Apple Music vs. Spotify Discover Weekly vs. Amazon Discovery Mix in 2021

Decided to give these services another shot in November 2021.

• Apple Music’s New Music Mix gave me 25 genuinely new songs, 9 of which I liked, a 36% success rate.
• Spotify’s Discover Weekly gave me 30 songs, some dating back decades, 5 of which I liked, a 17% success rate.
• Apple’s selection was a variety of progressive house, techno, dance, electronica.
• Spotify’s was entirely drum and bass, even though I’ve listened to plenty of other music using their service. (But had checked out another Spotify drum and bass playlist recently.)

I used Spotify’s web player, which gave me no ads during the entire time I listened. (using their free plan.) For Apple Music, I used the generous free trial (2 or 5 months) given by the Shazam app. The Apple Music player on the Mac is janky – with odd back navigation. You also can’t drag their New Music mix to the sidebar, unlike Spotify where Discover Weekly is easily findable.

I also tried Amazon Music’s “Discovery Mix” and “You Might Like”. Stunningly, out of 25 songs in the discovery mix and 30+ in the “You Might Like”, not a single song was good. It’s like Amazon didn’t even look at my Amazon Music library to discover what I like. It was all random garbage.

I’ll give the win to Apple Music this week, as they overall had the most new music I liked. I even loved one of the 9 liked songs they recommended. (For the record, I loved two of Spotify’s, but Apple just found more new music that I at least liked.)