(Credit: YouTube Music/PCMag)Plans and Pricing
Spotify and YouTube Music have free and premium plans, but they operate differently. Spotify's no-cost tier has the expected ads and limited skips, and, surprisingly, now only lets you listen to shuffled music. With it, you cannot download tunes for offline listening, but you can play tracks in the background while other apps are open on your phone or tablet. On the other hand, YouTube Music's free version has unlimited skips, on-demand playback, and shuffling. This is extremely generous and relatively unique among free streaming plans. As expected, the free plan comes with ads, and it does not let you play music in the background or download music tracks for offline listening.
Spotify's Individual plan ($10.99 per month) and Family plan ($19.99 per month, covering six people) cost slightly more money than YouTube Music's equivalent tiers ($10.99 and $16.99 per month, respectively). It's the same for Spotify's Student plan, which costs $5.99 per month, compared with YouTube Music's $5.49 per month. Premium plans include ad-free listening, offline downloads, and, in YouTube Music’s case, background play. Spotify also has a Duo package ($16.99 per month) aimed at couples that saves a few bucks if you don't need a full Family plan.
Then there's YouTube Premium. For $13.99, this bundle includes premium YouTube Music plus ad-free YouTube. It's an excellent value if you spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos. Family and Student YouTube Premium plans are also available for $22.99 per month and $7.99 per month, respectively.
Winner: YouTube Music
(Credit: YouTube Music/PCMag)Content: Audiobooks, Music, Podcasts, and Videos
Both streaming services feature vast, 100-million-track-deep music catalogs. However, YouTube Music houses an impressive collection of user-uploaded content, covers, live performances, and remixes pulled right from YouTube. It also features native music video support, letting you seamlessly switch between a song's audio and video versions. Spotify lacks the robust catalog of original and fan-created musical content, and often features short, looping video clips or animated artwork rather than full videos.
Still, Spotify leads the industry with its extensive podcast library, including extremely popular exclusive shows. It also has an excellent audiobook library for Premium subscribers. YouTube Music has a growing library of podcasts, but it doesn’t come close to rivaling Spotify's offerings. Likewise, YouTube's audiobook library is limited to user-uploaded content. As a result, Spotify has a broader range of official content.
Winner: Spotify
(Credit: Spotify/PCMag)Music Discovery
Finding new music you jibe with is an integral part of the streaming music experience. Fortunately, both services offer excellent discovery features to help you on your auditory journey.
Spotify has handy playlists like Discover Weekly, a weekly mixtape of new music and deep cuts catered to your listening preferences. In addition, AI playlists are a beta feature that Spotify is exploring for cutting-edge playlist generation via text prompts and even emoji. It's a fantastic way to unearth new music if you’re feeling adventurous. If you're more of a hands-off listener, Spotify's AI-powered disc jockey, DJ X, queues your favorite tracks and adds new ones for variety. Of course, Spotify has curated playlists that cover a wide gamut of music genres.
YouTube Music is no slouch in this field, though its AI offerings are decidedly less impressive than Spotify's. Playlists like Your Mix and My Supermix are personalized musical mixes packed with hours of music you like, based on your search and listening history. The Samples feature serves up a vertical, short-form video feed for quick music previews. If you're more of an old-school radio fan, the Music Tuner lets you create custom radio stations based on selected artists. Granular customization lets you refine the Tuner with filters for popular tracks, deep cuts, or new releases.
Offline Mixtape is a fantastic YouTube Music feature. This automatically downloads a 100-song playlist locally on your device based on your listening patterns, which is handy if you do a lot of traveling or have spotty internet connections. Likewise, Smart Downloads automatically downloads music to your device for offline play whenever you’re connected to Wi-Fi, giving you a catalog of 500 songs to keep your offline mixtape and music playlists fresh.
As we all know, not every piece of music is available to stream. Some may be unavailable due to licensing, or perhaps the track is too deep a cut for the service to pick up. Fortunately, if you have unique music or soundtracks you want to stream at any time, uploading is the solution. YouTube Music accommodates listeners with their own private library of digital music with its music uploading feature. YouTube Music lets you upload 100,000 music tracks from your computer to your YouTube Music library. Once uploaded, these tracks are made available to all of your devices. Spotify does allow you to upload files from your computer for local listening, but YouTube Music goes one step further by saving these uploads in the cloud, where they’re available across all connected devices.
Winner: Tie
(Credit: Spotify/PCMag)Music Streaming Quality and Hardware Support
Neither Spotify nor YouTube Music provides high-definition audio. That said, Spotify beats out YouTube Music by a small margin. Premium Spotify users can stream audio at up to 320kbps, while YouTube Music maxes out at a lower 256kbps. As neither has outstanding audio quality, the difference between the two is not as pronounced compared with Amazon Music Unlimited or Apple Music, platforms that contain high-res lossless quality audio and Dolby Atmos tracks.
Spotify also has broader device and platform compatibility compared with YouTube Music. Both can be enjoyed on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. But when it comes to smart assistants, smart speakers, and smart TVs, Spotify has the edge. Spotify plays nicely with Alexa, for example, while YouTube Music does not. Generally, Spotify’s more universal compatibility makes it a better streaming choice.
Winner: Spotify