Earlier this week, I decided to move from Spotify to Apple Music. I did this for a few reasons, one reason is for the pricing.

I used to have the student discount for Spotify, which made the subscription only around £6/month, but that ran out a couple of months ago, so it had started renewing at £12/month.

Now while Apple Music is still £11/month, I’ve heard that the quality of the music is much much better compared to Spotify.

Another reason is Spotify’s whole AI thing. First it was Spotify’s weird generated podcast thing which was essentially Spotify Wrapped but in the form of a podcast where two “hosts” evaluate your year of music. The concept is kinda cool but it being AI just made it really weird in my opinion.

Then there’s also that AI DJ thing? That was also pretty strange as all it did was speak for 10 seconds and then play a completely random song.

And now there’s an “AI Playlist” thing where you just write a sentence into Spotify and it just generates a playlist for you. So just a clone of ChatGPT but instead of spitting out text at you it gives you random songs.

And since we’re on the topic of AI, now there’s a thing where apparently Spotify just has AI generated profiles with generated music?? For whatever reason?? That’s just really strange to me, a platform built to allow artists to put out their music is just fabricating them now??

Now this isn’t to say Apple hasn’t done their fair share of AI stuff, everyone is incorporating AI into everything they make now, but music isn’t Apple’s primary source of income or even identity, but it is to Spotify, and I have not seen a single sign of AI in Apple Music whatsoever.

Now of course there are algorithms in both, algorithms that decide what music you might want to listen to or algorithms to even shuffle a playlist, but that isnt truly “AI”. It’s learning off of you, yes, but it’s not generating anything new and it isn’t replacing someone’s job.

Think of it like the “AI” (npc’s) in Mario Kart for example. They’re not generative or replacing anyone’s job, theyre following a predetermined path on the track, but if they get bumped off track or are about to hit something, there’s an algorithm there telling them how to get back on track or how to avoid an obstacle.

“AI” as a word isn’t inherently bad in my opinion, it’s the generative stuff. The programs that steal art from actual artists and just spit out horrible looking images and videos.

One more reason why I decided to switch is that handling local files is much much easier, and somewhat better.

Now I haven’t actually needed to import a local file into Spotify for a while so I can’t remember the full process but on Apple Music it’s as simple as just adding an audio file to your library and then adding it to your playlist. It automatically syncs with your phone and it even works on the web player.

Now with Spotify, it’s pretty similar from what I can remember, but I do remember that it has to be put into a playlist for it to even try sync, and the app on your phone does have to be open for it to sync too. But I do fully remember local files just not being supported on the web player for Spotify which honestly I wouldn’t have expected.

I only mention the web players as there is one downside to switching to Apple Music. Last.FM doesn’t directly support Apple Music like it does with Spotify. You can’t connect your Apple account and I don’t think you can even scrobble songs on mobile. To scrobble on PC you have to have the browser extension and hope it recognises the songs from the web player. There is a desktop scrobbler but it’s ancient and only supports the old iTunes client and Windows Media Player.

One final reason to switch is the experience on the free version of Spotify. It is absolutely HORRIBLE.

Not being able to see every song in a playlist, only being able to play 5 songs before being hit with several obnoxious ads, paywalling lyrics?? I get the ads part, obviously you need to monetise your product, but when they’re that frequent and that obnoxious, it’s unbearable.

But overall, switching to Apple Music was probably a good idea. Last.fm isn’t too important and it most definitely isn’t a reason to hold back on switching, but it is nice to have a record of what you listened to in the past and when.