Spotify Vs YouTube Music: Which Music-App you should have in 2024?

Among a plethora of music-streaming apps available on the market, finding the best music app for myself in 2024, was a daunting process. Therefore, in all of these applications, I decided to hold a contest, with the title “Spotify Vs YouTube Music.”

However, comparing these two apps would be a great challenge, as they both carry amazing features for their listeners and keep surprising them with their regular updates. Spotify is an app, designed specifically for music; however, YouTube Music being a product of Google has a strong base.

Let’s run this competition with me, to find the best music-streaming app in 2024 and explore their major gaps.

Selecting the best app between Spotify and YouTube Music was not like eating a piece of cake. Because, when I analyzed both apps, I noticed these apps hold a huge number of audiences and features. Therefore, comparing and choosing the best one will be tough.

As we all know, Spotify is the elder sister of YouTube, as it was launched in 2008 while YouTube was launched in 2015. Spotify evolved over time and added millions of features to provide the best possible music experience to its users.

Whereas, YouTube gives tough competition to Spotify in a short span, by offering features almost equal to it, such as an extensive music library, cheaper price plans, custom playlists, and much more. Now, if you are concluding that YouTube is the winner of the competition, then hold on! As there is a surprise for you.

Hers is a short description of the difference in features between Spotify and YouTube Music:

YouTube and Spotify, both contain an extensive music library and discovery features. So, now you will not miss out on any new and trending songs, that your friends are listening to.

The music discovery feature of Spotify search and YouTube Music Explore, functions in the same way to bring out the best songs for you.

However, Spotify provides hundreds of extra features for music discovery as compared to YouTube. These features are Made for You, Daily Mixes, Release Radar, Discover Weekly, and Your Niches Mixes.

On the contrary, YouTube offers, suggestions, Related playlists, New Release Mix, Discover Mix, and a few others. The addition of AI-DJ, in Spotify levels up the music discovery game and makes it superior to YouTube.

Yes! You are again thinking right that, Spotify once again got a point over YouTube.

When I analyze the audio quality of both apps, I find a huge gap between them because Spotify has better audio quality as compared to YouTube.

YouTube offers only 4 audio-quality options whereas Spotify offers 5 different options of audio-quality. The free version of Spotify and YouTube offers a sound quality of 160 and 128 kbps, respectively. To give you a better understanding of audio quality, here is a table for you:

Audio Quality	YouTube	Spotify
Automatic	Not available	Varies according to the internet speed
Low	48 kbps	24 kbps
Normal	128 kbps	96 kbps
High	256 kbps	160 kbps
Very High	256 kbps	320 kbps

So, according to the audio-quality settings, Spotify wins at this point by offering more options and higher quality than YouTube.

Although, both music-streaming apps, Spotify and YouTube can be connected easily to many devices, such as Android, iOS, Windows, and MacOS. But, YouTube functions seamlessly on all Google-associated devices and Apple Siri, ignoring the Alexa system, which is a major drawback of it.

Where, on the other side, Spotify offers a wide range of device compatibility, along with Android and iOS, it also offers Smart TVs, speakers, and much more. Moreover, it also gives an option for Alexa, Siri, and Google connections. So, ultimately, Spotify won by offering more device usage options.

Spotify and YouTube almost have the same price plans for their users, with the standard features of ad-free music, high-quality sound effects, unlimited skips, and downloads. But, gain a point over YouTube by offering the extra premium options, such as Spotify Duo and Mini.

Here is a table for the price plans of Spotify and YouTube.

Plans	Spotify	YouTube Music
Premium Individual	$10.99/month	$10.99/month
Premium Family	$16.99/month	$16.99/month
Premium Student	$5.99/month	$5.99/month
Premium Dua	$14.99/month	Not available
Premium Mini	Approx. 0.13/day or 0.46/week	Not available

Spotify also offers a special discount for the students and Spotify Kid option, which is a child-friendly music option. YouTube too offers these features within its premium version, which makes it difficult to understand.

Note

You do not need to separately Sign up for YouTube Music because when you subscribe to the YouTube Premium account, you will automatically get its subscription.

So, once again Spotify won the competition by offering more flexible features to its players.

If we talk about the color theme, then both of these apps have a dark theme with a grid-shaped layout for the playlist and content. However, Spotify has the most user-friendly interface as compared to YouTube Music, due to designs specifically created for the comfort of users.

Like, YouTube Music does not have a dedicated desktop app, so, to use it you need to use the web player version; however, Spotify has a proper app for all types of devices.

The customizable sidebar of the Spotify on desktop adds a cherry on top. You can easily access artist’s profiles, playlists, and many other options. 

In the free versions of both apps, you will experience features that need no subscription plan. Surprisingly, YouTube offers more options in its free version as compared to Spotify. It is the reason that, in a short time, YouTube Music became a strong competitor of Spotify.

So, the free version of YouTube offers an ad-skipping option after 5 seconds, access to the entire longs library, background music, unlimited song skips, and audio quality between 48 to 128 kbps. Whereas, Spotify allows, access to all songs and music, background music, six songs skip per hour only, and sound quality of 24 to 160 kbps.

Free Version
YouTube Music	Spotify
Ad Skipping option after 5 seconds	No such option od ad-slipping is available
Listen to all content library	Access to all content library
Background playback option	Option to play background music
Unlimited Song skips	6 songs skip per hour
48 to 128 audio quality on all devices	24 to 160 kbps audio quality

If we conclude according to the number of features, then no doubt, that YouTube Music is the winner in the free version test.

After comparing a few features of Spotify and YouTube Music, I concluded that it is better to use the Premium version of Spotify over YouTube Music. However, both of these apps look like a close relative, as they both have almost similar features.

But, I opted for Spotify, as it has many options to offer. Like, as better audio quality, an optimized desktop app, music recommendations, AI-DJ, a huge library of podcasts and music from around the world, and much more.