As someone who just made this choice, let me add some insight.

- My friends use Spotify

- Larger library

- Well made playlists

- Social feed

In the end, they are very similar products. I feel that Spotify has a huge head start on Google here, and it shows. The more mature product is Spotify. I think Google can't really compete in terms of curation and popularity.

Really, the edge cases of "music that is not on Spotify" ends up being so small that Google's upload your own music feature doesn't tip it in their favor. At least in my eyes.

Yep, playlists are one of the reasons I use Spotify. The fact that you can search other playlists that other users made on Spotify and easily get curated lists relating to every genre makes the entire experience very nice. It's nice to just type in a genre or mood and get hundreds of playlists that fit the bill.

For example, I like some noir movies and the jazz within that genre. There isn't a specific genre that most music playing devices would realize but Spotify has lots of user made playlists that has the type of music I want. Compared to Google's lackluster results

https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/srst/noir+jazz/EAY

I don't really think that iTunes or Google Play has the same thing, I may be wrong though.

Are there any specific artists that you've been able to find on Spotify but not on GPM? I haven't run into this problem yet (except one time when Mick Gordon maybe forgot to renew or something his Wolfestein soundtrack? It was fixed within a week though)

I am friends with several small music publishing groups (I hesitate to call them record labels) and every artist is excited to get their album up on Spotify...and that's it.

Many of the self publishing activity that Soundcloud was/is famous for has moved over to Spotify.

New releases from smaller acts seem to be Spotify FIRST right now.

Can you give an example of the larger library?

Yeah I like the social feed. Wish you could get to it on mobile though.

GPM has a lack of some international artists.

This Taiwanese artist is on Spotify but not Google Play Music.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2JBUyLiFvpFPWdZGqIGYLD?si=uq...

https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/sr/crowd+lu

Nothing except youtube, but that's just cheating.

Same with this one.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0tNjyz75Px29Yuf1sjs25G

https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/sr/cosmos+people

Google Play Music has Jay-Z, as far as my research shows. (unfortunately I can't check as I have Spotify due to their network affect roping me in through a family plan) Is it really fair to say Spotify has a bigger library outright?

Spotify claims to have 35m songs and GPM 40m. Not that that means much, either. The killer feature GPM has over Spotify is that you can upload your own tracks to fill the gaps wherever their library is lacking.

Spotify has Jay-Z as well.[0] I would say it's hard to really quantify which library has the larger selection as most of the differences would be completely obscure music that no one listens to. However, I haven't seen any artist on GPM that isn't on Spotify while the opposite can't be said.

Spotify has the ability to upload music as well, however that is contingent on you having premium.[1]

[0] https://open.spotify.com/artist/3nFkdlSjzX9mRTtwJOzDYB?si=j1...

[1]https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Can-you-upl...

I'm not going to dig around for metrics on this, but my intuition is that Google covers a larger base of "established" musicians whereas Spotify seems to be dominating new releases from smaller artists.

Google Music, Pandora, iTunes, are seemingly there to cover bases. The momentum appears to be towards releasing your music on Spotify first for your friends to listen to.

Larger library? They all use the same base library afaik.

Spotify "Over 35M" [1]

Google Music 40M [2]

Apple Music 45M [3]

[1]https://press.spotify.com/us/about/ [2]https://play.google.com/music/listen#/sulp [3]https://www.apple.com/apple-music/

I thought this as well. I used both for a while and never found instances where spotify had a lead.

>"Larger library"

Uhm no they are all licensing the same content from the same 4 entities.

Spotify was first for on-demand streaming in the modern era, even before Google or Apple Music. Its radio/recommendations are better than Pandora, and I haven't tried others.

I think Spotify's UI is fantastic, and its multi-device awareness is functional and intuitive. To your point, Google does have ad-free Youtube, but the ads don't bother me enough/I don't watch enough Youtube for it to impact me like it does with music.

Finally, I like diversity sometimes; giving not-Google money is a plus, all other things being equal.

> Spotify was first for on-demand streaming in the modern era

I guess that’s true if you define the “modern era” as “starting with Spotify”.

Help me out, I genuinely can't think of a music streaming service that came before Spotify.

I vividly remember being blown away by their product when it came to market. I remember because I had never seen anything like it and literally didn't believe it could be done at that time. I was waiting for a train and could just search for any song and play it right away from my phone, no downloading, no waiting, just instant music. I was very sceptical beforehand but was instantly sold.

Did I miss another service that did something even remotely similar before Spotify did it?

Spotify launched in 2008. Rhapsody launched in 2001, then added content from major labels in 2002.

I previously used (and really enjoyed) Rdio, which launched before Spotify came to United States (2010 vs 2011). But Spotify was around before that in Europe.

Pandora radio started in 2000 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Radio

Myspace was a popular way to share music, if limited.

Youtube, again though this doesn't fully fit the definition.

Anybody know about soundcloud? I know I was using that before I heard of spotify but I'm not sure if it came out beforehand.

Pandora wasn't on demand until very recently. It was "station only".

Myspace def. was limited and didn't have full catalogs of all music in any scope approaching Spotify.

Youtube is video that has music, and can't be conveniently used on mobile or used for music discovery explicitly.

Soundcloud is actually the closest to what I meant, but it obviously isn't used for record-label music distribution en masse.

> Youtube is video that has music,

True.

> and can't be conveniently used on mobile

I disagree, but that's highly subjective.

> or used for music discovery explicitly.

It can be, but the YT Music app only was launched in 2015.

Spotify was light years ahead of Pandora when it launched in Europe. I used to VPN through Europe just to use Spotify before it launched in the US. It was a popular work-around for the tech literate in the US circa 2006. People went nuts for the service, though the cachet of it being difficult to access may have helped.

I define modern era as "doing anything approaching what spotify does regarding playlists, on demand music and discovery".

- Spotify’s UI is much cleaner IMO

- Better iOS app

- Native (well, Electron) MacOS app

- Playlist folders - niche feature but a big one for me

- Amazingly good music discovery on Spotify (not properly compared with Google but they get it so right a lot of the time even for niche genres)

I do wish Google Play could address some of these (most of all playlist folders! big one for me and how I organise music) as I do love the ability to store your own music along with cloud music that GPM gives, and it would be enough for me to switch with just a couple of changes.

Spotify has one mission: music. They do it really well. Google has a hundred hands in a hundred industries and only do a few of them very well. Google could shut their music service down for no reason at all. Spotify on the other hand has just gone all-in on ensuring they are a lasting institution.

In the same light, Spotify is incentivized to crush the music app space. They need the best UI, the best discovery experiences, etc... whereas Google’s product is like the rich family that funds their son’s strange lifestyle business: It can live or die and the world keeps spinning. They do not need to innovate or be better... and they really aren’t.

My wife used Spotify before we met. My sister uses it. My step mom uses it. All my buddies use it. I can count dozens of people around me that use it. It’s almost becoming a verb now: “Spotify it”. On the contrary, I only know one or two diehard google fanboys who use their music product.

So I guess at the end of the day.. to answer your question, yes you’re missing something!

That’s true for most things. While everyone thought Google Drive or One Drive or Some other drive company will kill Dropbox because making syncing storage isn’t rocket science, they were wrong.

A nimble team of people focused on solving one core problem, whose entire livelihood depends on it working well, triumphs the giants.

We can assume Microsoft and Google has enough middle management that they’ll fk it up along the way for sure. Too many agendas and failure doesn’t mean much.

Therefore it’s in the best interest of giants to acquire companies that fit their mission and scale them with their marketing power. YouTube, Android, docs, are all good plays by google.

For me it's:

- Better discovery

- Much cheaper (150kr/mo for 6 subscriptions, vs 100kr/mo for one with GPM)

- A desktop client (even if it's a crappy electron one)

- YTRed isn't available here anyway

Nitpick, but Spotify isn't an Electron app, it uses CEF [1].

[1] https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef

I like Google Play Music, a lot, but:

    - Google. Privacy.
    - trying to shove the Android/Material UI on iOS, such
      an impedance mismatch... I *hate* that.
    - no dedicated client on desktop (so, no offline mode)
    - the UI in the browser sucks (again, alien, and basically
      *negative* information density if it could be so)
    - uploading/downloading is a crapshoot[0] with official tools,
      and the API is unofficial so hacks[1] may be short-lived.

So, again, I like GPM (and GPMAA) a lot, but only on Android.

The only thing I miss in Spotify from GPMAA/Apple Music+iTunes Match is the digital locker for seamless syncing of music I own.

FTR, despite having a native UI and digital locker, I moved from Apple Music to Spotify because discovery and reliability were terrible.

[0]: official tools behave similarly to this: https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi/issues/140

[1]: https://github.com/lloeki/ruby-skyjam

I was a longtime user of Google Play (Songza before that) on iPhone. I loved the playlist but the app was incredibly buggy. I was using the free version so I had ads. Often the ad wouldn't play and then freeze all playback, or the ad would play and then the music wouldn't start again. This made me very hesitant to pay a monthly subscription.

I've switched to Amazon Music (free with my Prime membership) and although the app works well, the curated lists aren't as great.

My point is that maybe other people have started with the free Google Play (Music?) app and had the same experience and looked for options elsewhere.

I've recently tried out every major service: Google, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Prime.

They are all insanely buggy. I was a Spotify user for about 6 years before this and it was buggy, and is getting buggier as far as I can tell.

I've only been using the Amazon Music for a few weeks now but I haven't encountered many bugs. It just doesn't seem overly feature rich. Although the one very annoying thing I have encountered is that my Alexa device doesn't seem to have a list of all of the possible Playlists. For a time, there was one called "Top Prime Hits". I could play it on my phone, but when I asked Alexa "Play Top Prime Hits" it couldn't find it. I now have to pair my phone, play it on my phone and set output to my Alexa. Seems to defeat the purpose of voice with Alexa.

Google's service was late to the party and feels like an afterthought. And Google has a pretty big history of shuttering products that don't get big, so I wouldn't want to trust to keeping my music there. (Spotify could of course fail, but is unlikely to stop offering a music service short of them going bankrupt).

Across all platforms Spotify is consistently pretty good. I didn’t feel the same way with Google Music. The UI and performance would be problematic sometimes. The no YouTube ads is nice.

Some people on HN like areas especially might care about diversifying who they give their money and/or attention to. Spotify has an advantage there too.

I hate that we've managed to fragment the tech markets again. Various websites I visit have exclusively Spotify or Apple Music playlists embeded, nothing modal that can be imported anywhere else.

Those websites will be looked at one day the same way we see Java and Real Player plugins today.

> I'm not quite clear on why people are choosing spotify over google play music

Simple answer: I'm a tech literate person (I read HN and a dozen other sites) and I hadn't even heard of "google play music" until now.

So that's one reason.

The other is likely that Spotify is pretty aggressive with marketing here (Sweden). E.g. get a phone contract and you get a year of spotify etc. But the most important reason is probably that after manty years on a product you get some lock-in. Now I wouldn't switch if the product was 10% better or if the price was 10% lower unless many of my friends switched and I could also port all playlists etc.

It's the music discovery aspect of Spotify that is their game changer. They are constantly adding new ways to find new music.

Google Play has good options for music discovery too... I stick to them mostly for their "Radio" option which is very good at selecting music similar to a song I'm listening to.

That being said... I've been underwhelmed by the app's UI and performance and have given frequent feedback but haven't got any response and there has been no changes. Typical of Google... Its been so bad that I'm considering switching to Spotify soon. Its really annoying when you're trying to select some romantic music for dinner with your partner and the app keeps refusing to work.

Yea the radio features are pretty cool!

Another thing I really enjoy about spotify is their app's ability to pause a song on my laptop at work and press play on my phone when I get in my car and the song picks up right where I left it. And the remote control functionality during parties is great. They're also experimenting with some "auto-DJ" features which don't do too bad of a job for an algorithm :)

Spotify is a music company, they care about it in a way that I don't think Google or Apple cares, this reflects on the dedication to the core of their product.

Assuming that a Google Music PO reads this thread:

--Spotify's ML features are way way way way way way better than Googles --Everybody else uses Spotify, which means I can share it

The latter is obviously the thing Google won't win, so shouldn't try

Also, I think there might be something in diversifying the companies you use online. It's a bit scary how much of ones life is wrapped up in about 5 companies these days...

Google know enough already!

Amongst many of the other things listed by others here, a big item for me is integrations between all your logged in devices. One killer example: I can listen to a playlist through my ps4 while gaming (a unique feature in of itself), pull out my phone and pick another song in the playlist on my app. It tells me just below the play button where the music is currently streaming.

I use both, and am in a gradual transition to GPM. However, I keep Spotify around because:

* My TV has spotify and not play music. I could get a Chromecast but why? * Spotify exclusives are still a thing. * The daily mixes are still better than anything Google has for recommendations. It's surprising google is as bad as it is for music recommendation. * Google keeps things close to their chest for popularity. I like knowing if an artist's top song is 100 times more popular than their next, for example, or how many people follow a playlist. Spotify lets me know who runs a playlist, whereas that's hidden for GPM.

(Spotify has moved closer to their own playlists, which saddens me a little. I always hoped there would be room for curation from personalities. I miss DJs.)

Google Music has superior UI? SMH.

In any case, I switched to GPMAA when it was launched and had the $7.99 a month rate locked in.

Then, GPMAA started adding tracks to my playlist, etc. at random. No, Google, I don't want your suggestions to be auto-added to my collection. I simply want to listen to what I want to listen.

I want to get away from Spotify but there are no better options. Amazon Music seemed promising for a bit but their catalog isn't as comprehensive and their app is just wonky. E.g.: the app won't sync / display song time when streaming over Bluetooth to my car audio. Deal breaker for me.

I tried Google Play Music for a time, kept having trouble where songs would stop playing in the middle. Sometimes it would stop playing one song and skip to another track, other times it would just stop playing entirely. I don't want to hunt down the app and try to massage it into playing the song I want, it just needs to work, which Spotify gives me.

I use Google Music on an iPhone and iPad with a Chromecast Audio at home and could not be happier with the setup.

I use GPM, but that's because of the bundling with Youtube Red. I would prefer Spotify for a desktop app, nicer looking UI IMO, and so Google doesn't know my music prefs. But for now, ad-free YT is too nice to give up.

What operating system? I found Google Play Music Desktop Player to be pretty awesome (although it's just a browser underneath but it has much better integration with the rest of the system through themes, media keys) also native last.fm, lyrics, etc.

https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/

I use Spotify because it works on my TV and PS4 whereas GPM does not. I would happily use GPM but I don't want to buy new hardware to do so.

I didn't claim to "know which UI is superior for all people." If you look closely, you might see that I had included "to me." I did this on purpose to make sure nobody thought I was speaking for them. I am annoyed that you did so anyway.

My comment was an opportunity for people to disagree with me - what about the GPM UI do you find inferior to the Spotify one?

The fact that you suggested ignorance as one of the possible reasons for millions of people preferring Spotify over Google Music speaks quite a bit towards your view of how important your feelings are.

If I ask you "Hey, why would you ever prefer the shoes you like over mine? To me, it's an obvious choice. Is it just because you don't know any better?", would you interpret that as an honest question?