Okay, listen. At the end of the day, we’re all schmucks for having music subscriptions — there was a time when music was physical, a CD you had to clean, a cassette you had to rewind, a vinyl record you had to sit down and listen to, as an activity! Now, we just consume music mindlessly. Hey, at least we can agree — Spotify and Apple Music are both better than Pandora.
But Spotify is, like, way better! Just for context, the Spotify I will be talking about is the paid subscription, Spotify premium; it’s the best streaming service on the market currently, and I’ll tell you why. First, it’s cheaper for students! The Spotify student discount is also bundled with a Hulu subscription, which gets you popular shows like New Girl, Alone, and Tell Me Lies. From a purely economic standpoint, Spotify is the way to go!
Spotify also has a supremely better algorithm that tunes music recommendations to your taste, and if you want to listen to some music without it influencing your algorithm, you can exclude listening sessions from your taste profile. The taste profile — a term coined by Spotify — is, to me, the most valuable part of Spotify. With your data, Spotify makes daylists, mood-mixes of songs for your day that change about every five hours to stay fresh and up to date with you. It also makes a personalized Discover Weekly playlist, which gathers deep cuts across genres in order to always expand your taste. And need I mention how much fun Spotify Wrapped is at the end of the year?
While I haven’t read the Apple Music argument, I will lastly combat one point that I assume they made — that Apple Music’s Lossless audio and Dolby Atmos make for a much superior listening experience. And yes, honestly, that may be true. But think of it this way: when you want to play music out of your phone speakers when you’re doing your laundry, do you really care about the sound quality? Or when you’re walking to class, listening to music on your three–year–old, clapped out Airpods, is sound quality what you’re really appreciating? I would argue that no, it really isn’t. Physical music media like CDs, cassettes, and vinyls aren’t loved and fantasized over because they sound better — the digitization of sound vis-a-vis Dolby Atmos, et al. will always sound like milk chocolate from the south of France in your ears — but how the music makes you feel is what matters. It feels really good to put a cassette in the car stereo and go for a drive. Spotify will always try their very hardest to know how you feel. Even if they don’t get it right all the time, all your friends are on Spotify anyway. Go party with them.
