Amazon Music vs Apple Music: Which Music Streaming Platform Is Better

The music streaming war is heating up. Every major company, including Amazon, Apple, and Google, offers one way or the other to capture the growing streaming market. Apple has included Apple Music as a default option on all iPhones. Google is pushing YouTube Music with YouTube Premium combo, and Amazon has integrated its Music service with Prime subscription.

In terms of natural reach to customers, both Apple and Amazon enjoy a huge advantage over the rivals. Apple is in cloud-nine with all-time high software and services revenue, while Amazon Prime Music crossed 55 Million members.

In this post, we are going to compare Amazon Music to Apple Music. The comparison will be based on UI, discover menu, personalized functions, music listening experience, price, and more. Let’s get started.

Cross-Platform Availability

Amazon Music is available everywhere. We are talking about mobile platforms, Windows, Mac, web, Echo smart speakers, and Fire TV. Apple Music is accessible on Android, iOS, Mac, Apple Watch, and its HomePod smart speaker.

Download Amazon Music for iOS

Download Apple Music for iOS

User Interface

This one is important. If a user doesn’t find what he is looking for, then it can be irritating and might lead a switch to rival service.

Amazon is sticking with tried and tested dark blue theme. The app uses the standard bottom navigation bar to switch between the menus.

The Settings menu is at the top, which is uncomfortably weird. The three-dot menu throughout the UI uses a transparent theme that looks good to me.

Apple Music is straightforward with iOS guidelines. It uses a white theme by default and supports the dark mode in iOS 13.

All the major options such as Library, Browser, Search, etc. are at the bottom.

As its case with every Apple app, the settings menu isn’t accessible from the app itself. You need to go to device Settings to make the changes.

Discover New Songs

On Amazon Music, you need to set Music preferences from the Settings menu first. Based on that, the app will personalize the home screen for you.

The banner on the top displays the brand-new albums for the chosen languages. Below that, you will find the custom playlist created by moderators, trending ones, and playlists based on occasions.

When playing a song, users can tap on the three-dot menu and choose ‘customer also listened to’ option to find new songs based on other’s listening habits.

Apple Music straight away asks you to choose the music interests on the startup. Now, from the app, head to ‘For You’ section, and it will suggest the playlists, songs, and new music based on interests.

The Browser menu lets you discover new songs and albums based on languages. It is a vertical mix of banners, playlist, and songs in a single menu.

Apple also displays Beats 1 interviews and gives an overview of the upcoming albums at the bottom. The radio integration is also there if you are into listening online radio on the go.

Music Player and Listening Experience

No matter how many songs a service offers, if the listening experience isn’t up to mark, then it might lead users to the uninstall option.

Starting with Amazon Music, the default player uses a cool-looking transparent UI with all the major options at the bottom. One can add a song on a continuous loop, use Alexa to play a song, and even cast the playing music to Amazon-branded smart speakers and Fire TV.

I tried the app with Mi Bluetooth speaker and Funcl wireless earphones. It worked flawlessly. There was no lag and the overall quality stayed to the maximum level. Unfortunately, there is no built-in equalizer support.

Recently, the company launched Amazon Music HD, a lossless music service with the highest level of quality. So far, it’s limited to a handful of countries.

Apple Music opts for a fairly simple player UI with minimum functions at the bottom. Due to the closed nature of the Apple eco-system, the casting functionality only works with Apple devices such as Apple TV and HomePod speaker.

Tap on the three-dot menu, and the sliding section lets you like a song, suggest fewer songs like that and other personalized options.

Apple Music offers EQ support, but it’s not available in the app. You need to go to Settings > Apple Music > Playback > EQ and select the relevant setting.

The listening experience is top-notch as Amazon Music.

Features

Amazon Music has integrated the Alexa voice assistant in the app. You can just ask her to play any song for you.

Other functions include sleep timer to shut the service down after set time, the offline recommendation to automatically download songs for you, music downloads, loudness normalization to keep a balance among all songs, and more.

Apple Music, being a built-in service, takes advantage of other Apple services. It supports Siri shortcuts, has radio integration, automatic downloads, the ability to set volume limits, and more.

Price

Amazon Music is a part of the Amazon Prime subscription. With $99/year, one gets a year of Prime Video subscription, free-shipping, and access to Amazon Music.

Apple Music is free for the first three months. After that, it costs $10/month for a personal plan and $15/month for the family plan, which lets you add up to five more people into the group.

Level-Up Your Music Experience

As you can see from the comparison above, both the apps have their strong points above the other. Apple Music shines with Siri integration, the UI is better looking, and the pricing is also flexible. Amazon fights back with Alexa integration and wide eco-system support.

Next up: YouTube Music is another capable offering from the search company. Read the post below to see its comparison to Amazon Music.