How to quit Spotify and what you give up if you do

Last week, several popular musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, removed their latter categories from Spotify.

The artists said the move was in response to Spotify’s ongoing licensing deal with Joe Rogan, who is accused of spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine and has an exclusive podcast through Spotify.

“I have decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that cost people their lives,” Mitchell wrote on his website.

Spotify will not remove the Rogan podcast. CEO Daniel Ek wrote over the weekend that “it’s important to me that we don’t take the position of moderating content while at the same time ensuring that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.” offend them.”

Does this mean fans of Joni Mitchell or Neil Young – or those who agree with their stance on Joe Rogan’s podcast – have a choice: Stick with Spotify or find a new music streaming service?

The main alternative to Spotify is Apple Music, which costs $9.99 per month and has 60 million paid subscribers in 2019, the last time Apple officially announced Apple Music subscriptions. (Spotify has 172 million subscribers.)

One thing that you probably won’t give up is your favorite artists – Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. For the most part, artists on Spotify are also on Apple Music. Both have deals with all the major US record labels. Both have catalogs of over 70 million songs.

There are two main types of Spotify subscriptions: paid and free. A paid subscription costs $9.99 per month and removes ads, gives users access to mobile song selection, and provides access to exclusive podcasts.

Most people can’t cancel a premium account on a smartphone. (The reason is complicated, but involves Spotify’s efforts to comply with Apple and Google’s app store rules while minimizing payments to those companies.)

So you have to cancel online:

• Visit Spotify.com/account
• Click Change plan.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page, then click Cancel Premium.

It’s harder to completely delete your account, especially if you’ve been a paid subscriber before.

Currently, to completely close your account, you must visit Spotify’s support website and contact customer support. Users will have to talk to an online chatbot or email Spotify to completely delete their account. They will have seven days to change their mind.

If you cancel your Spotify Premium subscription, you will lose the ability to listen to “The Joe Rogan Experience” in addition to other podcasts exclusive to the service, including shows featuring Bill Simmons and Michelle Obama as well as stories from Gimlet Media.

Spotify also includes live stream counts for most songs to help users compare hits from artist to artist. Apple Music lacks that and only provides a list of each artist’s top songs – so it’s hard to figure out if that song by Adele or YoungBoy NBA is a bigger hit.

Spotify has a better algorithmic playlist feature than Apple, and it usually picks up when the user completes an album or song, so there’s no pause when the recording ends.

Apple Music also lacks many of Spotify’s social features. While Apple Music allows users to find friends on the service, you can’t see what they’re listening to in real time, as Spotify allows users to do so on the desktop. Spotify also has features that allow multiple users to collaborate on a single playlist.

Apple Music collects what friends are listening to in “Friends Match Lists,” but it’s an algorithmic playlist, not a real-time feed.

Many musicians also maintain playlists of what they’re listening to or the inspiration for their recordings, and those playlists are often just for Spotify.

Users who cancel Spotify Premium may also lose access to some of Spotify’s early concert ticket sales.

You will most likely have to give up your library when switching from Spotify to another service, as there is no official tool to transfer music or saved playlists from Spotify to Apple Music. There are some third-party paid tools that purport to do that, but they are not guaranteed to work smoothly.

Finally, if you cancel your Spotify subscription, you can still access the ad-free version of the service through the desktop app for PC or Mac (but not your phone) or a browser. web. Apple Music requires a subscription and there is no free version.

Most curated playlists on Spotify include a copy of Apple Music.

Instead of Spotify’s “Rap Caviar”, Apple has “Rap Life”. Spotify’s “Deep Focus” is quite similar to Apple Music’s “Pure Focus”. The playlists won’t be exactly the same, but they will have similar choices and sequences and can be a viable alternative for many listeners.

Instead of a daily “Discover” Spotify playlist, which is algorithmically generated for each listener, Apple creates a number of similar individual mix lists for Apple Music subscribers, like “New Music Mix” or ” Friends Mix”, made for most weekly users of the platform.

Apple Music is intended primarily for people who use Apple products, like iPhones and Macs, and works better with Apple’s HomePod Mini wireless speaker than Spotify.

But you can still use Apple Music from non-Apple products – there’s a version of Apple Music for Android and a version of iTunes for Windows. There is also a web interface that allows users to stream music from a web browser.

Prices are the same: Apple Music costs $9.99 per month, the same as a Spotify Premium subscription in the US

But Apple also has a newly introduced $5 plan called Apple Music Voice, which gives access to curated playlists and online radio stations, but doesn’t allow users to add songs to their mail. their library or create a playlist.

Apple also bundles Apple Music with some of its Apple One plans, which add extra storage space, a subscription video service called Apple TV+, and sometimes the ability to share subscriptions with family members, This can save money.

While Apple doesn’t have the same number of exclusive podcasts as Spotify, it does publish some paid podcasts through a product called Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, as well as providing access to most of the podcasts. podcasts non-exclusively through the Podcasts App.

Apple also has a number of radio shows available only to Apple Music subscribers. It operates three radio stations that often feature interviews and breaking news on some of the biggest musicians in the country. Several great musicians, including Billie Eilish and The Weeknd, host radio shows for Apple.