Spotify Vs Apple Music Sound Quality

Spotify premium streams at a quality of 320kbps while the free version is 160kbps.

Spotify vs apple music sound quality. If you re an iphone fan the winner in this category is apple music so it means that we have a draw in this apple music vs spotify comparison. Premium subscribers can choose to switch on high quality streaming which uses 320kbit s. I decided to compare spotify s audio quality to itunes s aac and to the original music.

Right off the bat the higher number might make spotify look better. It s not a million miles ahead though. I just got the apple music free trial today and apple music sound quality is much better than spotify.

If audio quality is at the absolute top of your priority list look into hifi streaming services such as tidal. Music library apple music and spotify both feature massive libraries but apple claims more with 45 million tracks against spotify s more than 35 million songs. That s a clear edge over the 256kbps of the apple music output.

But as the codec is more efficient the perceived audio quality is pretty much the same. Apple music is streamed at 256kbps in aac advanced audio coding format while spotify offers the ogg vorbis format at 320kbps. Indeed it looks to be the runt of the litter as apple s aac codec is locked at 256kbps.

Unless you are listening on some sort of high end audio system or high end headphones chances are you won t be able to tell the difference in streaming quality. I ve thought that i ve been going deaf ever since i joined spotify. First things first it s worth mentioning that neither apple music or spotify will provide you with audiophile grade streaming experience.

The 256kbps aac files on apple music s icloud library sound more open and involving than spotify s 320kbps mp3 streams and benefit from extra space subtlety and punch too. Spotify can stream up to 320 kbps via spotify premium s extreme audio quality option whereas both apple music and youtube music only go up to 256 kbps. Apple music doesn t compress songs like spotify so you get a louder and richer sound.