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Add to SafariWhen comparing Apple Music vs Google Play Music, the Slant community recommends Google Play Music for most people. In the question“What are the best music streaming apps on Android?” Google Play Music is ranked 7th while Apple Music is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Google Play Music is:
Google Play Music is a free service for storing and streaming ones library that has zero advertisements in the interface as well as the playing music.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Free no advertisements
Google Play Music is a free service for storing and streaming ones library that has zero advertisements in the interface as well as the playing music.
Pro Instant mixes
Google Play Music can make smart recommendations for playlist by the user just picking an artist or song they want recommendations formed from.
Pro Also offers streaming service
GPM can be used as a normal music player but also as a streaming service like Spotify.
Pro Plays from any source
Plays local music as well as from DLNA sources, so I can play from my home servers as well.
Pro Upload library through browser
Google has added the option of uploading songs through the browser with the help of a Chrome extension download as well as directly through the desktop Chrome app.
Cons
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.
Con Confusing to use
Con No folder support
Con Want credit card info before using "free" service
Con Status bar not sensitive nor customizable
There is no way to go easily go back a specific amount of time (for example: Audible has a button that allows you to go back 30 seconds).
The status bar could be more time specific. If you want to go back to a particular segment of listening, there is no way to know exactly where you will land. You have to do some kind of guessing and it is annoying. Lot of time wasted in searching in a blind manner.
Con Quality only as high as 320kbps MP3s
There is no option to listen to lossless music, even if that is what the user has uploaded. The highest quality is 320kbps MP3s. If a lossless track has been uploaded and the user then downloads the track at a later date the file will also only be a 320kbps MP3.
Con No way to start the app in ones library
The app offers no way to actually start up in ones library, either in the desktop Chrome app or the Android app. For those that only use this app for listening to their purchased or uploaded music this is pretty annoying as there s no real need for the front page of recommendations and activity. This doe snot necessarily need to be some social platform but just a way to listen to ones music, really the user should have the choice, especially if they are paying for this service through purchased music or their streaming service.
