For the past few years, I’ve been pretty happily subscribed to YouTube Music via YouTube Premium. Not only does it save me from ads on either platform, but Google has slowly turned YouTube Music into a pretty decent streaming service. There’s a lot to like about it.
However, I haven't used Spotify since we were in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, and even then, I wasn’t subscribed to it. So, I thought it might be good to revisit the app and actually take advantage of Spotify Premium to see what I’ve been missing out on.
Most of my friends and family use Spotify, and it seems much more omnipresent than the other music streaming apps when it comes to third-party integration. It’s pretty hard to escape Spotify, and using YouTube Music, I often feel a bit left out when new features are released or when anyone shares links to songs that I can’t listen to because I’m not subscribed.
After using Spotify exclusively for the past month, here are the things I like about the app, the things I still miss about YouTube Music, and whether or not I could see myself making the switch permanent.
The features that made me switch
The decision to switch didn’t come to me overnight. It’s something that I first considered doing during a New Year’s Eve trip in 2023 when I was in Hawaii with my friends. Someone is usually playing music for us to enjoy while we’re relaxing, playing games, or driving to and fro. Everyone else had Spotify, which I didn’t normally think about much prior to the trip, but there was one feature in particular that made me realize just how much I was missing out.
Spotify Jam is an incredibly useful feature that launched in the fall of 2023. It lets one person set up a “Jam,” which is essentially a queue of tunes that they can invite others to join in on. Anyone in the Jam can add songs and manage the order of songs, making it a collaborative DJing effort.
I love this feature because it lets everyone mix up the music queue and show off each others' music preferences. I have a pretty eclectic taste in music, and while my friends enjoy it when I DJ, I know my tastes don’t always agree with everyone in the room, and there are certain genres or songs that I may not be too privy to that others may love.
Because of this, I made a point to make the switch to Spotify Premium ahead of our 2024 New Year’s Eve trip so that I could a Jam myself since I was the main one DJing this time around with my new Sony ULT Field 1. Spotify Jam also made it so I didn’t have to set up a playlist beforehand, which saved me a lot of time as we would just create a queue in real time. This feature alone made it worth subscribing to Premium, and if you’re late to the party and haven’t tried this feature out yet, I recommend it the next time you and your friends get together.
Another feature I absolutely love is a bit less flashy but almost as important to me. Spotify has a Smart Shuffle feature that will insert songs it thinks you will like when you shuffle a playlist you’ve created.
I sometimes find it difficult to discover new music, as I often become comfortable with what I know and like. I have several playlists that I cycle through depending on my mood, and so I’m very familiar with just about every song. I’ll often add a song every so often, but my playlists tend to stay pretty stagnant. This is why I like the Smart Shuffle feature so much; it keeps me in familiar territory while giving me something new to listen to that matches the other tunes in my playlist; that way, it doesn’t stick out so much or ruin the vibe.
Spotify’s AI DJ was also a feature I was really intrigued by, as it’s seemingly yet another way to discover tunes based on the music you like. The AI-generated DJ interjects every few songs to set up your listening experience, changing the vibe every so often with songs you’re familiar with or may like. It’s a unique feature that I find quite music, as it almost feels like you’re listening to the radio, something I don’t do much of these days.
That said, the execution is far from perfect. The DJ will often switch to genres or artists that I have zero interest in, and I feel like it will jump in to change the vibe of the tunes a little too often. Sometimes, I just want to stay in the same vibe or feeling for a while, and the DJ will switch things up at a whim, which feels quite jarring at times.
No doubt it’s a cool feature, one I think Spotify should tweak a bit. However, it does highlight one of my biggest problems with switching to Spotify, one that makes me miss YouTube Music.
Things I miss about YouTube Music
One of the best things about YouTube Music is that the app seemed to know me before I even started using it. When I first subscribed to YouTube Premium over the pandemic, I was surprised at how well the app was able to guess my tastes by recommending songs that I ended up loving. This is because YouTube Music is tied to the main YouTube app, and so my music searches throughout the years would influence YouTube Music’s knowledge of me.
This is something I am struggling with when it comes to Spotify. The app’s music recommendations just feel subpar compared to my experience with YouTube Music, and I find myself skipping songs more often than not. That’s not to say it’s all bad, and the songs that show up in Smart Shuffle are often great. But whether it’s via a song radio or the AI DJ, Spotify doesn’t seem to really get me.
Of course, I recognize that this is more of a growing pains situation and that the app will have to take some time to get used to my tastes. My previous experiences with Spotify were pretty limited, so it doesn’t have much to go on, which is evident whenever I compare my Spotify Wrapped and YouTube Music Recap every year. I can't be too hard on the app for not fully understanding my tastes, but I find that this is something that often makes me want to go back to YouTube Music.
Another thing that I find lacking on Spotify is the selection of music, but not so much in the way you might think. I’m a big fan of remixes and often prefer them over the original mix. Spotify has a vast selection of music and remixes, but I’ve learned pretty quickly that this is still pretty limited compared to YouTube Music.
The thing about YouTube Music is that its connection to YouTube makes it a much stronger music streaming platform, in my opinion. I find some of the coolest remixes completely out of the blue, and even when a particular song or mix isn’t available as a music track, I still have instant access to the song via a YouTube video without ever having to leave the app. And as a nice bonus, I can watch full music videos if I want to, which comes in handy when I’m on the treadmill and need visual stimulation.
I’ve already become pretty disappointed at the fact that I can’t find many of my favorite mixes on Spotify, but the lack of music videos right now is also pretty disappointing. Spotify may be a music streaming service with a focus on audio, but music videos are a pretty fundamental part of the music listening experience.
Will I stay or will I go?
After using Spotify for a couple of months, it's clear to me why it's such a popular platform. The app experience feels much more mature, for lack of a better word, and Spotify has a lot going for it despite the long wait for its long-awaited Hi-Fi tier.
Meanwhile, Google is continuously tweaking the YouTube Music UI on what feels like a daily basis. It feels like Google is trying to slowly turn YouTube Music into a Spotify clone, which isn't a bad thing, but it speaks volumes to just how good of an app experience it is.
That said, while Spotify is a favorite of ours here at Android Central, with some genuinely fun and useful features, the biggest thing keeping me from staying in the actual music experience. Spotify just doesn't know me as well as YouTube Music, and I'm not sure I want to put in much more effort teaching Spotify to learn about my likes and dislikes. After all, I'm here to listen to music that I want to hear, and right now, YouTube Music knows exactly what that is.
For now, I'll continue using Spotify to see how things improve, but there's a good chance I'll go back to YouTube Music for my music needs.
