By: Priscilla Porter

Hey students!! Tired of buying the newest albums or wasting your data to stream them off YouTube? If you don’t already have a music subscription, consider getting one! If you already have one, make sure that you are getting it for a Student Discount! Here are some of the pros and cons of the two most popular music subscriptions, Apple Music and Spotify:

• Apple Music
  • Pros:
    • Apple Music Exclusive Releases – Have you heard Frank Ocean’s visual album release, Endless? Probably not if you are a Spotify subscriber, SORRY! It is a work of ART.
    • Clean Versions / Radio Edits Available – Just in case you’re DJ’ing a kid-friendly party or don’t want to completely offend your parents with your not-so-clean music, check out the clean versions or radio edits, available on Apple Music!
    • Easier to Navigate – Saved a new song or album? Find it immediately on your Recently Added page, which the app opens up to by default. In general, finding your music and separating by Genre, Artist, Albums, etc. is, overall, much cleaner than Spotify.
  • Cons:
    • Apple Radio – I am not a fan of Apple Radio. The Pop station will have you jamming to JT one minute and sobbing to One Direction the next.
    • No Feed – Apple Music makes it tedious and honestly no fun to follow your friends. There is no feed to see what they’re listening to. Instead, you have to go to your own account to see who you’re following, and then select the person to check out their music (am I looking for new music or stalking an acquaintance on Instagram?)
  • Spotify
    • Pros:
      • Discover Weekly – Spotify keys in perfectly to your musical tastes and curates a weekly playlist with new music suggestions that are right on the dot with the vibe you love. Check out your “Discover Weekly” every Monday!
      • Daily Mix – Spotify also creates 6 Daily Mixes with a playlist of your saved music and artists you already love. There are 6 so that they can separate your genres and artists to make the perfect mixes for any mood. For example:
      • Hulu and Showtime Subscriptions – Okay so this is SUPER cool. When you sign up for a student discount on Spotify, you get free subscriptions to Hulu and Showtime as well; all three for ONLY $4.99.
    • Cons:
      • Saving Music – This is a big one for me. Saved a new song or album? Well happy for you, but it’ll just be dumped into the “Songs” category in your Library and you’ll have to do quite a bit of scrolling through your list to find any of your music. The best way to access your music in a more organized fashion is to look up the artist, but that’ll use your data. Making playlists is your best bet to finding your music on Spotify, so I’d suggest sticking to Apple Music if you aren’t big on playlists.

Not going to lie, I spend money on both subscriptions every month. I like both subscriptions for different reasons, but I initially started out with Apple Music. I’m honestly too lazy to go through my library, download my old music on Spotify, and create all new playlists. If you are just starting out with a subscription though, I definitely suggest Spotify (as long as you’re cool with making some playlists to organize your music).