Apple Music and YouTube Music are two giant music streaming services available on iOS,
Android, and many other devices.
In this video, I'll walk you through how they compare after spending over six months with
each service and which one you may want to subscribe to.
So, let's dive in.
And first, let's talk about the apps, The apps for Apple Music and YouTube Music are
a lot of the time the main way you'll interact with each service.
Both services have apps available for iOS, iPadOS, Android, and watchOS.
Apple Music is available through the web browser on PC, or through the iTunes application as
well as through a native application on the Mac.
Do note, for Apple watches both services have apps for the watch, however, you can only
download songs from Apple Music directly onto the watch.
YouTube Music is available on the Mac and PC through a progressive web application that
runs through the Chrome browser.
Also, YouTube Music will be supported on the newly launched software later this year.
Right, let's go back into the apps.
And first, let's look at the now playing screens.
One of the first differences you'll notice is the loss lists and Apple digital master
badges on songs and albums in Apple Music, which to me is something that makes Apple
Music stand out compared to YouTube Music.
And that's because YouTube Music and Apple Music offer different levels of music quality,
which can affect how the music you listen to actually sounds.
As of mid-2021, Apple now offers lossless audio with a maximum resolution of 24 bit
48khz, which is basically CD quality, as well as a high-res lossless option for a maximum
resolution of 24, bit 192khz, which requires a digital to analog converter to listen to
this format, otherwise known as a DAC.
Basically what all of this means is the tracks Apple Music is now delivering are CD quality
or better because before Apple was compressing the tracks below CD quality at 320 kbps AAC.
YouTube Music has a maximum streaming quality of 256 kbps which is lower than Apple Music’s
standard quality.
And in general, I do find that the lossless tracks on Apple Music do sound better than
their YouTube Music versions.
Now, Apple also has two additional tricks up its sleeve when it comes to audio quality
options and those are Apple digital masters and Dolby Atmos.
Apple digital masters are signified by a badge on a certain album or song that you're listening
to.
When you see that badge, it means that Apple has certified that the song or album you're
listening to has been mastered in a way that is going to sound good with no clipping or
other audio distortion from the encoding process.
Dolby Atmos is Apple Music's newest type of format that basically gives the music you
listen to more space, vocals feel farther forward and sound engineers can do some cool
tricks with this new format, like placing certain instruments behind you, for example.
However, in my experience Dolby Atmos tracks sometimes can sound more muffled than their
stereo versions or it just sounds like somebody added more reverb to the track.
So at this point, I would not choose Apple Music because of Dolby Atmos, at least, not
yet.
All right, back to the now playing screen.
Another thing you'll notice with both applications is the ability to view song lyrics here.
Apple does a better job in my opinion with animating song lyrics, so they’re timed
to the music that you're listening to, whereas with YouTube Music, it'll just show you the
lyrics but they're not timed to the music.
Speaking of animations, another cool trick Apple Music has up its sleeve is animated
album artwork from artists like Coldplay and Taylor Swift, which look really cool.
Now, speaking about albums, the ability to see upcoming albums that haven't been released
yet is another feature that sets Apple Music apart from YouTube Music.
For example, Apple Music shows the upcoming Coldplay album with tracks that have already
been released, whereas YouTube Music will just show the singles from the album, but
not in the context of the upcoming album with the album release date and the ability to
go ahead and add that album to your library.
One major part about how YouTube Music and Apple Music works is how to decide on what
song should play next.
Now, you can let these services decide what to play next for you, and both of them have
decent autoplay queues in my experience that you can go into to reorder these suggested
songs, or even swipe to delete them.
Apple Music and YouTube Music use your listening history as well as ratings for specific songs
to recommend music to you.
On YouTube Music you can influence your recommendations by giving a song or album you like a thumbs
up or a thumbs down.
On Apple Music you can do this by clicking the three dots and either click the love or
dislike button.
Also note that Apple Music does take into account what's in your library for your recommendations,
even if it's music from an old iTunes library that you may not want to listen to anymore.
So it might be a good idea to clean up your library when you get started with Apple Music
if you've imported music from an old iTunes library.
The second option to control what music plays next on these services is to manually go through
the apps, find music and add that music to the Playing Next queue in Apple Music.
This is called Playing Next and in YouTube Music, it's called Up Next.
In YouTube Music, you have two options to add a song to the Up Next section, you can
hit the three dots next to the song and select play next to immediately play that song next
or just hit, add to queue to add it to the end of the Up Next queue.
Apple Music works in a similar way.
You have two choices when adding a song to your Playing Next queue, you can select playing
next to add this song at the top of your Playing Next queue or select Play Last to add it to
the end of your Playing Next queue.
And if you don't see the option to play last, delete the Apple Music app from the device
where you didn't see that option and then redownload Apple Music and that should clear
up the bug.
One thing I think Apple did better than YouTube with this feature is Apple integrated your
listening history with the Playing Next feature.
Next up, let's go through how to navigate both apps.
Music has a slightly simpler UI compared to Apple Music.
There are three main tabs to navigate in YouTube Music, home, explore, and library.
Home shows you your personal recommendations based on your music tastes.
Explore shows you new recommendations for what to listen to plus you can search by genre
or see what's hot on the music charts.
Library in YouTube Music shows you what songs, artists, albums, and playlists have been added
to your library, as well as what music you've downloaded to your device.
Now, taking a look at Apple Music’s app, you'll see that there are a few more tabs
to navigate.
You've got Listen Now, Browse, Radio, Library, and Search.
Listen Now is very similar to home in YouTube Music, it shows you a lot of auto generated
playlists and other things to listen to that are based on your music preferences and listening
history.
Browse is similar to Explore in YouTube Music.
You can see new recommendations for what to listen to based on what's hot in music today.
You can see what songs are popping the charts in Apple Music in your country or in a different
country, which YouTube Music has as well.
Apple Music’s Radio tab features old school radio delivered to you over the internet with
some modern features.
There are three main music stations, Apple Music One, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music
Country.
Each station has their own unique shows with different hosts, playing different types of
music.
When listening to music through an Apple Music radio station, you'll have the ability to
not only see information about the song you're listening to, but the ability to like and
dislike the song as well as add it to your library.
Plus you don't have to listen live, you can always access previous radio show episodes
on the app.
The next tab is the Library tab and that's where you'll find all of your downloaded music,
playlists, anything you've added to your library regardless, if it's from Apple Music or a
previous iTunes library.
The last tab is Search which gets its own dedicated tab in Apple Music and it also includes
music genres to browse as well.
Now, going back to the library tabs of both of these services for a second.
One question you may have about these tabs is what exactly they’re for when you can
just stream any music you want on these services at will.
On Apple Music, the library is key for one thing and that's downloading.
If you want to download a song album or playlist, you need to add it to your library on Apple
Music.
Now, this isn't the case for YouTube Music.
You can download music without having it in your library.
The Library on YouTube Music is really essential, though, for seeing music that you've uploaded
to YouTube Music and it's also a handy place to save auto-generated playlists, or put music
that you like and want to get to without having to search for.
Also, keep in mind that what you have in your library on Apple Music does seem to have an
impact on recommendation.
Now for YouTube Music, I've been unable to find any information that verifies it works
in a similar way and in my experience at least, it just heavily relies on your playing history
as well as the songs you've liked and disliked and typically ignores whatever you've added
into your library.
Next up, smart speakers.
Smart speakers have become really popular devices to use with music streaming services
over the past few years.
Apple Music is available natively on Google Nest speakers, Amazon speakers, Sonos speakers,
and of course Apple's own HomePod Mini.
YouTube Music is natively supported on Google Nest speakers and Sonos speakers through the
Sonos app.
You can also Airplay YouTube Music or Apple Music to any Airplay-enabled speakers.
The same thing goes for Google Chromecast enabled speakers.
One quirk to be aware of if you plan to use Apple Music with Google Nest speakers is that
at the time of this recording, Autoplay is not enabled when you ask the assistant to
play a specific song through Apple Music, meaning it'll play the song you asked for
but nothing after.
Next up, music availability.
This is a huge part of any music streaming service and where YouTube Music really shines.
YouTube Music has a large category of music especially from artists that aren't as well
known because it can leverage YouTube and you can also get access to things like concert
video audio.
They also have a feature in the app that allows you to switch between the music video version
and regular version of songs.
Now, sometimes YouTube Music will play a version of a song that you didn't necessarily want
it to play.
But overall, I’ve found it to be pretty accurate when requesting music through a smart
assistant.
Now, this isn't to say that Apple Music isn't going to have what you're looking for.
For major artists it definitely will and it'll typically have a better sounding version of
songs from artists in its catalog thanks to its support for lossless and high fidelity
audio.
And if there's music that you just can't find on either service, both Apple Music and YouTube
Music allow you to upload your own music to their services and store that music in the
cloud.
In Apple Music, you can do this from the music app on the Mac or the iTunes app and for YouTube
Music, you can do this by using the YouTube Music chrome app.
Next up playlists.
Playlists are critical to any music streaming services, especially auto-generated playlists.
Apple Music has personal playlists like replay 2021, which shows my favorite tracks of the
year all in one playlist.
New Music Mix which is a mix of new music based on my tastes.
The favorites mix, get up mix, which obviously has an upbeat tone, and the chill mix to help.
Relax, and unwind.
YouTube Music also has quite a few personal playlists including the thumbs up playlist,
which is all the songs you've given a thumbs up to, replay mix, the songs you've listened
to recently.
My Supermix, a general, auto-generated playlist based off your preferences and listening history.
The new release mix, discover mix, and then my mixes, which are several different playlists
that are based off of different artists within the same genre or type of music.
You'll also run into special playlists like My 2020 Year in Review playlist which shows
what songs I was listening to last year.
Both services also offered curated playlist based on what's hot in music as well as around
a particular artist, genre, mood, time of year.
Etc.
Now, one playlist YouTube Music has that I think is really smart is called the Offline
Mixtape.
This is an auto generated playlist based off of your music, preferences, and listening
history that is constantly uploaded for times when you don't want to, or aren't able to
stream music over a data connection or Wi-Fi.
This playlist is automatically built into the service and allows you to adjust how many
songs you want on the playlist in settings.
Unfortunately, Apple Music doesn't have a comparable feature to this.
It does have an automatic downloads feature, at least on iOS, which will let you automatically
download music for offline listening when something is added to your library or purchased
in the iTunes store.
But in general, the best way to download music for offline listening on Apple Music, especially
for playlists, is to add that music to your library and then manually download it.
And if you download an auto-generated playlist, it should continue to update and download
new songs automatically.
Next up, social features.
If you and your friends all use Apple Music, there's a social profile component to the
service.
You can follow your friends and share what you're listening to as well as playlists that
you've made.
YouTube Music allows you to share playlists but doesn't allow you to follow friends, just
yet only artists on the platform.
The last major difference between these two services before we get into pricing is purchasing
music.
I know some of you out there still want the ability to be able to purchase music through
the streaming service that you subscribe to.
And right now, Apple Music is the only one of these two that allows that.
Alright, now let's talk pricing and both YouTube Music and Apple Music are competitive in both
their pricing and their tiers.
YouTube Music and Apple Music both offer a student plan for $4.99 US dollars a month,
an individual plan for $9.99 a month, and a family plan for $14.99 a month, which includes
up to six accounts.
Now, where these services differ is with bundling.
YouTube Music can be bundled in with YouTube Premium, which is a service that includes
YouTube Music, but also lets you watch YouTube videos like this one with no ads on all devices,
enables background play for YouTube videos, and the ability to download YouTube videos
as well.
YouTube Music also offers a free tier which Apple Music does not though Apple Music does
for free trials, as well as does YouTube Music.
YouTube Music’s free tier allows unlimited skips and you can play specific songs in specific
playlists and specific music on demand.
However, it does have ads, doesn't allow for downloading or background listening.
Meaning you can't close the YouTube Music app and go to a different app on your phone
and continue to listen to music.
Apple Music can also be included in a bundle as well.
Specifically, the Apple One bundle, which is great for those already in the Apple services
ecosystem.
There are three tiers in Apple One and they include Apple Music, Apple TV, plus Apple
Arcade and iCloud Storage, the Premiere bundle ups the iCloud storage to two terabytes plus
gives you access to Apple News Plus and Apple Fitness Plus.
Alright, so that's everything about these two services and their pricing, now for my
recommendations.
Because these two services are competitive with both their tiers and pricing, at least
here in the US.
Now if you live outside of the US, make sure you check your local pricing and I'll leave
links below to do that, to make sure that's the case for you.
But in general, until YouTube Music ups their streaming music quality, I'd recommend Apple
Music in general because you're getting better music streaming quality.
And I actually think Apple Music’s app is slightly better than the YouTube Music’s
app in terms of features.
Now, if you're on Android and planning to get a WearOS watch later this year, YouTube
Music is going to be the way to go, or if you're a fan of more indie and smaller artists,
YouTube Music might have a better catalog for you.
All right, I hope you found this video helpful.
And if you liked it, make sure you hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel
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in the video description below.
For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder.
Thanks for watching.