscription on 6 devices.
  • Student plan available.

The disadvantages of Apple Music:

  • Sometimes the recommendations do not work correctly.
  • High-cost subscription plans.

YouTube Music Premium

It is a music service from Google that targets users who listen to music on YouTube. The interface is so minimal and straightforward that even the Apple Music app seems more complicated compared to it. One of the service’s key features is smart search (you can enter the words of the song that you have memorized in the search bar and the system will find the desired song for you), which no music service can boast of.

YouTube Music Premium has three types of subscriptions:

  1. Individual for $9.99/month.
  2. Family for $14.99/month.
  3. Student plan with a 50% discount.

The main advantages of YouTube Music Premium:

  • A beautiful, user-friendly interface in dark colors, which looks stylish.
  • Smart search for songs, not only by title, but also by part of the lyrics.
  • Ability to listen not only to the official tracks of performers, but also covers, recordings of concerts, etc.
  • Recommendations based on previous searches and views.
  • Student plan available.
  • A web version of the service is available.

The disadvantages of YouTube Music Premium:

  • Sound quality is not always high.
  • The presence of different inserts at the beginning and during playback, since the tracks are often taken from music videos, where there is a separate storyline.

Summarizing all of the above, we compare services according to the key criteria for a music lover:

  • Sound quality

With a good connection, we get a music stream from Google in the mp3/320K format, which is comparable to the AAC/256K stream from Apple. Which format is better at high bitrates? One can argue about this for a long time, since in different cases, everything sounds different.

  • Search

We usually don't remember complex artist aliases. One insignificant error is enough to confuse Apple Music Search and for the search results to be zero. Google's search intelligence is striking in its cleverness – you can search for anything, in any language.

  • The app

It's inconvenient that there are two YouTube apps in the end. But here, in many cases, we save on unnecessary movements that we are forced to do in Apple Music – for example, likes.

  • Price

For comparable money, we get YouTube without ads, concerts, music videos, interviews, audiobooks, shows, lectures, and other pleasures from Google.

Conclusion:

It is impossible to unequivocally say, “Here, choose this one, because it is definitely better than the other” since everyone can boast of their own nice features. If a unique ecosystem and user-friendly interface are important to you, choose Apple Music. If you want to listen not only to the official tracks, but also to covers with and without videos, and you like to use the smart search – choose YouTube Music.