When comparing Deezer Music vs Apple Music, the Slant community recommends Deezer Music for most people. In the question“What are the best music streaming services?” Deezer Music is ranked 2nd while Apple Music is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Deezer Music is:
The Deezer music streaming service is available in 182 countries. There are 192 countries on this world, which means Deezer is available in all but 10 countries.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Available to customers living outside the US
The Deezer music streaming service is available in 182 countries. There are 192 countries on this world, which means Deezer is available in all but 10 countries.
Pro Huge collection of music
The Deezer music streaming service has more than 73 million songs, which makes Deezer one of the largest music catalogs available now.
Pro Built-in lyrics
Deezer comes with a lyrics feature where users can see the lyrics when the selected track is playing.
Pro Personalised radio
The Deezer music streaming service offers a radio-like service called Flow which plays random music based on your favorites.
Pro Outstanding CD quality (with Elite Service)
For those that subscribe to the Elite Service ($19.99/mo), the bitrate is hi-def CD-quality 1,411kbps at 16/44.1 kHz.
Pro Available on a large number of platforms
Deezer (with a premium subscription) is available on a wide range of devices such as those running Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, smart TV and a web app. You can see the full list here.
Pro Great choice of Musi Mixes
You can download mixes and save.
Pro Can download and play selected music offine
Pro Inbuilt music ID feature
Pro Add your MP3
You can import an MP3 file to listen as a normal song and add it to your playlists.
Pro Browser Deezer
If you use Deezer on PC you don't need to download it, as the web version is the same as the desktop app.
Pro Also for podcasts
Deezer has started to include podcasts in 2015 for a few countries, and has since expanded it to all countries and with a dedicated section offering 160K podcasts.
Pro Sleek interface
iTunes has a flat, clean design with playback controls at the top-left, search at top-right and a row of ways to categorize available media beneath that. Plus it can be minimized to take up much less space. The minimized interface is called the MiniPlayer and it can be set to display on top of all other windows. It's possible to show iTunes on top of all other windows when playing movies as well.
Pro Syncs across devices
iTunes can synchronize playback information, podcast subscriptions & settings and automatically download purchases made on other devices.
Pro iTunes Store has a huge selection of media
iTunes has a huge catalog of videos, songs, and podcasts in the iTunes store.
Pro Playlists created by people
The Apple Music streaming service focuses on playlists selected by curators rather than intelligent radios in other streaming services. Choosing playlists selected by the curators improves the experience with another method of music discovery. Of course you can still heart or disheart any song on your own to improve the service's suggestions in the For You section.
Pro Family sharing for up to six devices
Pro Siri integration in a music streaming service
Pro Internet radio
iTunes includes a streaming music service called Radio that creates stations based on chosen genre, song or artist. Requires Apple ID to access.
Pro Airplay support
iTunes allows streaming audio to all Airplay enabled devices within Wi-Fi range. It's possible to select more than one device to play a song at the same time.
Pro Beats 1 Internet radio offers a shared audio experience
Beats 1 is a 24-hour radio station station run by Apple. It is hosted Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden and Julie Adenuga.
Pro Built-in parental controls
iTunes parental controls can be used to deny access to certain parts of iTunes such as podcasts, internet radio, store or shared libraries and restrict access to media that has a certain rating or warnings.
Pro Connect feature allows closer communication with musicians
Musicians post on the Apple Music streaming service about news, ideas, new music etc. You can engage with them directly on the site.
Pro Great podcast integration
Pro Lossless at no additional cost
Includes streaming lossless formats as part of the basic subscription.
Pro Dynamic Crossfade
When crossfade is set to automatic, its length changes based on what's playing to keep the flow between songs.
Pro Programmed DJ Sessions
DJ sets can be listened to like it’s a set.
Cons
Con Doesn't pay artists enough
Deezer pays artists significantly less than other similar services. As of March 2018 it was paying $0.0064 / play, less than Apple Music and Google Play, half as much as Tidal ($0.0125). Not as bad as Spotify or Pandora, but could certainly do better.
Con Sometimes skipped songs occurred
Some songs skipped even if you are a premium user.
Con No settings to configure “Flow” to work as advertised
Flow is a great idea, but it fails to work as suggested. The idea is it listens to what you like and adds suggestion tracks. But mostly it just plays your track over and over, and pops in a random track, usually nothing you like. They need settings and better algorithms for it to work.
Con No Linux client
Compared to Spotify it has no native Linux client available.
Con Can only listen to 30 second song clips without a subscription
Con A lot of songs are cut at the end
Many songs are not played until final chords, and many others are of very low quality records, showing audio distortions. This is frustrating.
Con No free plan
While there's a three month free trial that lets you test out features of the service, Apple Music is a subscription-only deal. There's no ad-supported free version or anything like that.
Con Heavyweight
Appears to get bigger and bigger with each update, without really adding more value to someone who just wants to listen to and organize music.
Con Buggy iTunes app
Immediately after the launch of Apple Music worldwide with the release of the iTunes 12.2, once users upgrade to the latest version of iTunes, many users experienced issues with music list being mixed up, wrong metadata etc.
Con Some albums have missing tracks / artists have missing albums
Due to copyright issues some albums on the service have tracks missing or some artists on the service have albums missing, which begs the question, why list the album if it is not complete.
Con Mediocre algorithms
Apple Music's algorithms are not very helpful if you are trying to find more music.
Con The mobile app is known to crash from time to time
Con Poor audio quality compared to other services
Con Poor UI
Con Doesn't pay artists a fair price
As of march 2018, Apple Music paid the artists $0.0074 per count. That's better than Spotify ($0.0044) and slightly more than Google Play ($0.0068) but way less than Tidal ($0.0125) or Napster ($0.019).
Con It changes the default artwork of your music
Con Confusing onboarding process
Con Apple Music has in some situations deleted user's local files
Con Requires an Apple device
Apple products are expensive as hell, and you can't use Apple music without one or iTunes.
