Spotify and Apple are no stranger to a conflict. The two tech giants have butted heads over many topics, including European law. Now, Spotify claims that Apple has taken away a beloved feature from iPhone users –  the ability to control the volume on Spotify Connect devices using the physical volume buttons on their phones.

Spotify Connect, if you're not already familiar, is the nifty feature that lets you control Spotify playback on devices like speakers, game consoles, and smart TVs from the best iPhones and other devices. But as of September 3, iPhone users will be left jabbing at an in-app slider instead of their trusty volume buttons, and let’s just say people aren’t thrilled.

According to Spotify, this whole mess started because Apple decided to "discontinue" the technology that allowed physical volume buttons to control the audio levels on connected devices.

Now, instead of simply pressing the volume buttons, iPhone users will have to tap a notification that pops up when they try to change the volume, guiding them to an in-app slider. Spotify is trying to sell this as a "persistent, high-quality" alternative, though the extra steps are likely to annoy just about everyone who’s used to the simplicity of button control. Some users have already started seeing this change, expressing concern on Reddit.

Spotify has supposedly been asking Apple to give them the same treatment Apple Music enjoys on HomePods and Apple TV to enable this feature, but no dice. Apple insists that apps need to integrate with HomePod to get that kind of volume control tech.

Whose fault is this mess, then?

It's tempting to point the finger squarely at Apple, as many often do. The Cupertino tech giant is no stranger to accusations of being a bit too protective of its walled garden. If Spotify is to be believed, Apple’s insistence on making third-party apps jump through hoops to access key features might not be in good spirits. But let's not let Spotify off the hook too quickly.

The truth is, Apple does provide an API that allows third-party music services to stream directly to HomePods, but Spotify has yet to implement it. Why? Well, that’s the million-dollar question. If Spotify is truly concerned about providing the best possible experience for its users, you’d think they would’ve jumped on that API as soon as it became available. Yet here we are, with Spotify more interested in pointing fingers than offering a solution.

So, both companies could have done more to avoid this drama. Apple might be playing hard ball, but Spotify’s reluctance to adopt available technology doesn’t exactly paint them as the hero of the story, either. The easiest thing to do? I'd suggest switching to Apple Music. But that's a whole other debate.

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Whether you're a Spotify or Apple Music user, I wager there's a chance you like to keep an eye on what the other side of the fence is working on in their quest for music streaming service dominance.

While I'm firmly in the green camp for now, when Apple's Senior Vice President of Services, Eddy Cue, opens up on the rivalry, it's worth listening to what he has to say.

Cue took to popular tech YouTube channel SuperSaf to talk about the differences, and similarities, between the two services. You can check it out below.

Eddy Cue on Apple Music vs Spotify

"Everyone pretty much has all the same songs so there are not any differences there," Cue admits, "But that doesn’t mean you can’t innovate and that you can’t do special things. That’s the mistake that people think."

"If you look over the last few years, we’ve innovated in quality of the music. In the history of music, there’s really been two formats, mono and stereo. Now, with our surround sound, it’s the first time that you put on a set of AirPods and you’re moving your head and the music is like you’re sitting on the stage with the band exactly how they were hearing it when they’re singing it."

One of the reasons I've stuck with Spotify is the company's willingness to try new things with curation around AI, but Cue seems to be focused on the human side of streaming music.

"We still think there’s a people part here, as much as we love technology. There’s still an aspect of people that’s critical to us," he explains, "That starts with radio, where we do live radio shows with real DJs and the playlists we’re creating that are algorithmic but always with a personal touch to it."

Cue also acknowledged Apple's shortcomings with classical music, noting that the company "knew we sucked" at handling classical music.

"One of the things that we knew we sucked at doing was classical inside of Apple Music," he admitted. "So we decided like if you love classical we should give you the same kind of experiences, so we went off and did a completely different application for Apple Classical."

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• Spotify HiFi is finally on the way — although you'll pay more than Apple Music for the privilege

After raising its prices a few weeks ago, Spotify has revealed a new plan for users - but it comes at the cost of one big feature.

The company will offer a new "Basic" premium plan which includes everything you'll find in a standard premium plan except for access to audiobooks. It'll set you back $10.99 per month, a small discount on the $11.99 subscription price of the 'Individual' premium membership.

A Family version of the new Basic plan will cost $16.99 per month, offering up to six Basic accounts without audiobooks. The Premium family plan is still $19.99 a month.

You can sign up on Spotify's site.

Spotify matches Apple Music pricing

The new Basic subscription tier brings Spotify to the same price as Apple Music's standard price, but the long-rumored Spotify Hi-Fi could be just around the corner.

The new higher-tier option is expected to add around $5 per individual membership, making it around the same price as a family membership of the new Basic tier.

The company has also been keen to push AI features for users. I wrote last year about how impressive the AI DJ was, while it began rolling out a Chatbot-style AI playlists feature in April.

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For years, I was one of the Spotify faithful, waiting as patiently as I could muster for the HiFi update so that I could enjoy my music in the best quality possible. I’d already switched over to Apple Music, TiDAL, and Qobuz by the time Spotify started adding features I wasn’t interested in like audiobooks, merch stores, and other things unrelated to music streaming — but is this latest announcement too little too late for someone like me?

Coming later this year, Spotify will apparently add a new pricing tier that will provide hi-res streaming, and… not much else. The news comes from an inside source via Bloomberg.

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Finally! But is it enough?

This new streaming tier is likely going to cost “40% more” than what users are paying right now, putting the increase to about $5. After the streaming service’s most recent price rise to $11.99, that would make this new “Supremium” tier cost $16.99 — one of the most expensive music streaming subscriptions that you can buy.

Will you get your money's worth? Unless Spotify can justify the price with more than just hi-res streaming, probably not. In the time that it has taken the green circle to get hi-res streaming onto its app and into its library, TiDAL has dropped its subscription fee to $9.99 per month, Apple Music added hi-res streaming to its standard subscription fee of $11 per month, and only Qobuz (the one for nerds, like me) is more expensive with its top-level hi-res ‘Sublime’ tier costing $17.99 per month. The latter comes with a 60% discount to the Qobuz download store, where you'll find an enormous library of tracks that you can buy and own digitally. If you just want streaming, then there's the Studio subscription — which costs $14.99, less than Spotify's potential new tier.

Let’s ask again then — is this new tier too little too late? Yes, most likely. It’s certainly not enough to pull me back to the streaming service, and given how much cheaper it would be now to move to a different service that offers hi-res streaming, it’s not likely that users will want to move over. Unless, of course, Spotify can justify the extra cost in another way. It’s a weird, difficult-to-parse decision from Spotify, particularly after all the price rises over the last few months, and one that doesn’t really make sense.

Whatever happens, it looks like we’re finally getting Spotify Hi-Fi — whether people will subscribe, however, is another question entirely.

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Apple Music, the music streaming service of choice for a wide range of Apple users, costs $10.99. For some time now, Spotify has cost the same, boasting Audio Books instead of Apple’s Hi-Res streaming — although you’ll struggle to justify the difference with Spotify’s latest price rise.

For one dollar extra per month, Spotify is now one of the most expensive music streaming platforms, beating the recently price-dropped TiDaL along the way. But where other services give you hi-res streaming, 3D Audio, and other extras, are Spotify’s Premium features worth the extra dollar now?

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Same price, nothing new to show for it

Over the last year, Spotify has raised its prices in both the US and the UK, gradually bringing it up to the higher point that we see today. It was less than a year ago when the price rose to $10.99 in the US, and then April this year saw the price rise to £11.99 in the UK. Given the price before that first rise was $9.99 (or £9.99 in the UK), that’s a full 20% rise in price over what you would have been paying 11 months ago.

What do we have to show for the price rise? The first one could account for the launch of Spotify Audio Books, although that came a good few months later in November 2023. What about this latest price rise? Spotify hasn’t pumped out any major new features, upped its commission for artists, or brought out hi-res streaming, the excitement for which is gradually lessening as more users transfer their playlists over to the likes of Apple Music.

It seems it’s a price rise that doesn’t account for anything new right now, then, but new features coming in the future — “We’re increasing the price of Premium Individual so that we can continue to invest in and innovate on our product offerings and features, and bring you the best experience,” Spotify says. But why should we, the customer, foot the bill for things that we can’t use yet, on the proviso that they are ‘on the way’?

The alternatives

After all, there are loads of other options out there that now cost less than Spotify, and offer a more compelling feature set. Take Apple Music for example — it will set you back $10.99 per month, and give you a human-curated library of playlists and streaming radio stations to go with its Dolby Atmos-accredited Spatial Audio and hi-res streaming options so that you can hear your music in the best quality possible. It also comes preinstalled on the best iPhones, MacBooks, and iPads, which is always a bonus.

Perhaps you want to feel like a rebel, and you want to choose TiDaL instead. After its most recent price drop, the once JayZ-backed platform also costs $10.99, and gives by far and away some of the best streaming quality that money can buy. There’s also its own form of Dolby Atmos included in the form of 3DAudio, a standard used by Amazon Music Unlimited as well. Then there’s Qobuz, my streaming platform of choice, or Deezer, built by some very cool French maniacs, or even YouTube Music…

The point at hand is that Spotify no longer has the competitive edge that it once did, thanks to its once lower price. Podcasts on-app don’t matter, because they’re available for free thanks to Apple Podcasts and other listening platforms. The Audio Book offering is limited, and services like Audible do a better job for those interested in the format. The only thing Spotify has going for it now that will mean it will keep many of its listeners is that they’ve got their entire libraries already saved on the service, and transferring it to other services is a massive pain in the behind.

Should I move over?

But it is possible, and yes, that means you should think about moving over to a different platform. Spotify and its ‘one app does everything’ approach doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, and its distinctly anti-artist practices are making it ever harder to justify sticking with the green circle over the ever-improving range of alternatives.

As to where you should go, it’s worth shopping around and working out which one would work best for you. Do you want the Apple streamer that comes installed on your brand-new iPhone 15 out of the box, or do you want the absolute best streaming quality possible? Whatever you land on, given its now ever-increasing price, Spotify will likely no longer be at the top of the list of possibilities.

Spotify has announced that it is bringing an end to support for the Car Thing. The Car Thing was a cool accessory that was essentially a display that you could attach to your car and then use as a remote control for your Spotify music.

The accessory was semi-discontinued just a year after it hit the market but now, a couple of years later, those who have been happily using their Car Thing ever since will soon have to find an alternative solution after the company confirmed its demise.

In an email sent to Car Thing users, Spotify confirmed that it is discontinuing the product, and as a result, it will stop working on December 9, 2024.

The clock is ticking

A Reddit post shared the email sent to users in which Spotify said "While this chapter is closing, we're working on new, innovative ways to enhance your drives in the future."

Car Thing cost Spotify subscribers $90 and was a way for people to enjoy the streaming service on an in-car display without using their iPhone and it was a good option for those whose cars don't support CarPlay. It remains to be seen what Spotify has in store from here, but an online FAQ does say that the company has "0 plans to release a replacement or new version of Car Thing". Those hoping that this news was simply the precursor to a new, better version are set to be left disappointed.

As for the Car Thing that you might have in your car right now, there isn't much that you can do with it beyond December 9, unfortunately. At which point it'll probably find a new home in that drawer of old and obsolete tech that we all have at home. Or the bin. Probably the bin.

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Apple has reportedly chosen to challenge a €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) fine slapped on it by the European Union over concerns that it prevents fair competition in the music streaming space. The fine came following a years-long complaint by Apple Music competitor Spotify, but Apple has reportedly filed a suit in the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg with a view to overturning the original decision.

Spotify had originally argued that Apple forced its prices up because it had to cover the costs associated with the App Store and its payment processing.

The EU ultimately agreed with Spotify, but Apple is of the belief that the EU has so far been unable to prove that App Store rules have impacted Spotify and other companies in the ways that have been alleged.

An incoming court battle

Bloomberg reports that unnamed sources believe Apple has chosen to appeal and that the company will now face another legal battle with the regulator.

Apple hasn't done particularly well when going toe-to-toe with the EU to date having previously been slapped with a record €13 billion tax bill over a dispute related to Irish state aid.

The EU also famously forced Apple to adopt the USB-C port on the iPhone 15 while EU citizens can also install third-party app marketplaces following the launch of the EU's Digital Markets Act. Apple continues to duke it out with the EU over that act, with some developers arguing that its attempts to comply with the DMA have not been in good faith. Apple has also been forced to make other changes including offering iPhone owners the chance to choose their own default web browser.

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To show how much stuff it managed to fit into the brand-new and unbelievably slim iPad Pro M4, Apple managed to create an ad that lit the internet on fire. 

The ad, dubbed ‘Crush!’ was a part of Apple’s Let Loose launch event, and saw all kinds of creative tools like instruments, art materials, and books getting mashed by an enormous hydraulic press.

Ever since the ad appeared on Twitter, it’s ignited a storm of messages from users outraged over the destruction of the tools, with complaints ranging from waste and recycling to Japanese creatives angered due to a wonderful ancient belief that physical objects have souls, making their destruction tantamount to blasphemy.

Apple, seeing what it likely thought was an innocent attempt to show how compact and feature-filled the iPad Pro is and, perhaps contrary to intent, how it managed to become a catalyst that brings every creative on Twitter together to decry the reaches of technology into their space, has issued an apology over the ad.

A misjudged attempt that riled up creatives everywhere

To atone for its sins, Apple has bowed its head and said ‘We’re sorry’. In a statement to AdAge that we saw through NBC News, Apple is clear that it intended not to cause any kind of offense, harm, or blasphemy to its watchers (and, in turn, most of its target audience in creative professionals).

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

In addition to the apology, Apple is also pulling the ad from its TV spots, so you’ll never have to see a rubber emoji’s eyes popping out of its stretchy face. It’s interesting, however, to think about the environment in which Apple has launched the ad, and how even just a couple of years ago it might not have created such a stir.

Imagine, instead, that Apple launched the ad five years ago, when the world saw tech as something that would enhance the creative experience. iPads could be drawing tools, Macs could be music creation aids, iPhones could help you record your ideas on the go — the future, as both Apple and creatives saw it together, was bright for a tech-creator symbiosis. Had this ad been released then, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as badly as received.

Take, for example, the LG ad that is now circulating again thanks to Twitter. It similarly uses a giant crusher to crush creative tools into a device, albeit this time with a focus on cameras and photography. The phone at the heart of the ad, the LG Renoir KC910, is a so-called camera phone with an 8MP shooter on the back, then some of the best optics attached to a smartphone. Yet the device at the heart of the advert isn’t the most important part that we need to focus on here — rather, the context into which it released, and why it didn’t receive backlash at the time.

Search through the comments on YouTube or for any articles about the ad when it came out is fruitless. Nobody cared. What was different then that’s now around to make an ad like this cause so much backlash? For one, the relationship between tech and creativity is becoming more and more strained thanks to generative AI, and what many see as a way for big companies looking to save money, and skip over creative professionals who already find it difficult to find work.

Combine that with a general distaste for content created for AI art and music, and you’ve got a bubbling pot of negative feelings toward anything that could resemble tech overtaking creativity. Enter, then, just as tensions are at their highest, Apple’s ad that crushes artistic endeavor into its thinnest and lightest iPad yet. While Apple likely didn’t intend to, it seems to have sent a message to concerned creatives feeling the weight of budget cuts and unscrupulous managers turning to alternative methods of content creation. A message that says ‘an iPad can replace all these beautiful things into one’ rather than ‘we’ve squeezed loads of stuff into the slimmest Apple device ever’.

It wasn’t the cause of the way that people are feeling about the state of the creative industries, but the brief 30-second video became a catalyst for artists to get their thoughts and feelings known. It embodies everything that they are worried about coming real — a physical manifestation of all the things that they’re scared of.

Apple likely didn’t think this would be the case, the intent seems different to the outcome. But the moment you release something to the world, you are no longer the sole owner of the meaning of what you’ve created. You can’t stop the way that people react to something that you create, and in this case, that has backfired merrily on Apple and its ad.

Was the reaction over the top? Perhaps, but there is a very real, tangible anger from those complaining about the ad that’s impossible to ignore. As Apple heads into its AI future, it has to think long and hard about how it introduces its generative products to its audience of creatives who’ve long used its products to help them make music, art, and movies — it may have apologized, but trust is lost in but a moment.

Spotify’s continued quest to pay artists less

Spotify hasn’t been shy from the news recently, with its ongoing legal battle with Apple still very much lodged in the headlines. Well, while it’s using one hand to fence off Apple’s app store team so that it can get a link to its subscription options into its app for the best iPhones, it’s using the other to restructure its commissioning rates for artists — and the latter party isn’t too happy about it.

According to Billboard, Spotify has started to reclassify its deal with artists and creators on the app. Only last year there was a shift in revenue that saw massive numbers of artists now receive nothing for their artistic endeavors — and this new restructuring seems to be even worse. Somehow.

Now that Spotify has added audiobooks to its premium subscription, the streamer now argues that there are more licensing costs to pay per subscription — in essence, that it now has more things to pay with your $9.99 per month. Who else should shoulder this extra cost, Spotify thought, than its bread and butter, the reason it's able to exist?

To save money, Spotify will now pay artists a “discounted “bundle” rate”, and “reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.” The idea is that it will combine royalties from its three subscription options, paying artists less overall. To show how much artists will be losing out over this restructuring, Billboard did some maths in the article above and ended up with a total of $150 million lost for artists on Spotify. Ouch.

To make matters worse, Spotify doesn’t seem to need to save money — the company is growing, according to Spotify user stats. What it does now risk, however, in annoying its artists, is users and creators moving to alternative streaming platforms with better royalty rates that don’t cost the end user more to use.

There are rumblings that Spotify is going to up the cost of its premium subscriptions to $10.99 a month, bringing it directly into firing range of the likes of Apple Music, the recently reduced TiDal, and Amazon Music. Where these services all cost a dollar or so more than the green circle at the moment, another raise in Spotify’s cost would make for convincing price parity between all the options. Would a mass exodus of artists make the audiobook addition worth it? Only time will tell, but Spotify’s profiteering might become its undoing.

Apple just made Apple Music even better for labels and distributors

Apple already has an excellent way for artists to view metrics of their music and its streaming, but the firm just launched a new way for their teams to view trends and more with its called ‘Apple Music Partner Program’. This gives labels and distributors ways to view different, so-called ‘premium metrics’, allowing users to track artists' milestones with tools like ‘Chart Explorer’.

The news comes via Music Business Worldwide, which goes into more detail about the new program, which came to Apple Music on May 9th. For the front-end user, it’s not going to mean much, but for artists and their teams, it's going to be a useful way to see how their music is doing as they release it to the world.

Apple apologizes, And Spotify makes things worse

While the two companies battle it out in the App Store, Apple and Spotify have their own issues that make life difficult. Apple’s apology was the admonition of guilt, an understanding perhaps of not what it did wrong, but rather that it wasn’t expecting quite so much backlash to its advert. It points to a potential pain point in its upcoming AI releases, and highlights how careful it's going to have to be — and even more careful now that it's already trodden on the proverbial cat's tail.

Meanwhile, Spotify risks completely alienating its artists with more weird decisions around its commissions and royalties. There’s a kind of tightrope that streamers have to walk when it comes to the artists on its platform, and it seems like Spotify might be getting slightly too cocky and trying a backflip before it’s managed to stabilize itself properly. And before you even think about adding more cost to the subscription, lads, there’s something missing that everyone has already added in — where’s our HiFi streaming option?

Either way, it’s another week of Apple and Spotify news. Hopefully, there’s something new in the mix next time, because if I have to think about the various missteps of the most popular streamer on earth, I’ll book a plane to Sweden and mash some heads into desks myself.

What to watch

Dark Matter

Given that it's a mystery TV show where writing too much about it would give too much away we’ll instead give you the Apple TV+ blurb of the show so that you can make up your mind if it is something that tickles your TV glands:

"Jason Dessen is abducted into an alternative version of his life. To get back to this true family, he embarks on a harrowing journey to save them from the most terrifying foe imaginable: Himself."

Staring Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, and Alice Braga, you can watch the first two episodes of Dark Matter on Apple TV+ now. First impressions from someone who’s seen those two first episodes (that’s me!) are of a well-crafted, tense thriller that has some excellent action and a tantalizing mystery. Edgerton does an excellent job as main character Joel, and his joint lead Connelly is, as always, special to watch. One for fans of hard Sci-Fi this one.

Shogun

No, it’s not on Apple TV+, but you can still watch it on your Apple TV with the Disney Plus app. The Samurai epic is now finished, and what a ride. With twists and turns a plenty, it's easily one of the best TV shows of the last ten years, featuring an incredible story and some excellent characters.

In 1600, an English pilot and navigator ends up washed up in Feudal Japan. He quickly becomes a part of the plans of local Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who desires for power and influence in a Japan without a Shogun. Based on the book of the same name by James Clavell (which is also excellent), Shogun is a tale of backstabbing politics, Samurai honor (or lack thereof), and the influence of foreign powers who think they have more control in distant lands than they actually do.

The leads are incredible, and while Cosmo Jarvis’ English accent while playing the main character Blackthorne might seem over the top, you quickly get used to it. The most praise goes to Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, however, who play Lord Toranaga and Japanese interpreter Toda Mariko respectively.

Toranaga is threatening yet benevolent, never revealing too much of his plan — and Sanada is terrifying in the role. Mariko is reserved yet powerful, and Sawai is almost certainly one of the best parts of the whole show. Boot up Disney Plus and give it a whirl the next time you sit down to watch something on your Apple TV — it is excellent. The whole thing is available to stream now.

What to listen to

You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To — Knocked Loose

Bringing a righteous fury and a massively manageable 27-minute runtime, the latest 10-track album from the Kentuckian hardcore crew brings the breakdowns. Thick, heavy, and absolutely furious, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To is a triumphant return to form with some brilliant features from Poppy and Chris Motionless. About as subtle as a brick to the face as always, but loads and loads of fun. See you in the pit!

Radical Optimism — Dua Lipa

Pop diva Dua Lipa is back, fresh with some more disco-inspired beats on her latest album. Thick, driving string basslines drive a deliciously smooth time that doesn’t stray too far from what came before but builds on what was already a solid base in Future Nostalgia. Engaging, fun, sultry pop music from one of pop's most accomplished artists.

Eurovision 2024 Playlist

IT’S TIIIIIIIME! The Eurovision Song Contest which features nations that are nowhere near the European continent is almost upon us, and the official playlist is available before the show for us to listen to on Apple Music. There are all kinds of genres on offer here, from bizarre comedy industrial metal to some Eurobeat, and even some artists you might recognize.

There’s one thing on every tech publication's lips at the moment — and as much as Apple wants it to be ‘new iPads!’, it’s closer to ‘what does AI mean for the world at large’. I am not big enough, tough enough, nor clever enough to talk about what it will mean for humanity as a whole, but I can share how we see it affecting the media that we consume, be that a TV show on Apple TV Plus or a piece of music on Apple Music.

Some streamers have already gotten started with the AI ‘revolution’, most notably Spotify with its AI DJ tech that listens and watches your play habits, and then builds ‘up next’ playlists with your choices and likes in mind. It even has a voice. Apple Music is yet to dip its toes into the AI-inclusive pool as yet, but if it’s looking at how it can get started, it should be aware of some key points from Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s premier streaming platform which has embraced AI in its streaming model. The streamer has given four different pain points in AI and streaming in its most recent annual report for 2023 — although there’s really only one that Apple actually needs to pay any attention to.

The problem with artificial intelligence

Apple’s AI journey might not take it too close to the sun when it comes to Apple Music, but given the rest of the streaming landscape, it's impossible that Cupertino isn’t thinking about how to get artificial intelligence into its music streaming service. It likely isn’t going to go quite as far as Tencent however, which includes the likes of an AI-aided lyrics generator, AI-curated playlists, a Karaoke app with AI singers for duets, and a predictive model that Music Business World tells us “can how predict the ‘next hit song.’” Take that, bookies.

Apple Music on the other hand prides itself on its human-curated library, with playlists created by like-minded music fans and experts and ‘For You pages’ with music selected by real people. In this way, Apple doesn’t have to worry about most of Tencent’s warnings, which mostly fall in the camp of ‘we use AI for almost everything, and we’ve found problems with algorithms, ethical issues, and legal ramifications’. Apple can help how it uses AI in Apple Music, and most of those issues only arise if you use AI to create new music or use the tech in more nefarious ways. What Apple has less control over, however, is what kind of music people upload to the service.

One of the concerns raised by Tencent is copyright issues that stem from AI-created music. While it’s unlikely that Apple will be adding a feature that will let users create their own tunes, there is a chance that users might upload their own AI-generated music to the platform, with all the included AI copyright issues in tow.

See, AI uses music that already exists as a part of its learning model in order to make something new. Sometimes, with ethically iffy creation engines, there’s a massive chance that the music the model has learned from is copyrighted by the original artist, and given there’s then a little bit of that artist's music in whatever the plagiarism engine makes, to sell the music made would be to break copyright. 

There’s already a legal precedent that says AI music artists don’t own anything they create using AI, but there’s little stopping them from uploading it to music streaming services like Apple Music or Spotify. What would this mean legally for Apple Music? As a virtue of it being streamed on the platform, Apple would be making money on what could be copyrighted content, uploaded to Apple Music without the express permission of the original artist. That could open a whole new can of worms for Apple — one that it likely isn’t going to want to see kicked down the road.

It wouldn’t, in theory, be hard to stop this from happening. There are certain things that you can use to tell AI music apart from human-made music, such as the way that it sounds and digital artifacts, so it might not be too hard to add a vetting process to music that is uploaded to Apple Music. If it doesn’t get the problem sorted, however, there could be some hefty legal fees and intellectual property issues that could rear their heads — and those are never fun.

The Spotify problem, and the EU law that’s making life hard

Also likely not fun is Apple’s ongoing war of attrition with Spotify, which seems hellbent on taking up everyone’s time and brain power.

Earlier this year, Apple was made to pay a massive, $2 billion fine by the European Commission, which claimed that Apple should allow apps to advertise their own websites as payment options, in a bid to encourage competition on the App Store. Where many saw it as a government intervention in something it knew nothing about, Spotify instead saw it as an opportunity to finally avoid Apple’s App Store fees, and stick a link to its website in its app so that users can more easily head over and grab a subscription there, avoiding the fees Apple levies on apps and companies for using its platform.

Since the court decision, Spotify has been sending proposed updates to Apple’s App Store with the link in place — and every time, without fail, Apple has rejected it. Until Thursday, April 25, that is, when Spotify finally changed the contents of its update, which now only tells users that they can go to the Spotify website to get a subscription, along with a price list so that they can see how much their subscription will cost. Along with this, the firm took to X to share a tweet that logged their increased irritation with Apple and how the latter is ‘breaking European law’ by continuing to get in the way of Spotify’s need for a link to its website in-app.

In response, Apple released the rejection email it sent to Spotify around its previous updates to outlets — including to us. The email was clear: Apple wasn’t allowing the update because Spotify didn’t agree to Apple’s Music Streaming Services Entitlement, rather than any specific design element. This is, apparently, a requirement whether there is a button or not, so even this new update will need to go with the requirements that Apple has set out, and that “We will, however, approve version 8.9.33 after you accept the terms of the Music Streaming Services Entitlement and resubmit it for review.” The ball is now once again in Spotify’s court — let’s see what it decides to do.

New Beats in the hands of LeBron James

The hardest of hardware leaks as LeBron James is pictured on the Laker's Instagram wielding a new, as yet unseen, Beats Bluetooth speaker. Hanging from a chord on his finger, the Beats oval seems to be a new version of the now discontinued Beats Pill speaker line, replete with new color and… well, you can’t see much in the zoomed-out portrait video beyond the fact that it’s there. 

We did have as close a look as possible, looking for anything that sticks out as drastically new or different. He’s carrying a bag in the other hand, although it’s likely a shoe bag because it is much larger than the speaker itself. There’s a chord, loop, hanging thing so you’ll be able to hang it from stuff… and that’s about it. Otherwise, it's a tantalizing look at what could be a return to a product category for the Beats line.

Even though I called the Beats Studio Pro “the death rattle of a dying brand” in my review, the brand seems to be going through a renaissance in recent months. There were new versions of the Beats Studio Buds in the form of the Buds Plus, along with the aforementioned Studio Pro over-ear headphones. The Solo4 are rumored to be coming soon, and this new Beats pill could round out the product line. Under the caring wing of Apple, Beats could well be back for good.

Apple's AI worries, and Spotify's fight

In the next few months, Apple is expected to make some big announcements about AI and how it's going to implement the tech into its most popular devices, such as its best iPhones. It's likely going to have some form of AI inclusion in the likes of Apple TV Plus and Apple Music, although what form that inclusion is going to take is yet to be seen. Whatever happens, there are some significant bumps in the road that Apple will have to contend with before it can consider a full investment in the technology — not least of all the legal ramifications that come from others use of AI that might end up in its services.

The firm is facing its struggles against Spotify as well, highlighting the exciting legal time that it's having across the board. In this case, it's now back in Spotify's corner to get sorted, but continued legal drama isn't good for business.

Either way, the crux of Apple's media woes could be and are currently legal issues — and it looks like they're not going to end any time soon.

What to watch

The Bloody Hundred

Did you enjoy Masters of the Air? I did. I loved its visceral, sky-based action that left me covered with imaginary airplane oil, and the characters did a spectacular job of pulling me into the story. If nothing else, before you go and watch The Bloody Hundred, you should go watch the short series from the creators of Band of Brothers if you’ve even the slightest interest in well-written and spectacularly well-realized war stories.

Once you’ve finished there, you should go watch The Bloody Hundred, a documentary that tells the real, undramatized story of the US bomber group stationed in the UK. It’s narrated by Tom Hanks, and it’s only an hour long so it won’t take up too much of your time. It’s the perfect companion to Masters of the Air, and a great way to learn some more personal history that you might not have known otherwise. It’s available on Apple TV Plus to watch now.

Argylle

The most controversially terrible movie of the year is now available on Apple TV Plus, and while many aren’t massive fans of the spy thriller, there are still some things to like about the otherwise abject failure. Henry Cavil manages to prove that he has the range to play around two different character archetypes, while John Cena continues to be one of the biggest surprises to come from WWE who isn’t Dave Bautista. Dua Lipa… tries, and Bryce Dallas Howard seems completely tuned out the entire time — which does little for the story.

The narrative itself is a confusing mess of made-up events within the world of the story melding with events that are supposed to be actually happening to the characters, making for a jarring watch. In the long run, what could be an interesting deconstruction of narrative structure becomes a mess of ideas that don’t really work together. It is, however, in the same universe as the Kingsmen movies, which might work for some people in the audience. It is a bad, bad movie — but sometimes, curiosity can get the better of you. As it did me, and my Saturday afternoon. Best watched with liberal lashings of something strong. Like Sauerkraut.

What to listen to

Tortured Poets Department — Taylor Swift

This exists, with the extra 15 tracks Swift released just as the album came out. It’s in Spatial Audio. You can listen to it on Apple Music.

Only God Was Above Us — Vampire Weekend

Or you could listen to something new that isn’t by the biggest megastar in the world, whose reach is only matched by her obscene carbon footprint. Vampire Weekend's blend of Indie Rock and pop makes for a compelling recipe. This latest album has more edge than previous outings, but manages a more optimistic outlook despite the state of the world around them.

Banished By Sin — Deicide

AI cover art aside, the Floridian masters of the death metal riff return for their thirteenth album with all the anger and devilish tendencies dialed up to 11. Riffs for days, blistering blast beats and galloping, wailing guitars for a solid forty minutes to get the blood pumping and the horns in the air. Not for everyone by any stretch of the imagination, but one for the lover of all things heavy.

For months, Spotify has been trying to update its iPhone app that would let you go directly from the app to the Spotify website to buy a subscription, so that it could avoid the App Store fees when subscribing in-app. Now it’s had to restrict its enthusiasm, instead logging an update that will have “basic pricing and website information”, what it calls “the bare minimum outlined under the European Commission’s ruling.”

When Apple was fined an inordinate amount of money and told to allow links to websites by the EU, Spotify likely thought it was out of the woods. Apple, however, had other ideas — you could have links to the outside web, but you’d have to pay Apple for the privilege. Spotify, which claims to “remain committed to giving consumers real choice in our app,” has had an ordeal getting its updates that are supposed to go with the EU’s ruling okayed by Apple — and now it's had to downgrade its contents.

“Apple continues to break European law”

In a statement posted to X, Spotify laid down its complaints with Apple. It claims that Apple “punish(es) developers with new fees”, and that “by charging developers for communicating with consumers through links in-app, Apple continues to break European law.” It’s the sign of a long and embittered fight between App Store architect and a librarian coming to blows with an angry author who doesn’t like that their book isn’t in as opportune spot as it could be — even though that book is seven years old, and competes with the librarian’s own literature.

In response to Spotify's claims, Apple shared with iMore the App review correspondence sent to Spotify regarding its most recent App Store submission:

"Hello team at Spotify,

We are reaching out to let you know about new information regarding your app, Spotify - Music and Podcasts, version 8.9.33.

As you may be aware, Apple created a new Music Streaming Services Entitlement (EEA) for iOS and iPadOS music streaming apps offered in EEA storefronts. The entitlement allows music streaming apps to use buttons, external links, or other calls to action to direct customers to a purchase mechanism on a website owned or controlled by the developer. You must accept its terms before adding any of these capabilities to your app. Please find more information about the entitlement here.   

We note that your current submission includes a call to action to purchase a Spotify subscription on your website. As such, you must accept the terms of the Music Streaming Services Entitlement (EEA) and include the entitlement profile in your app for submission. To be clear, this entitlement is required even if your app does not include an external link (nor does it require that you offer an external link). We will, however, approve version 8.9.33 after you accept the terms of the Music Streaming Services Entitlement (EEA) and resubmit it for review. 

If you have any questions about this information, please reply to this message to let us know.

Best regards,

App Review"

Apple's response seems to say that Spotify hasn't signed up to Apple's Music Services Entitlement, and that this, rather than any specific issue with Spotify's app design, is holding up the update. 

Spotify has little sympathy amongst many Apple users — while it cries unfair around the App Store fees and being charged for out-linking Apple-based Spotify users are still clamoring for AirPlay 2, and native HomePod support. Something that competing streamers like YouTube Music and Deezer managed years ago, while Spotify drags its feet. Even for the likes of lossless playback, a long-promised update that’s yet to surface, Spotify continues to stumble. So when the green circle complains about App Store fees, it can ring hollow when it has managed to drop the ball with so many other features.

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• Using Spotify's AI DJ has turned the tables on Apple Music for me
• How to create and share playlists with friends on Spotify for iPhone
• Spotify for iPhone review: Finally, some progress!

Everyone loves Spotify Wrapped and all the intriguing insights it brings, but it only happens once a year. What if you want to keep track of your Spotify stats all year long on one of the best iPhones?

Fortunately, I’ve found a way to do just that using a third-party app called Stats.fm. OK, it’s not quite the same as Spotify Wrapped – there are no Instagram-style stories backed by your favorite tunes – but it’s a great way to dive into the data if you want to know how many hours you’ve spent indulging your secret love of lo-fi indie pirate metal.

Stats.fm is free to get started and lets you see your top 50 tracks and artists at a glance. Subscribe to its Plus tier ($6 for a lifetime membership on the official website) and you unlock a whole lot more. That includes much deeper info on your top tracks, artists, and albums, as well as insights into the way you listen. As well as that, the paid-for version banishes the ads for good.

There’s another aspect that data nerds will love: your listening history. You need to import this (see the steps below), and that means you might have to wait a few weeks for Spotify or Apple to gather the required data, but it opens up a whole new world of musical insights. You’ll also need the paid version of Stats.fm for this, but a lifetime membership is affordable if you get it directly from the app’s website (it’s cheaper than paying on the App Store).

Once your listening history is happily deposited into Stats.fm, you can learn far more about your listening habits than you thought possible. The app will show you your total minutes listened, how many artists you’ve given a spin, how many albums you’ve explored over the past month, and a lot more.

It also rustles up a bunch of interesting visuals to help you easily digest your stats, including streaming charts and “listening clocks” that show you what time of day you spend the most time listening. It’s all absolutely fascinating.

Often, the results can be surprising. I had no idea that 73% of my top tracks are “energetic” but only a mere 5% are “speechful,” for example. If you enjoy data like this and all the associated insights you can glean, you’re going to love this app.

How to set up and use Stats.fm

1. When you first open Stats.fm, you’ll need to log in using either Spotify or Apple Music. Tap the button for your music service and follow the on-screen prompts to log in.
2. You’ll now see the Stats.fm home screen with your data loaded. Here, you can explore various stats, such as your top tracks, artists, and albums from the past month, your recently played songs, a shareable image of your past month’s favorites, and more.
3. Tap the Top icon in the bottom toolbar (it looks like an upward chart line). This lets you browse through your most played tracks, artists, albums, and genres. Tap the grid icon in the top left to change the view.
4. The Stats tab (found by tapping the chart icon in the bottom toolbar) lets you break down your listening figures into percentages, graphs, and other visualizations. It’s a little limited at first because you have to request extended data from Spotify or Apple, and this can take several weeks in some cases. If you want that extra detail, follow the on-screen prompts to request your Spotify or Apple Music stats. If you don’t, skip to step 9.
5. Once you’ve received your data from Spotify or Apple Music, you’ll need to extract the .zip file and upload the resulting .json files to Stats.fm. You can do this on the Stats.fm website or by opening the app and tapping the settings cog on the home screen, then tapping Import Files and following the on-screen prompts (you can learn more about importing on the app’s website). Your files will be uploaded and processed, which will allow the app to understand your listening habits. The whole thing might take a few minutes, but you’ll get notifications keeping you updated on its progress.

6. Once everything has been processed, go back to the Stats.fm app. You’ll now see far more detailed breakdowns of your listening stats on every tab. For example, the Top tab will not only show you your most listened tracks, artists, and albums but how long you spent listening to each and how many streams that encompassed.
7. Go back to the Stats tab, where you’ll now find a bunch of info on how the currently selected time period compares to the past. At the bottom of the app, you can see stats on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or lifetime scale – pick one, and then just above it you can change the currently viewed day, week, month, or year. Stats.fm will tell you how that period compares to the one before it in various facts and figures.
8. With your uploaded data, the Stats tab also displays a suite of charts, including time clocks that show when you mostly listen to your music, as well as graphs projecting daily and cumulative streams, streams divided by day of the week, and more.
9. The Social tab is in the bottom-right corner of the toolbar. It’s where you can chat with other Stats.fm users, and the app matches you with people who share your tastes.

If you're waiting for lossless music streaming to come to Spotify, you aren't alone. While Apple Music already offers its own lossless music, Spotify has so far been unable to get its act together. That could be about to change, and it might finally debut alongside a new add-on rather than as a new pricing tier.

Spotify has been talking about its Spotify HiFi or Supremium subscription offering for years now, and it's so far been unable to ship it. The new tier was expected to sport lossless music streaming but so far, that hasn't happened.

But now a new report suggests that changes are afoot, but lossless audio won't be part of a new tier as originally expected. Instead, it's thought that the high-quality streaming option will debut as part of the Music Pro add-on that will include support for DJ remixes and more.

Sounds good

This is all according to a report by The Verge based on code that was spotted over on Reddit. That code says that “lossless has arrived” with support for “up to 24-bit/44.1kHz” FLAC files.

There is also talk of a new feature that will enhance sound played via specific headphones, with the AirPods mentioned specifically. It remains to be seen what that will actually do, not to mention the fact that pricing and availability still remain something of a mystery. There's no word on how much the new Music Pro add-on will cost, but it'll be an option that is offered to Spotify Premium subscribers.

So far Spotify has not mentioned what all of this means, but it's possible that there is something on the horizon given the new code discoveries.

More from iMore

• Spotify might be about to make a huge blunder with its Apple Music music lossless rival
• Some users are already seeing a HiFi icon in the Spotify app
• Spotify has no idea when it'll add support for high-res audio

While Apple attempts to get its ducks in a row, so to speak, and inject some additional AI features into iOS 18 and beyond, Spotify has stolen a march on its rival with a new AI playlist feature.

"We just launched a new beta test - AI playlists," Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said on X (formerly Twitter).

"It’s a feature that uses AI chat prompts to help you curate personalized playlists. It’s still a work in progress but I’m excited for you to give it a try."

As shown in the accompanying gif, users can ask Spotify via a chatbot-style prompter for a custom playlist. The example given in Ek's post is "Give me a playlist that will make me feel like a main character".

The update is rolling out for Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia for now, although at the time of writing, I'm not able to see the option on my phone.

Apple Music and AI

Apple Music's recommendations do a decent job of curating tracks for your library, but it's one of the areas where Apple's foray into AI is expected to be leveraged for increased personalization.

Spotify has already been doing something similar with its AI DJ. It's not a chatbot, but offers a synthesized voice to recommend an array of tracks based on what you've been enjoying recently or further back.

It's the chatbot-style interactions that help this new format stand out, and given Apple is reportedly working hard on its own large language model, seems like it could be a battleground where the next generation of music curation is fought.

As for Spotify, users may see a price hike in the coming days if reports are correct. The streaming service has been pushing to make podcasts and audiobooks profitable in the long term.

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• Tim Cook promises AI breakthroughs in Apple shareholder meeting
• I've replaced Siri with the ChatGPT AI on my iPhone
• Spotify will hike its prices again, report claims, as it attempts to pay for its expansion into podcasts and audiobooks

Spotify is reportedly ready to increase the price of its subscription offerings, with the music streaming service seeking to pay for its expansion into podcasts and audiobooks while battling to become profitable in the long term.

It's reported that the streamer intends to increase prices in five markets by the end of this month including the UK, Australia, and Pakistan according to a new report. That report also notes that the United States will receive a price hike as well, although that won't happen until later this year. The price increases are expected to be around $1 or $2 but it isn't clear how that will translate to local currencies.

The news comes as Spotify continues to diversify away from its music streaming roots in an attempt to reduce its reliance on music labels and cut its expenses at the same time.

A new basic tier

Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, says that Spotify also intends to add a new lower-cost tier to the mix that will include access to music and podcasts for the same $11 asking price as before, although there will be no access to audiobooks without buying them ad-hoc.

Spotify reportedly still intends to launch the so-called Supremium plan that will offer improved audio quality among other things, but there is no word on when that will actually arrive.

Spotify has historically lost money each year and it sees price increases as a way to change that. It currently spends billions of dollars each year to pay royalties for the music that its users listen to, another reason to try and expand into audiobooks and podcasts.

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• Using Spotify's AI DJ has turned the tables on Apple Music for me
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?
• Spotify Audiobooks is the killer feature to fight off Apple Music 

After being embroiled in legal battles for what is likely starting to feel like centuries to the two companies, Apple and Spotify continue to have disagreements — even after the European Commission's landmark ruling that should allow apps to link to payment methods outside of Apple’s App Store.

We say ‘should’ because Spotify thinks it hasn’t worked. According to The Verge, Spotify has emailed the European Commission, claiming that Apple hasn’t greenlit its latest update because it would allow users to go directly to Spotify’s site to purchase a subscription.

Apple and Spotify at loggerheads again

Spotify reckons that Apple’s behavior is deliberate — that it's all part of Apple’s plan to either ignore the EU’s ruling, or to drag its feet enough that Spotify will never get the benefits of what the ruling was supposed to allow. Spotify says that this is “yet another example of how Apple if unchecked, will seek to circumvent and/or not comply with the Commission’s decision.”

The company wants the European Commission to get in touch with Apple to force the firm's hand and allow Spotify’s changes to go through — and crucially, allow Spotify customers to get a subscription by clicking on a link in the app that takes them directly to Spotify’s website.

Apple has been at the center of a number of different legal troubles in the EU in recent years. The firm now has to allow third-party app stores on its devices after an anti-trust suit with Epic Games, for example, and the aforementioned Spotify case that meant Apple had to allow developers links in their apps to alternative payment methods that didn’t involve the App Store — and that also cost the firm $2 billion. There was even the recent USB-C case that meant Apple had to update the port on the bottom of the best iPhones.

Apple has been vocal in its distaste for the results in court, even going so far as to list the benefits that Spotify gets from Apple with the App Store — although dragging its feet on compliance with the ruling could serve to get it in even more hot water.

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• How to create and share playlists with friends on Spotify for iPhone
• Spotify is finally getting this Apple Music feature
• Using Spotify's AI DJ has turned the tables on Apple Music for me

The battle between Apple Music and Spotify continues, and there's even a battle between Apple as a whole and the Swedish music streamer thanks to the ongoing EU Digital Markets Act shenanigans as well. But it's the music that really matters, and Spotify has taken a step closer to offering feature parity with Apple in one key way — support for music videos.

While Apple Music has offered music fans the chance to watch the videos that go along with their favorite songs for years, Spotify has lagged behind somewhat. That's changing as of today, with Spotify announcing that it is rolling music video support out to a total of 11 countries as part of a beta experience that will likely improve considerably in the future. The list of 11 countries includes plenty that you might expect including Spotify's home country of Sweden, but there's one notable exception that will no doubt be corrected in due course.

At the time of writing Spotify is launching music video support in the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya. The most obvious omission there is the United States, and while some might make the link to Apple's home turf, that's surely little more than a coincidence. In fact, Spotify says that there's actual science behind its decision to roll the new feature out in Kenya, but not the US.

Let the beat go on ... in some countries

In a press release detailing the new beta feature, Spotify simply listed the countries that are coming online. But in a deeper dive with TechCrunch, Spotify’s VP Global Head of Consumer Experience Sten Garmark explained that the company " chose these markets based on a number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support." The VP went on to add that users should "stay tuned as we hope to expand the catalog of music videos and increase availability to more countries.”

Being in one of those 11 countries isn't the only limitation here, either. Spotify says that you'll need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber to enjoy the new music video feature with the price of that subscription varying depending on what part of the world you happen to live in, whether you're a student, and if you want multiple people to be able to use the streaming service on the same account.

Beyond the country and payment limitations, there is also no guarantee that your favorite songs will have videos available anyway. The press release notes that the feature is rolling out "with a limited catalog of music videos, including hits from global artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, or local favorites like Aluna and Asake."

You'll know whether the song you're listening to has a video available because there will be a button that offers users the chance to "Switch to Video" if that's the case. The video then starts from the beginning of the song. The option to switch back to an audio-only version of the song will also be available, too. Turning the iPhone into portrait orientation will allow the video to fill the screen, too.

Spotify says that the new music video feature is available on iOS and macOS as well as TV devices, not to mention Android phones and other desktop apps.

The feature appears to work well currently, but the only question many reading this will have is currently impossible to answer — when will Spotify music videos launch in the US?

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• How to create and share playlists with friends on Spotify for iPhone and iPad
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?
• Spotify: Everything you need to know!

Apple, no friend of the European Commission at the best of times, has released a strongly-worded press release in which it explains why it isn't happy about a $2 billion fine levied by the EC. The fine comes after the Commission found that Apple's "abusive App Store rules" unfairly affected music streaming apps like Spotify and others, preventing them from pointing users toward cheaper prices outside of the App Store. It also impacted users by making them pay more, too, the EC suggests. And Apple really isn't happy about it.

In fact, Apple believes that it's all Spotify's fault, rather than its own.

• Apple is not backing down from the EU and Spotify, and I think it is right

"The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify, a company based in Stockholm, Sweden," Apple says. "Spotify has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation."

Why the number of times Spotify spoke with officials about an ongoing investigation is something Apple believes it needed to bring up isn't quite clear, but that's just the beginning. Apple then went on to detail how many users Spotify has. And how long the App Store has been around. And tell us about what other developers do on the App Store before offering a thinly veiled threat about pulling out of the EU altogether. And all apparently ignoring the elephant in the room — Apple has been fined because it broke European anti-competitive rules. And just arguing about that won't change anything.

Anti-steering provisions

This all came in a rambling, ranting press release the likes of which are becoming increasingly common from Apple. In it, Apple explains that Spotify doesn't pay Apple anything to ship its app in the App Store — ignoring the Apple developer fee, although admittedly that isn't a lot — because it doesn't use Apple's in-app purchase system. But as is so often the case here, it isn't made clear how that changes what Apple has done nor why it believes it shouldn't have been fined for doing it.

"The Commission's investigation found that Apple bans music streaming app developers from fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app and from providing any instructions about how to subscribe to such offers," the European Commission's press release reads. And it's right, because we know full well that Apple did this. Apple knows it did it because it's going to release iOS 17.4 this week to change that behavior in order to meet the EU's incoming Digital Markets Act requirements.

Throughout the press release Apple seems to be arguing that because Spotify is doing well, it should just leave well alone. Because it's the biggest music streamer in the land, it should just ignore the fact that Apple broke EU rules. This is an interesting approach, and will presumably be the one Apple allows any company infringing its patents to take in the future, too.

And then we get what reads like a threat to take its ball and go home.

Under the "What's next?" heading, Apple says that it "has been a part of Europe for over 40 years, and today, we support more than 2.5 million jobs across the continent. We’ve helped markets thrive, promoting competition and innovation at every turn — and the App Store is an important part of that story," the press release reads.

Apple will of course appeal the fine, and it might get the figure reduced. But the EC says that Apple's anti-steering provisions are "in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU')." It adds that they are "neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple's commercial interests in relation to the App Store on Apple's smart mobile devices and negatively affect the interests of iOS users, who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device."

If that's the case, Apple doesn't really have a leg to stand on and the best it can hope for is a reduction in the fine that's been imposed. It's also worth looking at this fine as a potential warning shot on the eve of the DMA coming into force — the EC's way of saying that Apple should expect a tough time if it intends to play games with the new rules. Given the way Apple intends to comply with some of those rules, some might argue that it already is.

You really should give Apple's press release a read. Especially if you want to see a multi-billion-dollar company blame someone else for its problems.

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If you're a Spotify Premium subscriber you already enjoy 15 hours of free audiobook listening right now with the option to buy books if you want to listen to them at your leisure. Now, the audio streaming company has announced that those who won't have a Spotify Premium subscription can enjoy the same 15-hour listening time — so long as they sign up for the new Spotify Audiobooks Access Tier.

The new tier, which is available as an option via the Spotify website, sells for $9.99 per month and gives users access to Spotify's library of content for a limited time. Users can of course also listen to podcasts and music for free but they'll have to make peace with the ads that make that possible if they want to go that route.

However, there's an argument to be made that they simply shouldn't. With Spotify Premium available for $10.99, some might argue that the audiobook-only tier is somewhat pointless when you consider that it only saves book lovers a single dollar. If they also happen to enjoy podcasts and music, Spotify Premium is a much better option given the ad-free nature of the beast.

$9.99 Vs $10.99

Spotify announced its new audiobook tier via a press release, saying that it is "continuously innovating to provide the best possible offering for every kind of audio fan." It goes on to say that since launching audiobooks as part of its Premium plan it's seen a 45% increase in free users searching for and then interacting with audiobook content. "Now we are introducing a new plan option to give our listeners a variety of choices," Spotify says.

Spotify's  Audiobooks Access Tier gives those in the United States access to more than 200,000 titles for $9.99 per month and, as mentioned, they'll be able to enjoy other audio content in the form of podcasts and music while dealing with ads.

By contrast, Premium offers the same audiobook features with ad-free podcasts and music thrown in which makes the new tier's $9.99 price point seem costly.

Spotify believes otherwise. "Spotify offers several subscription plans tailored to fit a variety of users’ preferences and will continue to invest in giving our listeners more options to cater to their unique needs," the press release ends.

There are questions left unanswered by the press release, too. It's unclear what happens when a user's 15 allotted hours have been exhausted, for example. There doesn't appear to be an option to pay for extra time, unlike Spotify Premium. That could be something that changes in the future, however.

Those who are waiting for Spotify's Supremium subscription are going to have to continue to do just that, however. There were no more details shared about lossless audio streaming or availability, nor do we know whether the audiobook-streaming offering will go global any time soon, either.

For those who just want to listen to their stories in audio form and either don't listen to music or are tied to another service for whatever reason, the audiobook-only tier might be a viable option of course. But for everyone else, it just doesn't seem cheap enough to be worthwhile — after all, how many ads do you need to hear when listening to music to be worth an extra dollar on your subscription fee?

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The European Union has fined Apple $2 billion for breaking EU competition laws with its approach to music streaming. The tech giant is said to have broken the EU's antitrust rules by favoring Apple Music over competitors like Spotify.

The European Commission's statement says Apple prevented app developers from "fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services outside of the app," giving an unfair advantage to Apple's own music platform.

According to the statement above, the Commission says Apple's behavior over the last decade has led to "significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions." As other streaming services that pursue monetization through Apple's service are subjected to a 30% fee, Apple Music can afford to undercut its prices without losing as much of its profit. 

The press release adds, "Today's decision concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions amount to unfair trading conditions, in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU'). These anti-steering provisions are neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple's commercial interests in relation to the App Store on Apple's smart mobile devices and negatively affect the interests of iOS users, who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device."

Apple's perspective

Following the news, Apple responded with a statement giving a rundown of its side of the story and emphasizing Spotify's growth thanks to the App Store.

The statement highlights Spotify's success in the world of music streaming in an effort to showcase how the App Store ultimately benefits Spotify more than it hinders it. "Companies like Google, Amazon, Deezer, SoundCloud, and Apple compete for customers every day — but Spotify stands at the top."

Apple says Spotify chooses not to offer subscriptions via in-app purchases on the App Store — ignoring the continued dispute over the 30% fee for subscriptions that has led companies like Spotify and Netflix to remove any payment options from the App Store.

Apple claims, "free isn’t enough for Spotify. They also want to rewrite the rules of the App Store — in a way that advantages them even more."

Ultimately, Apple wants to be clear that there have been multiple attempts from the EU Commission to build a case, of which there has been "No evidence of consumer harm" and "No evidence of anti-competitive behavior."

This is only one step in the public antagonism between Spotify and Apple with no official Spotify app on Apple's Vision Pro, the tech giant's latest and greatest spatial headset. Just this weekend, Spotify signed an open letter to Apple, claiming its side-loading workaround is "a mockery of the DMA".

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iOS 17.4 will see huge shifts for Apple's previously 'walled garden' App Store policies, but in a new letter to the European Commission, developers say it's not changing enough.

Led by Spotify and Epic, the letter shared via the former's site lays out a series of "obvious and egregious" complaints with Apple's rollout of its changes.

The Digital Markets Act, aimed at loosening the grip of "digital gatekeepers" like Apple or Google, has pushed Apple into allowing sideloading on iOS for the first time (jailbreaking aside), as well as revised payment processes and a "Core Technology Fee" based on annual installs after a million downloads. To avoid that fee, developers will need to keep their apps in the App Store, where they can still be vetted by Apple.

The letter, signed by no fewer than 34 companies and associations, says this structure “seems designed to maintain and even amplify Apple’s exploitation of its dominance over app developers."

The choice between the Core Technology Fee and launching on the App Store is deemed "unworkable", with the companies claiming neither is DMA compliant.

“Apple’s new terms do not allow for sideloading and make the installation and use of new app stores difficult, risky and financially unattractive for developers,” the letter explains.

“Rather than creating healthy competition and new choices, Apple’s new terms will erect new barriers and reinforce Apple’s stronghold over the iPhone ecosystem.” The companies urge the European Commission to take action against Apple “to guarantee the DMA remains both credible and delivers competitive digital markets.”

What has Apple said?

The companies and associations listed in the letter include the likes of Deezer, Proton, Paddle, and more.

In response, Apple provided a statement to The Verge from spokesperson Peter Ajemian.

"Apple’s approach to the Digital Markets Act was guided by two simple goals: complying with the law and reducing the inevitable, increased risks the DMA creates for our EU users," it reads.

"For every change, teams at Apple continued to put our users at the center of everything we do.

That meant creating safeguards to protect EU users to the greatest extent possible and to respond to new threats, including new vectors for malware and viruses, opportunities for scams and fraud, and challenges to ensuring apps are functional on Apple’s platforms.

"Still, these protections don’t eliminate new threats the DMA creates," it ends, suggesting that despite its changes, Apple still feels the system will remain less secure.

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If you've ever switched from one music streaming service to another you're likely all too aware of the absolute farce that can ensue. Losing access to all of your meticulously created playlists is a real pain and if you have a huge library of music recreating that on another streaming service can often take so much time that few of us actually ever bother. Some people even refuse to switch because of the work that would be required and Apple seems to be well aware of that fact.

Getting people to switch to Apple Music from competing music streaming services like Spotify and Tidal is something that Apple has been trying to do for years now, and while it's still a popular offering it can't compete with the biggest and the best. But for those who do want to switch, Apple now seems determined to make it as quick and easy as possible to that effect it's reportedly now working on a tool to make the move less of a pain.

According to a new report Apple is working with SongShift to create a new feature that will allow people to take the music library from a competitor's service and move it to Apple Music. The feature is being tested, but it isn't ready to go just yet. However, it now appears clear that work is underway to make switching to Apple Music easier.

Moving all the things

According to a new MacRumors report Apple is testing the feature currently and references were found in the latest Apple Music beta for Android. They were first spied by a Reddit user but have since been confirmed by the site after diving into the app's APK.

Notably, the feature appears to be part of a deal with SongShift, a third-party service that already allows people to move their music playlists and libraries between different music streaming services. References to the feature being "powered by SongShift" can be seen on screenshots alongside text that invites users to "Choose a service and transfer your library and playlists you made over to Apple Music."

There have long been options for people who want to go this route but they have been third-party versions and limited in some way. They often also cost money or in some instances require a subscription. That obviously wouldn't be the case with any Apple-backed alternative.

It isn't yet clear how long Apple Music switchers will have to wait for Apple to bring this feature to the masses, but it's surely one that Apple will want to offer as soon as possible. Not all of those testing the Apple Music beta app on Android are already seeing the feature as an option, suggesting that Apple is still very much in the testing phase and is trying to ensure a limited number of people put the switching tool through its paces.

Apple Music is currently available with a free one-month trial while six months of music streaming is also offered when people buy certain Apple hardware, too. Beyond the trial music fans pay $5.99 per month for a student account or $10.99 per month for a standard account. Families can pay $16.99 per month while Apple Music is also available via the Apple One subscription bundle, too. That's perhaps the better option because it includes subscriptions to Apple TV Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, and more.

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Apple has been accused of breaking EU law over access to music streaming services on its platforms, and will be hit with a €500 million fine from the European Commission.

The news comes via a report from the Financial Times (paywall), which has spoken to five sources with direct knowledge of the ongoing case.

While the verdict isn't public until its announcement "early next month", the report suggests Apple unfairly prevented apps from suggesting payment methods outside of the App Store.

Spotify brought the initial complaint to regulators back in 2019, but it appears a verdict is finally forthcoming after half a decade and that Apple's terms will be deemed as "unfair trading conditions".

Another case, focused on Apple's decisions on which financial groups can use Apple Pay, is also continuing.

Apple hit by big fine in the EU

Despite the ongoing furore over the Digital Markets Act, aimed at preventing "walled garden" marketplaces, which rolls out early next month, this is the first time Apple has been hit by a fine from Brussels (a €1.1bn fine from France was revised down to €372m fine upon appeal).

Still, €500m may be the easiest part of this for Apple to swallow. The company has already allowed Epic Games, its longtime courtroom rival, a developer account in the EU to develop its own storefront and bring Fortnite back to the iPhone, while it's also been forced to alter the scope of web apps on iOS.

The biggest concern for the company is likely to be sideloading, with EU users expected to be able to install apps from outside of the App Store, and potentially away from the watchful eye of Apple's vetting process.

Apple's previously closed ecosystem is on the precipice of a dramatic shift, it seems, but it's not all bad news. Just a few days ago, the European Commission confirmed iMessage won't need to be opened up to other platforms.

If you were looking forward to using Apple Vision Pro with native YouTube and Spotify apps once the headset launches on February 2, we’ve got bad news for you.

According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, not only are these companies joining Netflix in not offering a Vision Pro app — but their iPad apps, which can easily be made to work on the headset, won’t be allowed on the platform either.

Instead, you’ll be asked to use Apple’s Safari web browser — completely missing the point of what a video app is capable of with Vision Pro. Other streaming apps, like Disney Plus, are confirmed for the headset and, in Disney's case, will take advantage of features like Environments. So, if you’d like to sit in Luke Skywalker’s speeder in Tatooine from Star Wars and watch a 3D movie via Disney Plus, you can.

However, when it comes to using YouTube, Spotify, or Netflix, you’ll have no choice but to type in each URL on Safari for Vision Pro.

A baffling decision by all — iMore’s take

Since September 2023, Apple has allowed developers to let their iPhone and iPad apps work on Vision Pro. It’s nothing more than ticking a box in Xcode, Apple’s developer platform for creating these apps, to enable this function.

For reasons known only to these three musketeers, the checkbox is something they’re not prepared to do.

In a time where these services have raised their subscription prices in order to, essentially, survive — the ease of simply downloading the apps to Vision Pro is not possible. That ease of use may be what could tempt users of these services to cancel their subscription with these three apps — especially when you’ll be able to access apps like Disney Plus on the headset.

Hopefully, all three will reverse course and click that checkbox for their iPad apps to work on Vision Pro. For now, though, if you decide to buy Apple’s headset, make sure that you’ve got these services bookmarked in Safari so you can easily access them in visionOS when the time comes.

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The matter of Apple's App Store and the way it runs it has long been a bone of contention for people, especially developers who sell their wares in it. Apple takes a 30% cut from all transactions handled via the App Store and doesn't allow apps to include a third-party payment system, either. But following the news that Apple is now going to at least allow apps to link out to third-party websites to process payments, it was hoped that there was going to be a new way for developers to accept money from their customers. And there will be, but it turns out that Apple will still want to take a 27% cut of all the money that hands after leaving an iPhone app. And developers aren't happy.

As is so often the case, Spotify is among the most vocal about the situation and it's been having its say in comments sent to various outlets. In them, Spotify dubs Apple's plans to take 27% from developers as "outrageous" before urging lawmakers to take Apple to task.

“Once again, Apple has demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to protect the profits they exact on the backs of developers and consumers under their app store monopoly," the statement begins. And it goes on to suggest that the route Apple is going to take is prohibited under the European Union's Digital Markets Act. As such, it could be illegal in the EU which will in turn force Apple to have a rethink.

Urging swift action

In a statement to the BBC, Spotify argued that it's now down to the UK to use its powers to put an end to Apple's "false posturing."

"The UK's Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumer Bill must put an end to this false posturing, which is essentially a recreation of Apple's fees," the statement reads. It went on to add "We strongly urge UK lawmakers to pass the bill swiftly to prevent Apple from implementing similar fees, which will help create a more competitive and innovative tech industry for UK consumers and businesses."

This closely follows a similar release sent to U.S. outlets like 9to5Mac which hinted that it's the EU that should be sorting things out.

"We strongly urge the European Commission to act swiftly and decisively to prevent Apple from implementing similar fees, which are prohibited under the DMA,” Spotify explained. And it's that final part that could prove important here. If the EU does find that Apple's 27% cut goes against its rules, things could be about to get even more complicated.

An Epic battle

This all comes after Apple lost its Supreme Court appeal in the years-long legal spat with Epic Games. As a result, Apple was told that it would be forced to allow app developers to link to external payment systems.

Apple is of course complying, but the 27% commission is something that some argue makes a mockery of the move. Developers are marginally better off as a result of the change, but some will argue that Apple shouldn't be taking a cut of payments that it isn't processing. It's worth noting that those on the Small Business Program will only pay 12% to Apple, down from the 15% that Apple takes for transactions processed via the App Store.

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It's been a strange few weeks for the Spotify app, at least the iPhone one. Reports from December suggested that the company was working to bring in-app purchases back to its app after having removed the ability to sign up for Spotify Premium back in 2016. That was based on code found within its app which showed that there were indeed references to options that would allow people to sign up once more.

However, things got more interesting when just a day later Spotify was moved to respond, saying that it wasn't bringing in-app purchases back to the iPhone after all. Farshad Shadloo told The Verge that “we have no plans to switch IAP [in-app payments] on at the moment.”

That, we thought, was the end of the story. But as is so often the case with a good drama, there's more to it than we originally thought. Because here we are, just a few weeks later, dealing with a distinct case of deja vu. Because once again, Spotify's app has its in-app purchase code back and nobody seems to know why. Spotify had removed it following last month's discovery but today it's back — and it's the exact same code that was discovered before.

Spotify can't make up its mind

The discovery was made by @aaronp613 on X, the social network better known to the majority of the planet as Twitter.

Backing up for a minute, it's difficult to understate just how big a deal Spotify's relenting on in-app purchases could be. Because it could change the way that people use Spotify on their iPhones.

Right now, people who want to subscribe to Spotify Premium must do so via the service's website, something that's a pain but far from a huge deal. Spotify ditched in-app purchases via Apple's App Store because it didn't want to pay the 30% cut that Apple takes from each transaction. That's something other companies also do, and for the same reason.

But while subscribing to Spotify Premium isn't something people do repeatedly, the same can't be said for another feature of Spotify. The app now allows people to listen to audiobooks, much like Audible and similar options. But because Spotify won't pay Apple its cut, audiobook fans have to buy their books via the Spotify website and then download them in-app. That's something people do much more often, and it's sure to be a bone of contention for many.

Could Spotify be looking to add some sort of in-app payment system to allow people to buy audiobooks in-app? If it is, it'll have to use Apple's payment system rather than its own — Spotify only needs to look at Epic Games to see why. Or try searching the App Store for Fortnite, perhaps.

What's going on?

Spotify couldn't have been more clear when it said that it wasn't bringing in-app purchases back, but it wouldn't be the first time that a company has said one thing and then done the opposite.

It's also possible that Spotify is getting ready to piggyback off future laws that might require Apple to allow third-party payment systems, but time will tell. For now, we can do little more than wait to see what Spotify has in mind. Because there's one thing that is clear. No matter what Spotify says, that code is designed to do something. What it is, we'll find out sooner or later.

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Why does Apple Music not understand how a 'like' button works? Why is this an issue in 2023?

I’m one of those people who have bounced between Spotify and Apple Music since Apple released its music streaming service in 2015 to compete in the streaming space. Then, when Apple rolled out its Apple One subscription bundle service in 2020, I made what has turned out to be a permanent switch — since the value of that bundle has been so great.

However, there has been one thing about Apple Music that has always bothered me, and it’s not that Spotify has a superior recommendation algorithm or that it has much better playlists. It’s that Apple Music, for whatever reason, hasn’t figured out how to correctly implement a simple way to like a song.

Apple Music’s ‘like’ button has been broken for years

For years, Apple Music hid the 'like' button under a menu. When you were playing a song, you had to dive into the menu to find the option to like a song or add it to your library. Later, they finally brought this 'Add to Library' button onto the Now Playing screen, but kept a separate “like” and 'dislike' button in the app. I never understood the need for this — if I like a song, I want to add it to my library. Why make this more complex than it needs to be?

Then, Apple updated the Apple Music app with iOS 17 and I finally thought they had fixed the confusion — one like button to rule them all. But no! They somehow made it even worse. Now, the button on the Now Playing screen is to 'favorite' a song.

What happens when you favorite a song? It adds it to your library. Oh, okay. That makes sense. But wait! It also adds it to a new playlist called Favorites. What? Why in the world does this need to exist? Apple already has a Favorites playlist — it’s the Favorites Mix playlist that is automatically updated weekly for you. And there’s more! You can add a song to your library without favoriting it and adding it to that useless playlist, but that option is once again buried in a menu.

Apple Music, please rip off Spotify

This entire experience makes absolutely no sense. There are now two ways to 'like' a song and one does one thing and the other does two things. There’s also a 'dislike' button that is buried in the menu and that no one uses. Where is my 'it just works' company with this confusing piece of crap?

Please, Apple Music, just rip off Spotify with this one. The app has one button — an 'add' button — that adds a song to your 'Liked Songs' when you tap it. There’s no separate library and 'Liked Songs' playlist that you have to worry about. If you tap the “add” button after you already liked the song, a menu pops up if you want to add it or remove it from the playlists you have created.

That’s a great and simple user experience. There’s no separate 'like' or 'favorite' or 'dislike' button that you need to use in order to feed Spotify’s algorithm There’s one button. Do you like a song? Click the add button. That’s it. That’s all it needs to be.

I’m going back to testing both

Of course, Apple Music does have its advantages. The app is still the go-to streaming service for Lossless Audio quality and Spatial Audio, and a lot of artists have been releasing their music in these new formats on the platform. The Live Lyrics feature is definitely better than Spotify and the Now Playing update is far more beautiful and immersive than the Now Playing screen that Spotify currently rocks.

However, Spotify has added a lot of recent updates that make me consider switching back. From its new desktop, mobile, and TV app design updates to adding 15 hours of audiobook listening per month for Premium users, the company is really diversifying itself and adding a lot of value for its subscribers.

I’m going to give Spotify another try. With Apple One getting even more expensive and Spotify having a more coherent user experience, I’m interested to see if I’d prefer heading back to a world without Apple Music. At the very least, I’ll know how to actually like a song!

Apple Music Classical has had a bigger impact on my listening habits than any other app, song, playlist or streaming service this year — and it'd be nearly perfect aside from a few small issues holding it back.

But first, a little background. There’s a little-known fact about the music I listen to — a bunch of it comes from soundtracks, and this all stems from a love of the music of the Back to the Future trilogy.

Back in the 90s, the adventures of Marty McFly amazed my 7-year-old self. I was lucky enough to go to Universal Studios in Florida, where I was dazzled by the Back to the Future Ride. As is usually the case when a ride ends at a theme park, you find yourself at the gift shop. But to me, this wasn’t just any gift shop — it was one full of the Back to the Future merchandise of my dreams.

This was before ‘merch’ from multiple brands was freely available to buy on the internet. Here, I was looking at toy versions of the Delorean time machine and brand-new VHS versions of the trilogy — and I was in awe. Yet, it was the soundtracks that caught my eye the most. After buying them, I listened to those three discs from each film constantly on my CD Player. From then on, I bought soundtracks from other movies, such as Star Wars and James Bond — and eventually, game soundtracks, such as Tomb Raider 2.

Fast-forward to 2023, and my Spotify library has a huge soundtrack playlist that has tracks from Tekken 2, Licence to Kill, the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show, Tomb Raider 4, and much more. 

But now thanks to Apple Music Classical, my method of managing soundtrack music has evolved into listening to movie tracks from a dedicated app instead of a dedicated playlist on Spotify. Yet there are some basic flaws that, for now, keep me from using it as a fully-fledged alternative.

Classically Apple

For those unaware, Apple Classical launched in March 2023 as a way of strictly listening to classical music. This way, you could listen to Mozart and John Williams without having your playlist interrupted by a random track from Snoop Dogg, while getting all the complex metadata associated with composer, musicians and recording not easily accessible on other streaming apps.

As a subscriber to the core Apple Music service I could access this app straight away, and I was keen to try it out and see how it could work for me with my music tastes. I wanted to see if Classical could help me discover a bunch of composers, similar to how Apple Music did the same for me with new artists in genres I previously never listened to.

Admittedly, over the course of a few months, I did discover some great albums, such as Bizet Carmen. But my curiosity and taste made me quickly focus on browsing film score composers.

Eventually, I added composers as favorites so I could quickly access works by John Williams and Bill Conti with ease. Adding albums and songs to different playlists was a joy too, so I could put different genres of movies into different sections, depending on what I wanted to listen to during the day.

If you’re also a lover of soundtracks, this may be ideal for you as well. However, several baffling limitations have stopped me from switching over to Classical exclusively for my soundtrack listening sessions.

Is this app stuck in 1998?

For the many things that Apple Classical gets right, such as its user interface and Spatial Audio tracks, there are a few fatal flaws that stop me from recommending it wholeheartedly. 

First of all, you can’t download tracks. Granted, you can add to your Library, or to a Playlist in Classical, but if you have no internet whatsoever, you’ll be brought to the  screen pictured above. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when you can do this in Apple Music with the same tracks and playlists that you’ve added in Classical.

This isn’t the only flaw, however. You can’t shuffle any music in the app. So, if you decide to create a bunch of playlists, like I have, you’ll have to be careful in the order that these tracks find themselves in. It’s either in one order or not at all. This is a baffling choice to me, and if this is intentional by Apple for some reason, it feels like only a basic request to eventually get this functionality added. That the app shipped without it at all feels remarkable.

Finally, Apple Classical is only available on iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices. It’s not even available as a web app, let alone a Mac app, much like how Apple Music and Spotify are. If you click on a link that’s from Apple Classical in a web browser, you’ll be advised to open up the app. For someone who works on a Mac daily, I currently have no choice but to have my iPhone nearby, with an active internet connection, in order to use Apple Classical.

Essentially, all of these reasons are why I’ll still be using Spotify for soundtracks. I can listen to tracks offline, on my Mac, or through a web browser with no issues through the Swedish streamer's service. It’s a shame, as the foundation of what Apple Classical offers is fantastic. Yet as it can’t get the basics right, I’ve got no choice but to keep Apple Classical to the back of the orchestra for now and wait until Apple decides that using the app offline, and being able to shuffle tracks, is not sacrosanct.

Apple is set to receive a large fine and a ban on the company’s App Store practices that take large commissions on in-app subscriptions to its music-streaming rivals, like Spotify.

The company is expected to be fined up to 10% of its annual sales alongside the enforced change to its subscription policy.

Bloomberg reports, “EU regulators are putting the finishing touches to a decision on Apple’s practice of blocking music services from pushing their users away from the App Store to alternative, cheaper, subscription options, according to people familiar with the investigation. The decision is slated for early next year.”

Anti-consumer?

Currently, apps like Spotify don’t offer subscriptions in its iOS app as Apple takes a large chunk of commission for in-app subscriptions, up to 30%. These allegations against Apple date back to 2019 when Spotify “claimed it was forced to ramp up the price of its monthly subscriptions to cover costs associated with Apple’s alleged stranglehold on how the App Store operates.”

However, a Bloomberg report in June claimed “In early 2022, Apple began allowing Spotify and other music services to direct users to the web in their apps to sign up for subscriptions.” By allowing this in its guidelines, companies could bypass the 30% cut, allowing potential subscribers more pricing and subscription options.

At the time, Spotify disagreed with Apple’s claims as the company “hit back at Apple’s efforts, saying in June that the restrictions still existed and the changes were “just for show.”

We won’t know the results of the hearing until early 2024, but we can expect to hear much more about this saga as the new year begins. Earlier this month, reports suggested Spotify would return to in-app subscriptions but these reports were later squashed by the music-streaming giant.

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Reports yesterday of Spotify adding in-app purchases for subscriptions back on iPhone have been debunked by Spotify’s global head of corporate and policy communications.

Speaking to The Verge after new code was spotted in the Spotify app on iOS with an in-app payment system including a checkout screen, Farshad Shadloo said, “We have no plans to switch IAP [in-app payments] on at the moment.”

Spotify removed the ability to subscribe to Spotify Premium in 2016 in an effort to avoid Apple’s 30% commission for purchases made through apps on the App Store. Earlier this year, Spotify migrated those subscribers over to its payment system.

Spotify’s dispute with Apple creates friction in the Spotify app experience on iOS with no ability to buy audiobooks, similar to how Amazon Kindle users can’t purchase content in the Kindle app on their Apple devices.

While reports yesterday seemed to hint that there was a slight shift in the relationship between Spotify and Apple, it looks like there won’t be any changes to the way you pay for Spotify Premium on iPhone anytime soon. 

Earlier this week, Spotify revealed that 17% of its workforce were to be laid off, roughly 1,500 employees. This is the third announcement of job cuts this year for the company, which is looking to find a remedy to its continued financial losses.

No IAP for now

While the lack of in-app purchases in the Spotify app is inconvenient for Apple users who use the green and black streaming service, it’s something we’ve become accustomed to over the years.

It would be ideal to see all subscriptions like Spotify Premium inside Settings on your iPhone, but for now, it looks like we’ll have to keep tabs on our Spotify login details and use the company’s website for all future payments.

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Paying for Spotify Premium has been a complicated business in recent years, but it might be about to get a whole lot easier. Giving Spotify money as an iPhone owner has meant doing so via the company's website for some time, but there are now signs that subscribers could be able to pay for their music fix using Apple's in-app purchase system once more.

Spotify has not allowed people to sign up to its Premium subscription service via an in-app purchase for more than seven years at this point, and it stopped allowing those who already signed up to continue paying that way earlier this year. The move was all about preventing Apple from taking a cut of its subscription money, something that has proven to be a bone of contention for many a developer over the years. It even saw Epic Games get Fortnite kicked out of the App Store for good, and it's why Epic and Apple have been in court on and off ever since.

It's also why Spotify subscribers can't buy audiobooks in the iPhone app, but there is a sign that something is afoot after it was found that there are new code references to an in-app payment system in the latest beta version of the Spotify app.

More ways to pay?

This is all according to a MacRumors report that's based on the discovery of those references. The report notes that it isn't yet clear what those in-app purchases are going to be, but the system in play does include an in-app purchase checkout screen and retry panels for when a payment fails.

Most curious of course because, as I just mentioned, Spotify has been very clear about its disdain for Apple's in-app purchase system and the way that it takes a cut of all transactions that are processed that way. But there are currently no ways to bypass that system without getting kicked out of the App Store — just ask Epic Games — so it's beyond odd that these references exist.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has not been quiet about the way he feels in terms of the App Store. He called its rules "absurd" back in May 2023, and it's unlikely that his stance has changed.

What's really going on?

There are so many questions around this news that it's difficult to know where to start. Is Spotify going to implement Apple's in-app purchase system here? If it is, will that be for the Spotify Premium subscription or for buying audiobooks? Or is a new external payment system on the way?

There have been moves to open the App Store and allow third-party payment systems before with the EU often at the heart of them. It's possible that Spotify is simply getting its ducks in a row ahead of time, ready in case Apple is forced to allow external payments. Dating apps in the Netherlands already have that capability after Apple was forced to implement a system to allow it in 2022 — but not until it had spent $52 million in fines over the matter.

Apple doesn't want to allow transactions outside of the App Store for obvious reasons, and it still takes a cut of those dating payments, too. One thing is sure — all eyes will be on Spotify to see what comes next.

More from iMore

• Spotify: Everything you need to know!
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?
• Spotify has a new look — and I hate it

Spotify, the music streamer that continues to prove hugely popular among both iPhone and Android users, is reportedly testing a new feature that actually disables an existing one. Yes, you read that right.

Not only is the new feature the ability to turn another feature off, but that feature is actually one of the very best things about Spotify. Perhaps the reason that some people use Spotify over competing music streaming services like Apple Music and others.

That feature is personalized recommendations, something that uses magic and rainbows (probably not magic and rainbows) to make recommendations for new music based on the songs, albums, and playlists that you listen to already. It's mighty impressive and it, by all accounts, works way better than anything that the competition has been able to muster in all the years they've been trying to catch up.

So all of that being said, the concept of a new feature being all about turning that stuff off might seem strange to you. But you'd be wrong because it could actually be amazing and one of the best features to come to Spotify in years. Let me explain.

So what does this feature do, exactly?

Before I explain why this news is so exciting, I have to explain what the news actually is. According to a MacRumors report, Spotify is now testing a tweak that will turn off personalized recommendations — the system that uses the magic and rainbows (still probably not magic and rainbows) to help recommend songs to music fans around the world. Little is known about this change, or how it will actually work, but MacRumors says that beta code found by Aaron Perris suggests that changes are afoot.

Before someone emails me to explain how Spotify's recommendation engine performs its recommendation wonders, a quick explainer on how it really works. Although it would be better if it was magic and rainbows. In short, Spotify pays attention to everything you listen to including the songs, genres, and other data points, and then feeds that into an AI-powered system that makes recommendations based on all the information it was given. The result is custom playlists that are full of music adjacent to songs you're familiar with but are actually new. The result of that is new music for you and more listening minutes for Spotify.

So we can all agree that the personalized recommendation system is pretty great. So why would you want to turn it off?

I'm glad you asked.

Kids. You'd want to turn it off if you have kids

OK, so let me set the scene. As a former Apple Music subscriber who recently relented and switched to Spotify like the rest of my family. I'm also the one who normally plugs my iPhone 15 Pro Max into the car when we're out and about and yes, I have two kids.

As anyone with kids will know, their musical tastes don't necessarily align with mine. And it's their songs we listen to when we're out and about, of course. That means that Spotify's recommendation fairy dust gets sprinkled on more Boy With Uke than I'd like to admit, and not the Fleetwood Mac that I'd like to listen to.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Apple Music is about to gain a new feature in iOS 17.2 that will allow listening history to be disabled based on the Focus Mode applied at the time, which in my example would be the Driving one.  That way Apple Music won't use music played while driving to inform its own recommendation system, and I'm very hopeful that's the route that Spotify is taking here. Because oh boy, my custom recommendations are taking a hammering.

My fear is that Spotify's new feature will work in much the same way but that it'll make me tap a button each and every time I want to enable and disable the personalized recommendations and that'll suck. Mainly because I'll probably just forget to turn it back on afterward!

More from iMore

• Spotify: Everything you need to know!
• How to create and share playlists with friends on Spotify for iPhone
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?

Spotify has, for a long time, been more than just a music streaming service. There is music news on board, artist merch to browse, short-form videos, and hours upon hours of podcasts available within your ever-burgeoning subscription. Now, as rumors of Spotify HiFi show their heads once again, Spotify has added thousands more hours of content in the form of over 150,000 audiobooks, free (to an extent) for Premium subscribers to access.

A shot over the bow of Amazon in particular, aimed squarely at upsetting the balance of the retail giant's separation of Audio-book purveyor Audible and its music streaming service Amazon Music Unlimited, this inclusion only widens the appeal of the Swedish streamer. The streaming service with the most just got even… mostier, as it were.

The single-platform model

When it comes to adding new features to its stable, Spotify has little choice but to stick it into the only app that it curates. Unlike the likes of Amazon and Apple, it can’t just add a new app to its roster, one that comes pre-installed on devices. Where Apple can release Apple Music Classical and introduce a new service that way, or Amazon can buy an existing service and bring it on board to its suite of apps, Spotify has to think about recognition — people know Spotify for the Spotify app, and not much else.

Spotify also has bigger ambitions than to become a niche music streamer like Tidal, or other hi-res options like Qobuz. These are apps for one thing, and one thing only: Listening to music in the highest quality possible. Spotify doesn’t want to restrict itself to just music, that much is already obvious with the inclusion of podcasts, and its comprehensive domination of the space.

If anything, however, the fact that Spotify has to put its new features in one app only makes for a better selling point for the Swedish company — it’s loads more convenient to have everything in one place.

While I am a user of Apple’s music and podcast services, I find myself increasingly annoyed with the way that everything is separate from each other. The Podcasts app looks different and feels different from the Music app, and I have to navigate both to find exactly what I want. Add Audible for audiobooks and everything becomes even more annoying to navigate, as well as adding in something even worse, in the form of extra cost every month.

The Cost Factor

I pay for an Apple Music subscription, an Audible subscription, and then a couple more hi-res streaming platforms so that my Audiophile credentials remain unchallenged. All in, I pay around $60 per month for my audio subs, and that’s not including the family Spotify plan that I’m a part of.

Now, if Spotify can bring all the things that I pay for into one, helpfully inexpensive subscription that I can lay down the dollars for every month, I would be eternally grateful.

Spotify’s new AudioBook inclusion is filled with 150,000 books, from Patrick Stewarts' memoir to Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome. That’s all included in your premium subscription, and you can listen to 15 hours of books for free every month. Compare that to the Audible subscription, which gives you a credit every month to buy an audiobook that you can listen to — anything you buy on Audible beyond that credit will cost you upwards of $40. Go up from the base $7.99 a month plan to the Plus $14.99 plan, and you get an extra credit.

Spotify costs $10.99 per month, already a decent deal when compared to its competition. Add in that you get a long audiobook included in that sub, and it becomes a whole lot more tempting and convenient than $7.99 for Audible plus the extra for another streaming platform. If that Spotify Family sub could be my only streaming thing, that’s one more large Lego set per month, after all.

I am tempted…

What’s keeping me back

… But I am not convinced. I used to be a long-time user of Spotify, and there were a number of different factors that drew me away from the service. First and foremost is audio quality — and there is a reason that I pay so much for Tidal and Qobuz, the two premier Hi-Res streaming platforms.

Apple Music, Tidal, and Qobuz all support lossless, high-res streaming. Apple Music is like the stepping stone to the latter services, offering streaming that’s not quite as good as the others for a better price. Now, I value hi-res streaming perhaps more than others, and as such pay the very high price to get exactly what I want — but Spotify might have an opportunity here to really nail things down in Tammy land.

I am already annoyed that Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Music are all separate apps, but I am willing to be annoyed in exchange for increased streaming quality. If Spotify were to now include hi-res streaming to rival the likes of Tidal and Qobuz, I would be far more likely to want to switch over, and potentially save myself a great deal of money.

Until Spotify can provide that hi-res streaming, however, this music, audiobook, and podcast listener will continue to listen over multiple different apps, paying through the nose for the privilege. From my point of view, these apps all still have my libraries on them — my audible subscription has all the books I’ve bought over years of use, and the podcasts app tells me when my favorite podcasts have something new for me to listen to. In the end, making the shift to Spotify for some but not all of my requirements hardly feels worth it.

I do, however, understand that I am an outlier. A freak with no leash, a niche customer with weird requirements. For everyone else, this could be huge — and it should make Amazon and Apple look up from their piles of money.

An industry shakeup

Spotify already offered Audiobooks in its app, but you had to pay for them. It was a statement of intent, however — ‘Hey Amazon and Apple, we’re coming for you’. A statement of intent that has now become an active part of Spotify’s business model, and it might just make for a massive shakeup in the streaming space, courtesy of the normal user, who doesn’t care for things like hi-res streaming.

For most people, the idea of one app that does everything could well be what brings them over to the platform. One app to search, one app to listen, and one app to conquer. And conquer is exactly what Spotify wants to do, as it watched its numbers fall after a series of blunders over the last couple of years.

There was the weird app update that made it feel like a green version of TikTok, and the still oft-rumored hi-res streaming update that is yet to be realized, amongst other issues that saw users start to try out the likes of Apple Music and Amazon Music. Since then, however, the app has been stronger than ever, and it could well be that audiobooks bring back some old users of the platform.

It will most likely, however, make Amazon and Apple think more about how their apps are presented, and how users access their content. Will Amazon bring Audible into its Music Unlimited subscription? Will Apple look at getting Audiobooks on Apple Music, or merging its services into one app that’s called something different?

Spotify has music streaming nailed for the everyman at this point, with loads of fun extras like Spotify wrapped. Podcasts and Audiobooks only serve to make the app stronger, and while weirdos like me aren’t going to be so easily tempted over, it’s very likely that other users will — and that could be very interesting for Spotify’s competitors.

Spotify Blends are a wonderful way to connect with friends, broaden your horizons, and show off all the underground music you listen to. But being one of many ways that Spotify will make playlists for you, it can be a little confusing to find initially. 

Released in 2021 and presumably an effect of long lockdowns and time away from family and friends, Blends are a very charming little idea that help you feel a little closer to those who are far away. 

You can wait for your friends to invite you to their blend or take the initiative to make a blend with nine of your coworkers. Being one of many unique features that Apple Music hasn’t copied just yet, it’s one of the best conversation pieces for any Spotify user. Here’s what you should know about Spotify Blends and why the expected iOS 17 changes to Apple Music aren’t quite enough. 

How to make a Spotify Blend on iPhone and iPad

A Spotify Blend is a collaborative playlist automatically created by Spotify to blend the genres and style of your music collection with your friends. It finds songs you have in common and tries to give a middle ground between those that aren’t.

When you are in the Spotify app on your iPhone or iPad, you simply have to click on the search bar in the bottom middle of the screen. From here:

1. Click on Made For You in the “Browse all” section. Click on Create a Blend in the “Made for Us” sectionClick Invite to invite your friends to a blend
2. Send the link to a friend and the Blend will be automatically made for you

Frequently Asked Questions

One more thing… Is Apple Music in iOS 17 catching up?

Spotify has managed to secure its spot as one of the best music apps out there, partially due to innovations like Spotify Blend. Despite paying artists over double for each song stream, Apple has under half the paid subscribers that Spotify has. You have to pay to use Apple Music, and each year, users are left out in the figurative cold when Spotify Wrapped comes out. All the pretty graphs showing the ridiculous amount of times you listened to Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness have noticeable Spotify branding, and this organic FOMO marketing leaves many wondering why they pay the Apple Music fee each month. 

Music is a great connector. Even if you come from different backgrounds and don’t share the same common knowledge, our ability to connect over music grounds so many humans around the world. Spotify makes sharing music an occasion. Spotify Blend automatically adds multiple different music tastes together and aims to find common ground. Comparatively, Apple Music comes across as rather insular. 

This being said, the iOS 17 update for iPhones, coming later this year, comes with some changes to Apple Music. As well as small quality-of-life improvements like a better UI and crossfade feature, it is finally introducing collaborative playlists. With this, you can connect to another friend's playlist digitally and add your own songs. You can add extra people in at any point, see who added songs, and even react to new song choices. 

But collaborative playlists have been on Spotify for years and can be accessed without paying extra for the feature. The upgrades to Apple Music look interesting, but its competition has been doing a lot more for a lot less this whole time. Apple Music, as our Twitter account states, is an excellent service, but Spotify does a better job at connecting people. Apple Music is a means to an end, whereas Spotify is often an experience in itself. 

The battle between Apple Music and Spotify is likely to be one you’ve already chosen a side in given the prevalence of music streaming, and while there are plenty of positives for each, I’ve long been a Spotify user.

That comes down to three main reasons; its Windows app is far better than using iTunes in 2023, its recommendations feel more consistently close to what I’d actively seek out and listen to, and Siri integration on Apple Music is so inconsistent while, interestingly, Spotify tends to nail my requests placed via Siri more commonly.

Those last two features had me interested in Spotify’s new AI DJ feature, and while I’d be lying if I said I felt entirely comfortable handing over so much of my audio decision-making to what is ostensibly a robot, I did so for research - just for a week.

What’s in a voice?

Spotify’s AI DJ is based on Xavier “X” Jernigan, head of the company’s cultural partnerships and host of the popular podcast, The Get Up.

While I’d been expecting a comically robotic voice, I was pleased by how smoothly the AI DJ introduced himself and how easy the process was. Simply search ‘DJ’ on Spotify, and it gets cracking.

‘X’ runs through songs in what it describes as “vibes” – short blocks of around three to five tracks that fit a certain theme. 

Some are self-explanatory, such as surfacing songs that I’ve been listening to regularly anyway, while others dip into years gone by to identify key tracks from that year (remember Despacito?).

It’s arguably a bit of smoke and mirrors that leans heavily on Spotify’s already solid recommendations, but I found myself enjoying each “vibe” and the way X introduces each.

They’re not all introduced, however. There were some moments where he just launched me into a track or two with little fanfare, but as silly as it sounds, I came to quite enjoy the interactions when they did pop up, where X was naming songs or artists and referring to me by name. Maybe I need to get out more.

Just vibing

For all the excellent work X does, it’s worth noting that the AI doesn’t get it all right, all of the time.

Just as other AI models draw from the same search results and data and regurgitate it such as ChatGPT and Bing Chat, I found Spotify’s AI DJ would recommend artists in my current rotation, play it, and then recommend it again shortly after.

It’s not a huge issue, but it did lead to a fair number of recurring appearances from some of my regular 2023 artists. Thankfully, some “vibes” are dedicated to new music identified to fall within a user’s tastes, so tapping the DJ button to move along these was welcome for me.

X can also bring plenty of knowledge, letting you know various trivia tidbits about songs or artists. Whether that’s touring schedules, major career milestones, or who played Glastonbury this year, it’s been a fun step closer to the FM DJs I grew up listening to in the car.

These are short anecdotes, not getting in the way of your next track by any more than a few seconds, and it’s a fun way to learn about artists, albums, or individual songs.

I was also impressed that the AI DJ is integrated into the Spotify app through CarPlay. Tap it to kick things off, and switch up the vibe with a tap. Spotify has always been one of the best CarPlay apps, but it was still a pleasant surprise to have X in the passenger seat.

While I’ve no issue with X’s persona, I do wonder how far we are from third-party voices and personalities being added, too. It’ll be interesting to see if any alternatives spring up, especially given Spotify is impressively malleable with things like themes on desktop.

Over to you, Apple

If Spotify’s AI DJ does end up being the future of music discovery, then it feels like Apple will need to do some catching up.

As much as the company stands by Siri, it remains the least smart “smart assistant” that I’ve used in my time. If I can’t rely on Siri to set a timer consistently with a voice command, can I realistically expect it to queue up the music for my workday?

That may be harsh, but I remain surprised that Apple Music Voice is a chargeable option, given in my experience, Siri remains inconsistent at best and incompetent at worst. 

Regardless though, Apple Music recommendations have been steadily improving, and since Spotify’s AI DJ is an extra layer on top it may happen.

And yet, Apple Music still has a larger library and better audio quality, so perhaps the two will continue to diverge into separate paths.

For now, I’m going to settle in and see what X has in store for me this evening.

Spotify has slipped out of the news cycle a little recently, something a green circle is likely pleased about after its 'new' app problems and controversy surrounding its rumored plans to make users pay for its as yet unreleased HiFi plan. It's back on front pages again – although this time for something that's going to affect around 0.68% of its audience.

Spotify hasn't offered in-app purchases on its app on Apple devices since 2016 after it refused to pay Apple's so-called 'Tax' on App Store purchases. There was a small period where users could get a Spotify subscription between June 2014 and May 2016, but now it looks like users who pay this way will have to find a new way to get their sub sorted.

No more Apple subscriptions for Spotify users

According to Apple, only 628 thousand of Spotify's 100 million subscribers used the Cupertino giants subscription option, and now that number is going to drop to 0%. Vanity Fair reported that users who subscribe through this method have received emails from Spotify that read, "We’re contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you used Apple’s billing service to subscribe. Unfortunately, we no longer accept that billing method as a form of payment."

Apple Music is the next best thing for users that want to continue to subscribe through Apple subscriptions – and to some users, it provides a much better experience. For around the same amount every month, you get access to Apple's library of hi-res audio, something that Spotify is still yet to release – and when it does, it's likely to come at a premium on top of your normal subscription cost.

Spotify has taken Apple to court over its App Store 'taxes' in the past, and this is just the last in a long list of different fights that Apple and Spotify have had.

Research conducted by Future between May 2022 and March 2023 has revealed that as the cost of living bites, 50% of respondents in both the UK and the US are stopping or cutting back on entertainment subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify. 

The research, which is powering the relaunch of our tech-expert buddies over at TechRadar, was conducted over three separate surveys in May 22, September 22, and March 2023. 

It comes as the cost of living crisis and rising inflations sees consumers searching for ways to cut costs or to find better value in the services and subscriptions they pay for. 

Cutting back

The cost of living research asked TechRadar readers whether they would consider, or had recently started "stopping or cutting back on entertainment subscriptions (e.g .Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video etc)." 

50% of readers in both the UK and the US answered yes, showing that half of all consumers are tightening their belts when it comes to digital subscriptions. 

It comes as Netflix clamps down on password sharing amongst users, and has rolled out an even cheaper ad-supported tier. With subscription fatigue now stronger than ever, it's clear that digital subscriptions in general are on the chopping block. 

Interestingly, however, purchases of physical tech are much more important. Both US and UK respondents said they were more likely to cut back on eating out, going to the bar/pub, and similar socializing before putting planned tech purchases on hold or canceling altogether. 

90% of TechRadar's core audience and 86% of all respondents say they agreed that it was now "more important than ever" to get a good deal on tech. That means events like Amazon Prime Day, which has already brought a swathe of great Prime Day Apple deals to the table, are the perfect opportunity to make some handy savings. 

Spotify has had its fair share of issues with the designs of its app. One of the most recent changes completely overhauled the mobile app, and left it looking a little less than stellar.

Thankfully, however, Spotify doesn't seem to have completely lost its eye for good design. The new look that it has brought to its desktop app looks to streamline users' experiences, putting more of their favorite music at their fingertips, with personal libraries and playlists more easily accessed than before. This puts the desktop app into the 'much better than the Apple Music desktop app' territory now, which continues to lag behind the mobile version.

New Spotify desktop features

There are some cool new things that you'll notice upon opening the new desktop app. First of all, the library is no longer a separate section to click through to; it's now a sidebar that can be collapsed. You can add different sections to this sidebar, allowing you to sort through different segments of your library like artists, podcasts, and albums. Like a certain album more than others? Pin it, and get easier access the next time you want to find it.

You can also add your playlists to this sidebar, making them more accessible than before. You can drag and drop songs from the central window into those playlists as well, making adding songs super easy. Those playlists can be easily reordered with a simple drop-down as well if you want to change the way that playlist looks.

The now-playing bar at the bottom remains similar, but there's now a new now-playing view on the right side of the screen. This gives more information about the song that you're listening to, such as artist bios and upcoming concert dates.

All this seems to be a step in the right direction. All the changes serve to make the app easier to use, and bring Spotify on the desktop back on top when compared to its competitors. Now we just need HiFi streaming...

Music streamer Spotify is again tipped to be working on a new tier that will add HiFi-quality audio to its catalog. The new quality will be similar to Apple Music's existing lossless streaming, but whereas it's a free upgrade on Apple's platform that won't be the case with Spotify.

However, while a new tier will be created to support HiFi streaming, it's now reported that there will be other perks for customers to enjoy alongside better quality music.

Among those perks is the ability to listen to audiobooks as a part of the subscription pricing, but it isn't yet clear if the choice will be limited or if a time limit will be applied.

Better quality streaming

Spotify said it was working on HiFi quality streaming back in 2021 but later paused its rollout after Apple Music offered a similar feature for free to all subscribers. Now, Bloomberg reports that Spotify continues to develop the "Supremium" subscription.

"To augment its current 'Premium' tier, Spotify will give subscribers expanded access to audiobooks, either through a specific number of hours free per month or a specific number of titles," Bloomberg reports. "There will be an option to purchase more. Currently, the company only sells audiobooks a la carte through its app. Spotify plans to introduce that feature in the US in October, after first launching in markets abroad."

If customers in the United States will gain support for the new tier in October it isn't yet clear when everyone else will get in on the act, but Bloomberg suggests that international customers will be the first to take the new feature for a spin.

it also isn't clear how much Spotify's new subscription will cost — the Premium plan currently sells for $9.99 per month. Apple Music costs a little more at $10.99 per month.

No matter which service you use, you're going to need some good headphones to get the most out of HiFi-quality audio. Be sure to check out our list of the best headphones around before you make your purchase.

Subscribers to the Spotify music streaming service could be about to get a big new feature — and it's one that Apple Music should absolutely look to steal for its own app.

The new feature, confirmed by CEO Daniel Ek, is called "Your Offline Mix" and is designed to give people something to listen to even when they don't have an active internet connection over which to stream music.

Those situations could include when setting foot on an airplane or just when the local 5G connection isn't as fast as it could be. But while Ek didn't go into details about how the feature would work, it's the prospect of downloading a proactive playlist that makes this the most interesting. A screenshot shared by Ek suggests the playlist created will be a multi-hour one.

Already being tested

As TechCrunch reports, some users are already sharing details about the feature that has appeared on their devices as part of Spotify's testing. However, it isn't immediately obvious how Spotify is choosing which accounts to enable the new feature on, or whether they are all Spotify Premium subscribers.

"A mix of your recently played songs for when the vibe is high, but your connection is low," Ek's screenshot shows.

Whether or not Apple Music will also start to offer a similar feature to Your Offline Mix, we will have to wait and see. But as anyone who found themselves on an airplane and having forgotten to download their music will attest, it's sure to be one that would prove popular.

The Apple Music subscription is of course available as part of the Apple One bundle that also includes services like Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness Plus, and more.

Apple has made significant purchases of companies in the past - one of its biggest being Beats Music in 2014. But we think it’s now time for another big acquisition to happen.

The company is well known for getting its co-founder, Steve Jobs back by purchasing his NeXT computer company in 1996, bringing it back from the brink of bankruptcy and becoming the monolith we see today.

However, you can’t help but notice that while Beats Music enhanced Apple’s music capabilities and audio hardware, there are other categories where it could improve again by buying another company.

With this in mind, the iMore team has had a think and decided upon certain companies that Apple could use to bolster its armory even more.

Nintendo

John-Anthony Disotto — How to Editor

I’ve been vocal about Apple’s lack of love for gaming for a long time, and now I have an opportunity to tell the company exactly what it should spend its money on – Nintendo.

I just want to see what Apple could do in the gaming industry if it put the effort in rather than something like Apple Arcade or gaming on Mac, which, let’s be real, both feel like afterthoughts.

Of the big three gaming console manufacturers, Nintendo seems the most likely, so for this particular opinion, we’ll focus on the most beloved gaming hardware manufacturer and developer rather than the best.

Buying a company like Nintendo would allow Apple to put its weight into the gaming landscape and get creative alongside the masterminds behind Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda to create magic. I see a lot of similarities between Apple and Nintendo and think they could work together to create products and games that would feel and play outside the box.

Deliveroo or Uber Eats

Tammy Rogers — Staff Writer

Apple, don’t just offer same-day delivery with Uber Eats – buy that or another similar service outright. Make it unavailable on Android. Make it so annoying to get a hold of for non-iPhone users that they wish they had an iPhone in their pocket. Let me ask Siri to order a chicken korma with a large portion of rice and a big garlic naan while I’m crunched up on the sofa watching TV, too lazy to get my phone from the coffee table in front of me.

Make my life easier at the expense of others, please.

In all seriousness, it’s a wonder that Apple hasn’t yet dipped its big Californian toes into the fast-food delivery space. They have so many users on iPhone that would use it and even more that might switch if the experience is good enough. There are even different, ready-made apps that it could buy, like Uber Eats or Deliveroo. Maybe, just maybe, we could even buy tasty Apple-themed treats. Maybe.

Disney

Stephen Warwick — News Editor

Steve Jobs was a founding father of Pixar, which was bought by Disney back in 2006 for a cool $7.4 billion. In 2023, it’s time to bring this narrative full circle with Apple’s acquisition of Disney.

There are some huge reasons why this might be a good idea. For starters, Disney is valued at north of $200 billion, making the size of the purchase a stretch even for cash-flush Apple. As analysts have noted, there’s also the question of Disney’s rather thin margins, which are much smaller than Apple’s operating margins of around 30%. But, technicalities aside, Disney would turn Apple into an unstoppable force in the tech and entertainment industry. So much so that it would likely never get past antitrust regulators - eat your heart out, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

Acquiring Disney would land Apple 162 million Disney+ subscribers and all of its content, 25 million ESPN+ subscribers, and 48 million Hulu subscribers, not to mention all of the content that goes with that.

It would also bring into the fold ABC News and give Apple access to IP, including Marvel and a small, obscure space franchise called “Star Wars”. Apple acquiring Disney would turn the company into an absolute monolith of hardware and service-based products that would destroy everything in its path.

Spotify

Daryl Baxter — Features Editor

I’ll just say it - Apple Music is a mess, and it feels like it’s been in some sort of mess since its debut in 2015. After purchasing Beats, the Music app was redesigned to handle music streaming to take on Spotify, TiDAL, and others. But eight years later, its curation and look still feel unfinished.

And that’s not even going into the recently-released Apple Classical app, where it’s iPhone only, and you can’t download a track. This is why I believe Apple should merge its Apple Music department with a purchase of Spotify.

Its app is leagues apart from Apple Music - its user interface feels fresh and intuitive, and curation feels more powerful and genuine to your tastes, and its ‘Look Back’ feature at the end of every year is useful and, funny. Granted, Apple does its own take now with ‘Replay’, but it feels too little too late.

Spotify also has its own podcast network, which it keeps integrated into the same app. While Apple split this off into a standalone app in 2012, that also feels like it needs more love. Nevertheless, Spotify has proved that both formats in one app work, so Apple, let's see a purchase.

Making it rain again

Apple’s track record of buying companies has been strong - from NeXT to Beats Music, and even Shazam, the music-recognition platform. But with its rivals like Meta and Google investing millions of dollars into VR, AR, and everything else, there’s no harm in getting help from an established company that knows its category from top to bottom.

More investment in its apps for gaming and music would massively bolster its capabilities and in turn, with games especially, make developers want to develop for Apple’s devices. But with WWDC 2023 a month away, there’s always a chance Apple has already bought a prolific company that could bring seismic change to one of these categories, and if that’s the case, watching this year’s keynote could be one to remember.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk have both taken it upon themselves to complain about Apple's App Store rules once more.

While neither man has been complimentary about Apple's App Store rules in the past, the latest discussion came after Twitter launched a new subscription feature that allows users to sell subscriptions to their content. But it appears that creating those subscriptions can take a little longer on iPhones because of Apple's rules.

Replying to the reasoning, Ek called the move "absurd" and suggested that Apple's approach simply wasn't scalable.

'This is absurd'

The discussion kicked off when Musk told Twitter users that "it takes a few days longer for subscriptions to go active on iPhone vs web" because "all subscriptions currently have to be approved by Apple." That would suggest that each Twitter creator's subscription is being turned into an individual in-app purchase in the App Store, meaning Apple must check each subscription every time one is created.

That's something that could prove problematic if a lot of people create subscriptions — something not lost on Spotify's CEO.

"This is absurd," Ek started. "How would this scale with every creator on every platform on the internet? And what about if a platform thought the right fee was 0% or 10% instead of Apple's 30%?"

The 30% cut Apple takes from App Store transactions has long been a bone of contention for Spotify and others, so it's little wonder that Ek took the opportunity to mention it here. Musk is also no stranger to complaining about Apple and the App Store, having previously also made his feelings about that 30% cut clear.

As for Apple, it believes the best iPhone is one that's protected by the App Store which means no sideloading and no payments outside of its walled garden. But with those walls starting to crumble as global governmental pressure mounts it remains to be seen where Apple will go from here.

In the meantime, Twitter subscriptions are going to take a little while to go live and you can blame Apple, apparently.

The world of music streaming is a competitive one and Apple Music has plenty to shout about. But if there's one streamer that it seems set to perpetually play catch up to, it's Spotify.

The Swedish streamer has been around longer than most which gave it a huge leg up on some of the competition. But it continues to grow in ways few others can compete with and its latest quarter results drive that point home more than ever.

According to those results, Spotify now has more than 500 million active monthly users. That's the first time it's achieved such a milestone, and it's a huge number.

Music to someone's ears

While Apple doesn't share much data about how Apple Music is doing, Spotify isn't bothered about who knows its numbers — likely because they're so positive. A press release confirmed the milestone, adding that the streamer's 515 million active monthly users is a 22% increase from the previous year.

It's a similar story for subscriptions as well, with a 15% growth giving Spotify 210 million people who now pay for their music.

Spotify also says that it saw its total revenue grow by 14% to €3.0 billion ($3.3 billion) thanks to those subscriber gains.

All of this is of course huge news for Spotify, but the release doesn't mention when it will get around to launching its HiFi tier. Apple Music has its own lossless streaming capabilities, but Spotify lags behind here. It also isn't clear whether Spotify will charge a premium for high-bitrate streams.

Whether you'll be strapping on the best headphones you can find and listening to Spotify's higher-quality streams any time soon is anyone's guess, but with half a billion people listening in we have to imagine it's on the way. The sooner the better.

In the meantime, Apple has some lossless and spatial audio music ready and waiting for you.

Spotify has long been the music streaming app of choice, with its massive library and impressive ‘play next’ feature. Over the last few months, however, things have looked a little spotty for Spotify, with a big update that angered users, news about Spotify HiFi that annoyed others, and controversial podcasters that got on the nerves of just about everyone else. In this case, you may be looking for another streaming service, like Apple Music, to get your audio fix – along with a way to make sure that you’ll not pay the $9.99 a month Spotify subscription anymore. You need to cancel.

Thankfully, Spotify has made it super easy for you to cancel on all your devices, from your iPhone 14 to your MacBook Pro and your iPad mini in between. We’ve detailed each way below, from the mobile platforms (which work much the same) to how to cancel your Spotify subscription on your desktop.

Cancel Spotify on your iPhone or iPad

Surprisingly, it’s super easy to cancel on your mobile device – there are even a couple of ways that you can do it! The first is through the Spotify app itself, and the second is through the in-app purchases section in your iPhone's settings. For the latter to work, you need to have subscribed through in-app subscriptions for iOS, otherwise, just use the first method.

You can also permanently close your account here, although you should only do this if you’re going to never come back to the platform ever again.

These steps only work if you’ve got a solo Spotify premium account – for family plan members, you won’t be able to change plan details within the app at all.

Cancel Spotify on Mac

There’s really only one way to cancel Spotify on a desktop, and that's in your browser. The App just takes you to the webpage anyway, so you’re probably best off starting there. For more information, Spotify has its own page about canceling.

As said before, this is the only way to cancel if you’re the owner or a member of a Premium Duo or Family account.

Apple Music – is it the platform for you?

So you’ve canceled Spotify, and now you wonder; which platform is best for you now? Apple Music is likely one you’re considering, and it’s easy to see why. The library is extensive, with all the music you could want (unless you like 20’s recordings of niche pianists playing in Jazz bars during prohibition), and there are some super cool extra features.

There’s Hi-Res music with the Apple Lossless program, and that comes included in the price of your subscription – which is the same $9.99 per month as Spotify. If you miss podcasts, you can always jump into the Apple Podcasts app, and there are some excellently curated playlists from real humans as well. Apple Music is a brilliant alternative to Spotify, particularly if you’re a user of one of the best iPhones and want a seamless experience.

Is Spotify working for you right now? There's a very good chance that it isn't, with the music, podcast, and audiobook streamer reporting that it's aware of an issue and that it's looking into it.

People have taken to social media, including Twitter, to say that they just can't quite make things work properly right now. Some say they can't make the app work at all while others are having problems logging in.

Those who are already logged in? They can't stream anything either.

No music for you

Downdetector.com, a website that highlights when online services are having issues or outages, shows a sharp increase in people complaining of issues with Spotify within the last hour starting at around 08:00 am EDT. 

Users have flooded social media to share screenshots of the Spotify app saying that "something went wrong" and offering them the chance to try again. That obviously doesn't seem to be helping right now, but the good news is that Spotify is aware of the issue and hopefully a fix is just around the corner.

Until then, competing streaming services like Apple Music remain unaffected, although Apple's own services are far from immune from such problems themselves.

Streaming services failing like this does make us pine for the days when we had a hard drive full of MP3s, but there's no denying the convenience of streaming when it works. Still, even the best headphones money can buy are no good when you can't fill them with music.

Thankfully, outages like this are normally short-lived so go for a walk, maybe have a cup of coffee. Hopefully, we'll all be bopping along to our favorite jams in no time at all.

As for what happened, who knows? But maybe it was related to the controversial interface refresh we were subjected to recently.

Spotify may not have had the strongest 2023, but there have been a couple of quality-of-life improvements that have made the app a little better. One of which is this new feature, which makes it possible to have a Spotify widget on your iPhone Lock Screen screen. You only need to tap it once to launch the app, cutting the process down from the few taps you might have needed before.

It's going to require iOS 16 later, due to the customization options that came with the most recent version of iOS, but it's super easy to do. You'll be bopping along to your favorite tunes in no time, if you can find them in Spotify's new look app.

One-tap Spotify

The new feature was revealed on a Spotify Community page, where the instructions were posted as well. Written by Spotify volunteer MattSuda, they talk you through the process of getting it working on the best iPhones.

There are also some troubleshooting tips at the bottom of the page for users that can't get the feature to work correctly. MattSuda says that restarting the iPhone might help, or waiting for a little while and trying again if it doesn't appear initially after the restart.

The widget makes launching the app a little easier if it's not already playing music, but the now-playing box still shows on your lock screen if you're listening to Bronski Beat.

Spotify has seen some flack recently for the redesign of its app, as users think it prioritizes video content over music, the material that most people subscribe for. It's also been a little secretive about its new lossless HiFi tier as of late, although there are rumors and rumblings that Spotify will charge more for the option – even though other apps and services have the same feature for free.

As a result of this, Spotify has seen lower numbers of subscribers, as users shift to other options, like Apple Music. Perhaps this will make some reconsider their position – although it's likely too little too late.

Spotify has had disagreements with Apple for a while now. The company has been critical of Apple's approach toward apps. Spotify even maintains a public tab of all the Apple decisions that have been unfair towards the company. Apple had even launched the HomePod without Spotify support.

While Apple has since then added support for Spotify on the HomePod, the app still doesn't work on it. That's because Spotify is yet to add support for HomePod, and it doesn't have plans to do it anytime soon, either, according to the company's statement to Mark Gurman. In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman also revealed that Spotify plans to add AirPlay 2 support eventually.

Spotify not too keen on Apple ecosystem support

Spotify apparently doesn't think of HomePod support as all that important, citinga lack of interest from users. Gurman reported, "Spotify says this isn’t a big deal. When I asked the company about the issue, it said there hasn’t been a “significant volume” of complaints about the lack of HomePod support. They claim there are only 18 comments on Reddit and 138 tweets about the issue. I think that misses the point, though. (And for what it’s worth, there’s a complaint on Spotify’s forums about HomePod support that has 5,800 likes.)"

Given how Spotify is one of the most popular apps on iPhone, it seems like a miss to leave out HomePod support. It doesn't seem to be racing to support the newer AirPlay 2, promising support while being very vague about the timeline. 

Spotify said in a statement, "Spotify remains committed to supporting AirPlay 2 at some point in the future. We’re on a path towards making it happen eventually, but we cannot state when that will be at this stage."

So it seems like Spotify won't come to HomePod anytime soon, but you can still enjoy it on the best Bluetooth speakers out there, or switch to Apple Music.

Spotify hasn’t had a good time of it recently. With its new app layout looking a little too much like TikTok for lots of users, and the announcement that a new pricing tier is coming if you want lossless streaming and nebulous ‘premium podcast stuff,’ users are understandably tired. Many will be looking for different ways to stream music on their phones, laptops, and tablets. 

I am a Spotify alumnus of many years now. I still have an account because friends insist on sending me links to albums and playlists on the service, but the platform sees no use on my devices. Instead, I have a hefty collection of streaming services that I use instead, with options at a bunch of different price points. If there is anyone who can tell you a little bit about music streaming services, then it’s me.

My number one: Qobuz

Qobuz is like a two-in-one. There’s a store where you can buy lossless music and a streaming service that will let you stream lossless music for a monthly fee. It’s a lot like Apple Music in that way, although you’ll soon find that the streaming quality is much better.

The library size is good as well, with loads and loads of niche artists and albums. I have never found myself wanting for albums, with pretty much everything I search being present and correct. The search function is good, and you can find songs based on the normal set of parameters, such as album, artist, and song name. One of the coolest parts of Qobuz, however, is all the information that Qobuz gives you about any track, album or artist.

There is stuff like this on other apps, but it goes super in-depth here. You could learn the story of an album, read reviews, or learn more about the writing process. I was surprised how much there actually is on here for not just the big artists, but the smaller and lesser-known ones as well. It’s a really nice touch, and it makes the service feel a little friendlier than some of the competition.

The App itself is excellent too. It’s about as simple as they come, but all the options are clearly laid out, and easy to get to. It’ll tell you what bitrate the track is streaming at, depending on the device it's plugged into, and give you loads of options when you’re on the now-playing screen. There’s not much to comment on with that - all the options are a swipe or a tap away, and they all work very well.

Qobuz has some of the highest bit rates available, going up to 192kHz 24bit. Not all tracks are going to be at this quality, but plenty are, and even those that aren’t sound great. The best bit, however, is the price. For the base subscription, which will give you the top streaming quality, all the tracks, and offline listening, you’ll only have to pay $10.83 a month. That’s if you pay for the year all in one, but even on a month-by-month basis, it’s only going to cost you $12 a month. Qobuz is one of the most reasonably priced lossless streaming services and is easily one of my favorites.

For Spatial Audio: Apple Music

It would be remiss of me not to talk about Apple Music and the Apple Music lossless service. It’s a great app after all, and comes at a great price. 

The tracklist is going to be one of the biggest on the list, and it has support for Spatial Audio. If you’re looking for a service that contains that feature, then Apple Music is going to be your best bet. It also works with headphones other than AirPods now, so you’re not going to have too much of an issue with that. Just double-check when you choose your headphones, and you’ll be golden.

The App comes baked into the best iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and it’s very solid. The search function works well and gives you exactly what you’re looking for. Of course, Apple Music Classical is coming soon, and that will bring even more search parameters for those of us who like to partake in the work of composers, orchestras, and maestros. There’s a browser version too, for those machines and devices that won’t let you download any apps.

The play next function in Apple Music is better than that of some of the other apps in this list, with its human-curated libraries. It’s very impressive, although not quite as seamless as Spotify’s version.

The only reason, in fact, that Apple Music isn’t at the top spot is the streaming quality. It’s very good, don’t get me wrong, but the lossless streams of Qobuz are still better, and it only costs eighty cents more every month. If you want something from a company you recognize, however, then Apple Music is and will always be a great option.

For the Rebel: Deezer

Deezer has been around for ages, as one of those slightly illegal streaming platforms that skirted the law with unlicensed track streaming. Since then, it has become a fully-fledged streaming service, replete with lossless audio, lyrics that play in time with the music, and a massive library of tracks. 

It’s well priced too, at $11.99 per month. That makes it a little more expensive than some of the other options, but a little less than my next option. It’s a solid streaming service, with great lossless support and playlist transfer baked in through TunemyMusic so that you can move your library from Spotify with a single click. Great for those long, meticulously curated playlists you’ve been pruning and growing over the last seven years.

The Deezer app is a good one, if unremarkable. There’s only so much you can do with a streaming app, in the long run. Where Deezer excels is in its music suggestions – It’s almost as good as Spotify, and that’s saying something.

For the rich: Tidal

Tidal is one of the bigger names in music streaming, thanks to its celebrity associations. Jay Z is an investor in the most expensive streaming platform out there, which has an emphasis on high-res lossless streaming and better rates for artists. It’s an immensely popular streaming platform, but it does come at a high price.

It’ll cost you $10.99 per month for an individual membership to Tidal HiFi, which will get you access to the music library and not much more. If you want to listen to the best quality, 192kHz 24-bit tracks and try out 360 reality audio (Tidals version of Spatial Audio), then you’ll have to pay for Tidal Hifi Plus. That option costs $19.99 per month, an entire $10 more than something like Apple Music lossless. That’s a lot.

You get what you pay for, however. The streaming quality is top-notch, and the library is extensive. I’ve not tried out the 360 reality audio portion of my subscription, but compatibility with headphones is limited, only working with accredited models. These mostly come from Sony. 

There are two reasons that Tidal isn’t further up the list. The first is the aforementioned price issue, which makes lossless music less accessible to more people, but also the app selection that you can download. They don’t look bad, but they don’t work very well – pressing play on a track might make the app crash, and the play next function barely works at all. The browser version is fine, but much slower than that of Apple Music or Spotify. For $20 per month, you’d hope it worked better. If you can put up with both of those, the app is cleanly laid out and otherwise easy to use, and the streaming quality is some of the best around. Crucially, it doesn’t look like TikTok.

Need to transfer playlists: Soundiiz

Once you’ve chosen your new streaming platform, it’s likely you’re going to want to get your old library to your new music home. Just as when you move house, you’re going to need to hire a moving team to get your beloved collection to the new premises, and that comes in the form of Soundiiz. Soundiiz logs into your various streaming platforms, letting you transfer your library and playlists to loads of different platforms, including those above. 

You’ll need a subscription to the service to transfer everything, but a free account will let you get everything you need across. It’ll even schedule playlist updates, so if your playlist changes or updates, then the new tracks will be updated on the other platforms. If you share playlists with your friends on Spotify, then this is super helpful. It’s a great service, and well worth paying the $4.50 per month so that you can transfer playlists in bulk. Once you've transferred everything you want over, you can cancel and come back every time you need to transfer another playlist – transferring them one at a time is free.

Spotify is sinking, time to choose a lifeboat

It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to Spotify, but there are loads of options out there that will make the transition that much easier. Spotify is no longer the name to beat in streaming, as it lags behind in key ways, such as lossless streaming, and you know… not looking like TikTok. 

Any of the streaming services above will work with all of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, with apps available on all platforms. Some even have in-browser players, so if your work computer is a little more locked down, you can still use the service without having to install anything. Whatever happens, if you’re sick of the slow downfall of Spotify, there are some great options out there to put a record on. Mister DJ.

The recent Spotify redesign didn’t fill me with confidence on the platform’s direction for the future, so it was high time that I sought out some new tunes elsewhere for a bit to see if the grass was greener over on the Apple Music side of the music streaming landscape. It’s been great so far — but one unexpected feature has really enamoured me to Apple’s platform.

And strangest of all? No-one really talks about it. Like, at all.

Apple Music has lots of excellent features that the company regularly sings the praises of. For starters, there’s the tens-of-millions of tracks available to stream in an instant from its library, the standard for all good streaming platforms. But Apple throws in some extra bells and whistles to make it stand apart from the competition: hi-resolution lossless audio comes as part of the standard subscription cost, rather than as a premium tier extra, as does Spatial Audio, a processing technique for compatible headphones and specially mixed tracks that makes it appear as if music is coming from all around you. And then there’s the recently-added ‘Apple Music Sing’ mode which strips back vocal parts and offers up the lyrics for a true in-the-home karaoke experience.

That’s before getting to all the curated stuff Apple offers. As well as the very, very good Music 1 radio station, there’s a ton of interviews (usually lead by the superb Zane Lowe) and cherry-picked playlists from giant stars including Elton John.

Curation vs AI creation

Which leads me nicely onto my favorite part of using Apple Music so far. It’s part of that curation: the simple accompanying text descriptions that sit alongside album listings in the app on both mobile and desktop.

Somewhere between a ‘behind the music’ explainer and a review, they add context to a listen, along with trivia that really taps into my obsessive music love. Did you know, for instance, that Neil Young debuted his classic ‘Harvest’ album to fellow musician Graham Nash by taking him out on a rowboat on a lake near his house and blasting the album to the pair of them over giant speakers he’d set up in his barn? I do now, thanks to Apple Music.

Barmy, excellent factoids like this are littered right across Apple Music, and it’s only possible because Apple employs real, human music experts to curate its platform. It makes sifting through Apple Music akin to visiting a record shop, or settling down with an old copy of NME magazine, or getting recommendations from a well-informed friend.

Spotify does offer some similar content in the form of artist bios, provided by the Rovi music database. But the per-album write-ups are missing. And while Spotify’s AI-driven recommendations are genuinely very good, I’m starting to be able to see the 1s and 0s its code connects between artists to define my tastes. There’s something more natural, personal even, about being offered a human’s opinion of an album, and you then being left to decide whether to delve deeper based on that take.

A Classical education

My only criticism is that there aren’t more of the album descriptions across the catalogue. It’s seemingly relatively random as to which albums get the write ups, and which don’t. Why does Lana Del Rey’s brand new ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’ release get one, but not Amy Winehouse’s now-classic ‘Back to Black?’ And if Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ gets a description, why not the equally-legendary ‘Pet Sounds’ by The Beach Boys?

That’s the price of having humans doing a very human job, I suppose. There’s only so many hours in a human’s day, and if they’re spent guiding me expertly through a small corner of the Apple Music catalogue with love and care, versus an impersonal AI description, less (in this case at least) is the more I’m looking for.

It makes me particularly excited for the Apple Music Classical launch that’s just waiting over the horizon. I enjoy listening to classical music, but have to admit my knowledge of the genre starts and ends with whatever snippets of info I’ve picked up from late night listening sessions with the DJs of the Classic FM old-school radio station. If as much detail goes into the data for the classical app’s launch as exists in the current Apple Music app, you might find me next in the orchestra pit rather than the mosh pit.

News about music streaming tends to come in dribs and drabs, with little details appearing when you least expect it. Over the last couple of weeks, however, things have been a little more lively, with both good and bad news coming from several camps. There’s been a lot to get excited about for anyone who streams music, but if you’re a classical music fan, then you’ve got big reasons to be what the kids would call ‘hyped’.

Apple Music Classical has finally been announced properly and given a release date, putting Apple firmly in the ‘good news’ side. Spotify has had less fun, however, with its new app makeover receiving a less-than-positive reaction. That was compounded with the Spotify HiFi news. Yes, the lossless version of the green streamer is coming, but they won’t say when or how much extra it will cost.

Apple Music Classical is on the way…

… with some cool features to go with it. Ever since Apple bought and summarily closed down the Classical Music streaming service PrimePhonic in 2020, users have been waiting for the new app. PrimePhonic was already something that I had been using before it shut down. I might not be one of the super fans of classical music that have folders upon folders of classical music and could tell you all the different recordings of the most niche composers, but I listen to a fair amount of the genre.

PrimePhonic was brilliant because it set everything out how a classical music listener would want. The search function had been built from the ground up for classical music, with parameters around not just title, album, and artist but for things like composer, conductor, recording and more.

See, Classical music is a lot more complicated than the stuff you hear on the radio or might stream on a music streaming app. For something like Dua Lipa’s Levitating, there’s just the artist, track title, and album to worry about. With a piece of classical music, there are more bits to each piece. 

There’s the composer who originally composed the piece, and the collection, symphony, or work that the piece is a part of. There are then different recordings of that piece, each with its own parameters. There’s a conductor, orchestra, and year of recording. There might be a specific maestro or player that played on a particular recording that you might want to find. There might even be multiple different parameters within each result. 

For example I might like a particular piece played by a particular orchestra, with a particular conductor, in a particular year. That same piece may have been played by the same orchestra but with a different conductor in a different year. Maybe you prefer the version of the piece played by a different orchestra, but the same composer in another different year.

This is just scratching the surface of why PrimePhonic was so good for classical music, and it feels good to see that the feature will be returning for Apple Music Classical. There is more for people like me to be excited about with the announcement as well. 

There’s support for Apple Music Lossless, one of my favorite parts of Apple Music. There will also be detailed composer bios, where you can learn more about the people who make the music while you listen. Expect the same for the pieces as well, in lieu of the lyrics screens of Apple Music. For Opera, this could be interesting. Not because you might want to sing along (although some might), but because you might not be able to follow along. How this works remains to be seen.

I am a little worried, in parts. For one, Apple hasn’t said if they’ll take classical music off the standard Apple Music app, and there’s a not insignificant part of me that wonders if it will. It would make sense from a business standpoint – want classical music? Here’s a separate app for you to use. 

It would perhaps declutter the main app as well, with less extra music on there for the unsuspecting to stumble across. But there's the concern. Apple Music is pretty good for music discovery as you ping around the app and find new music to listen to. I know someone that used to listen to lots of movie soundtracks but was introduced to more conventional classical music by the suggestions that Apple music gave them. 

If people aren’t interested in classical music, they’re not going to look at getting the app. So if Apple removes classical music from the Apple Music app, there will be less chance of those listeners finding classical music they like. It would be, in my eyes, a concerning blow to music discovery.

Another thing that Apple is yet to talk about regarding the new app is how it pays artists. PrimePhonic introduced something that completely changed how artists are paid for classical music, upending a model skewed toward more conventional music types. 

Where usually a listener has to reach a certain percentage of a track before they are paid, PrimePhonic did a pay-per-minute model. The traditional streaming model meant that Classical music and its extremely long track lengths often lost out on monetized streams - after all, 20 percent of a 3-minute track is a whole lot less than 20 percent of one that lasts an hour. It would be great to know if PrimePhonic's method of paying artists will carry over to Apple Music Classical, but at the moment, there is no news.

I can’t wait to try Apple Music Classical. I’ve been lamenting the last moments of PrimePhonic now for two years, and I can’t wait to see what Apple has done with it. I just hope it doesn’t let us down. Oh, and unlike the internet, I think that new icon looks great.

Spotify’s dreadful new app

One of the most contentious things to come from the world of music streaming recently is Spotify’s new-look app. Announced and then released in a trickle to users' devices, it left most wondering, ‘why on earth does my music platform look like TikTok?’. Our Editor in Chief has made sure that the world knows how much he doesn’t like it, but he understands why Spotify has done it.

In keeping with the world's obsession with short-form content, Spotify’s app now features small cards on the front page that you can sort through and watch short videos and audio clips as you scroll endlessly down, and down, and down, and down…

As Gerald remarks, you can understand why Spotify has made this change. It can’t create separate apps for all its features like Apple or Amazon can because it simply doesn’t have the sway it would need. It has the audio streaming space pegged down, but that is no longer enough. 

As with all companies it needs to get bigger and bigger until the heat death of the universe, or until everyone decides that it no longer wants to support the big green circle. In order to grow, Spotify needs to keep going with new features, and it has to put them in its one app, so that its customers and users get those features delivered to their digital door.

I get why it happened, but it doesn’t make the UI any less awful to use. Gone are the incredibly helpful suggestions of new artists, albums, and songs, replaced by an abomination. It completely takes the focus away from the music, the whole reason you likely subscribed to the platform in the first place. Your library is buried, and your music is that much harder to find. 

Spotify hasn’t solely been a music app for some time, but now it really looks the part too. If this doesn’t draw users away to something more ‘pure’ like Apple Music, I don’t know what will. I am unlikely to continue to use the service after this, that’s for sure.

Spotify charging for HiFi

Most recently, Spotify has come under some flak for the handling of its as-yet-unreleased HiFi listening tier. It’s been a thing for a long time, having been announced around two years ago. 

The problem is that everyone else beat it to the punch and released lossless streaming platforms before it had even said ‘here’s Hi…’. Between news that you’ll likely have to pay for it, unlike with Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited, and that it will come with extra features like premium podcast stuff and access to Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos, it feels like Spotify HiFi is dead before it has even arrived.

There’s an overwhelming feeling that it’s simply too little, too late. There are already firmly established high-quality streaming services for audiophiles, like Tidal and Qobuz, with Apple and Amazon filling in for the Layperson. Podcast fans aren’t likely to be particularly happy about paying extra for premium podcast stuff (of which the type is not detailed). Apple and Amazon provide Spatial Audio tracks for nothing extra on top of your ordinary subscription. Spotify has long been at the top of the streaming tree, but its recent announcements and blunders seem to show that the tree is starting to sway.

Big week for music streaming

For better or worse, this week, if nothing else, has been very interesting. There’s been lots of news around Apple Music Classical, which overall feels pretty exciting, particularly if you’re a fan of classical music. On the other hand, Spotify’s last week has been one to forget, from slightly noncommittal statements about Spotify HiFi, to its bungled app launch and dreadful new UI. It will be interesting to see what the music streaming landscape looks like a few months from now, that’s for sure.

There have been rumors of Spotify HiFi floating around for years now, with some members of its leadership seemingly confirming its existence. The Verge recently discovered that the service has been 'good to go for nearly a year', but its release was pushed back after Apple released Apple Music Lossless for no extra cost for users.

Talking to the Co-president, Gustav Söderström, The Verge has done some reading between the lines, connecting that Spotify was planning to make users pay extra for Spotify HiFi, along with other benefits like Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos and 'other perks related to audiobooks and podcasts'.

Paying extra for Spotify

Lossless streaming has become ever bigger in recent years, with the launch of Tidal and Apple Music Lossless. There are other more niche streaming platforms as well, such as Qobuz, and even Amazon has put its hat in the ring with Amazon Music unlimited. Spotify, one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world, has also announced its entry into the lossless streaming game, with Spotify Hi-Fi. That, however, was two years ago, with nary a sign of its release since then.

Now, in that Verge interview, Söderström has confirmed that the service will be coming, but not when. And if The Verge is to be believed, then it looks like we could be paying extra for the privilege of those higher bit rate tracks.

This would put Spotify on the back foot against its competitors, with Apple Music offering its lossless tracks at no extra charge for its users. That costs the same $9.99 per month, and you get all the lossless music on the platform. The only service, in fact, that charges more for its highest bitrates is Tidal but those are specifically recorded masters that will set you back $19.99 per month. It's not likely that Spotify will charge that, but it does set a precedent.

The thing then is that Tidal is for a different audience, an audience that wants the best. It's unlikely that audience would go back to Spotify, even if it did introduce lossless streaming for less than Tidal HiFi Plus. If they were going to leave Tidal behind, they'd have gone for Apple Music and its lower price tag. Either way, if you want to get lossless audio on one of Apple's best iPhones, your best bet is with Apple Music.