Apple Music was our audiophile pick until Tidal knocked it off the pedestal, but it’s still a very solid choice for lossless quality at $11 a month ($1 more than it was a year ago), if you’re an Apple fan. For select songs, audio streams at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz or 24-bit, 192 kHz quality. The latter matches Tidal’s best efforts. Watching Apple Music and Tidal one-up and match each other year after year is like watching two race cars neck and neck going around a track, with one barely ahead on one lap and the other nosing ahead on the next.
Apple’s song catalog numbers over 100 million songs, all of which are available in lossless format. Some tracks are also available in Dolby Atmos. Apple Music’s regular, lossy format streams songs at up to 256 Kbps, which isn’t noticeably different from Spotify’s 320 Kbps.
Apple’s human-curated discovery options aren’t as fun as Spotify’s. As on Spotify, you can see what your friends are listening to if they’ve turned on social sharing. You’re limited to 100,000 songs in your library, but there are no limits to how many you can put in each playlist. Still, it’s 2024 Apple. Unleash the masses (of tracks) and let people swamp their libraries if they feel like it.
I like the iPhone app, and the Android version is OK, but the desktop app is dreadful. Songs occasionally refuse to play, clicking “Add to Library” rarely works, and the Back button is a dysfunctional mess. Adding music to your library is tedious. If you navigate away from the browsing tab, the Back button takes you to the home screen, so you have to navigate all the way back to the album or artist you were looking at—except for when it nonsensically disappears. If you’re considering making the move, check out our guide to switching from Spotify to Apple Music.
If you’re planning to splurge on an Apple Music subscription with Dolby Atmos and lossless audio, you will need a pair of Apple-made headphones (to go with your iPhone and HomePod Mini). If, however, you favor Alexa-enabled speakers, you might want to consider Amazon Music, even if it’s not one of our top personal picks.
The Apple Music Voice Plan has been discontinued. Let’s be honest: I miss it about as much as I miss being swarmed by mosquitoes. With paltry few controls, you had to use Siri to control it, there was no way to view or make playlists, and you couldn’t save favorite songs, artists, or albums. That also meant no music videos or lyrics. I could go on, but it’s better to just forget it.
