Music is a part of life for most of us. Carrying i-pods or music players are not in trend anymore due to the smartphones being in everyone’s pockets for instant music. Music is to be enjoyed, not muffled. For a complete music experience that includes: streaming, premium songs, playlists, radios, podcasts and everything, the two top apps in today’s market are: Spotify Premium and Google Play Music. This article highlights the pros and cons for each and shows you why getting Spotify Premium is the best choice for a music-lover.
Know about Spotify Premium
Everyone knows Spotify mostly; the app that has almost any song you can think of. The Premium version is where it wins the hearts: play offline music (mp3s), sync your devices, skip to any song and most importantly no ads. It is developed by an independent company based in Sweden.
Design and Interface
Google Play Music has the same design as all other Google apps. It is colourful but lacks intuitive menus. Some features have to be searched for, and sometimes there are redirections to other Google apps as well.
Spotify Premium apk has a darker interface designed to facilitate better usage at night times or closed rooms. It is also based on the material design and has similar but less complex menus. For Premium users, the offline songs you have stores as mp3 files in your SD card are also accessible through online synchronization.
Songs and quality
Both apps boast of nearly 30 million songs and cover almost all songs you will ever hear. The difference is in the quality aspect: both apps offer Low, Medium and High-quality versions in free version as well as paid version. But Spotify premium version has the Ultrahigh quality mode where you get the best version of the song by default.
Recommendations and Playlists
Google Play Music’s suggestions is based on the preference of genres you select during initial set-up. This is almost fixed and generally users don’t see any change despite clearing the preferences later sometime. This can be irritating because some songs just stick to your recommendations section forever.
Spotify Premium wins here as its suggestions are based on what songs you hear typically and how frequent you hear them. And their best thing: Monday Morning suggestions, a list of 30 songs selected just for you, based on your taste. And surprisingly, they are almost always perfect in giving you songs of your taste.
Both apps allow playlists and can be synced across devices. In addition, Spotify lets you track your songs anywhere using Last.fm
Other features
Search options are well-facilitated in both apps. Spotify provides something better: you can specify the artist, track, album or year directly using the keyword followed by a colon. In google Play Music, you have to use the advanced search options to achieve this.
Spotify Premium lets you play the downloaded songs as well the songs in your SD card in offline mode. Google Play also offers the same.
Spotify publishes the songs you listened to as Stories, for your friends to see and get inspiration. For the quirky users, here is a bonus: there is a private mode where you can hear the songs which you don’t want Spotify to publish in your history.
Both are priced at $9.99 and a family pack for 6 people at $14.99. Spotify has a student discount of 50% whereas Google Play Music offers a trial period of 90 days for a device.
Accessibility across devices
Both apps are available for Android as well as iOS. But we know the obvious low performance of Google apps in iOS due to the design of Play Music being based on Google’s material design innately. Spotify also has a Windows Phone app which Google Play Music lacks.
For users on PC, Spotify Premium has a web version as well as a native app that has all features of the mobile version, whereas Google Play Music has only a web version. Lack of native app might be the deal-breaker for some users; otherwise, both stand the same here.
The Verdict
Download this amazing app to enjoy music and other stuff. If you’re an adjusting person and is not tired to search for songs that suit you, then both apps are at same score. But then, apps are meant to simplify things for you and so, Spotify Premium edges over Google Play Music in terms of interface, song suggestions, usability and overall feel-good nature.
