For many U-High students, like junior Uma Malani, music is an integral part of everyday life. From her drive to school to simply walking through the hallways, Uma is constantly listening to music, making her choice of streaming service very important. While some of her friends use Apple Music, Uma prefers Spotify due to the multitude of personalized features the platform offers. 

There has long been a debate of whether Apple Music or Spotify is the superior music streaming platform, however, of the 209 students across all grades who voted in an unscientific poll conducted by the Midway, 78% opt for streaming their music on Spotify while only 22% prefer Apple Music.

Having used Spotify since sixth grade when her mom subscribed to a family plan, Uma appreciates how personalized the music streaming service is, with various features including, Spotify Wrapped, an annual compilation of users’ listening data from the year, and the Spotify Daylist, which uses an algorithm based on listening patterns to create a daily playlist that is supposed to match your mood. Additionally, Uma enjoys being able to collaborate on and share playlists with friends. 

“I do have some friends that have switched from Apple Music to Spotify because it seems that most of my friends use Spotify so it’s easier to share music and playlists and collaborate on playlists and things like that,” Uma said.

Senior Max Mathais, however, prefers Apple Music because it is easier to use with his home speaker system. He is also conscious of the backlash Spotify has received for the mistreatment of music artists. In 2021, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers organized protests across the country against how little Spotify pays artists. 

“Spotify is renowned for taking advantage of certain artists on their platform,” Max said. “Not necessarily that Apple Music does not participate in similar activities but that aura around Spotify is unpleasant.”

Like Max, ninth grader Gio Nicolai prefers Apple Music because, with Apple products, he finds it easier to use the same account across his phone and computer without having to download any additional applications. However, he recognizes the positives and negatives of each platform. 

“There is an Apple Wrapped but the Spotify Wrapped does seem much better, I will say. I don’t have that much experience with Spotify, but I think it’s still a great platform and they do have very similar features. One thing I do wish is I know Spotify has a dark mode, and I definitely wish Apple Music had that, but on Apple there’s different genres and you can go into each of those and it’s very easy to do that.”

While senior Rathin Shah now uses Spotify due to the platform’s cheaper price, he prefers Apple Music. 

“Currently I’m using Spotify just because there’s a student discount for it that makes it cheaper than Apple Music but I did use Apple Music for a year which I did enjoy a lot because Apple Music has higher quality streaming offerings quality-wise,” Rathin said.

Rathin also said that whether people prefer Apple Music or Spotify depends on their listening style.

“Apple Music streaming is more album-based while Spotify streaming is playlist and individual song based, and I’m more of an album listener than a song listener so that’s why I prefer using Apple Music,” Rathin said. “They’re basically the same thing, though.”

While Spotify seems to be more popular than Apple Music among U-High students, both platforms do their job well — allow students to escape reality in the halls and classrooms by constantly streaming their favorite songs.