Spotify is the best for discovering new music from other users. Apple is great because of Beats 1 and their curated playlists. But the core features are basically identical.
I guess you've never experienced rdio? There we had a real thriving community of music lovers. Albums were discussed in comments under the item in questions, comments were rated, replies could be added. Popular and recent comments of your friends were featured on your frontpage. The heavy rotation section revealed a single users' (or a group for that matter) current taste at a glance, I could start any user's personal radio station.
Compared to that Spotify is a social tragedy - the activity tab has to be one of the most disappointing areas of the service. I can shout, but nobody can get back to me or discuss anything there.
Apple's UI for the Music app is practically unusable compared to Spotify's. They make it so bloody hard to find anything. One screen contains 4 different actions, with a tiny half-height panel being swipeable to get at critical functionality that should be on a dedicated screen. It's not a professional interface.
>> Apple is great because of Beats 1
... if I wanted radio I would subscribe to Sirius. I'm not going to pay $10+/month for a single radio station.
This is the only reason for me sticking with Spotify instead of Apple Music. It lets me have the Spotify app running on my htpc and I can easily control it from any device running Spotify. No need for AirPlay, Bluetooth etc.
- Syncing an album for offline play is a checkbox.
- I can play music on any device logged into the account from any other device logged into the account
- Robust song discovery
- Massive back-catalog
- HD Playback
It's absurd that iTunes, my phone's native media player, is worse than a third-party app.