Apple Music may come with a long list of advantages over rivals like Spotify — such as real radio and a super-affordable family plan — but there’s one thing it’s lagging behind on, and that’s music quality… or so it seems.
The highest bitrate Apple Music will offer is 256 kbps, which is lower than the 320 kbps offered by Spotify, Rdio, Tidal, and Apple’s own Beats Music service.
Kbps, or kilobits per second, refers to the number of “bits” — pieces of data — that are processed every second. So when you listen to a 256 kbps song, every second is made up of 256 kilobits of data, and that’s what you’ll be used to if you buy most of your music through iTunes.
1,411 kbps is considered “lossless” audio, and anything under that is classed as “lossy.” In simple terms, this means the file has been compressed to save space and has lost some of its bits along the way. The lower the bitrate, then, the poorer the quality.
So, theoretically, Apple Music’s 256 kbps bitrate shouldn’t sound as good as the 320 kbps offered by rival services. But there’s more to it than just bitrate.
Apple uses the AAC format for its tracks, which tends to be much better than the MP3 format used by Spotify and the others because of the way in which it’s encoded. In some cases, then, a 256 kbps AAC track can sound better than a 320 kbps track.
But either way, most users probably aren’t going to notice a massive difference — especially if they predominantly listen to services like Spotify on mobile, where the bitrate is lowered by default, or they’re already used to iTunes music.
Spotify may have an advantage over Apple Music in bitrate on paper, then, but don’t let that fool you.
Via: SlashGear
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
25 responses to “The one advantage Spotify has over Apple Music”
Spotify also has a free version
with annoying ads.
Purchased a year’s subscription to Beat for $90 and I’m happy.
Maybe it’s my area, but iTunes apps (Radio, Match…) can’t hold a candle to Spotify for streaming. iTunes takes forever to connect, often drops out, and sounds flat. I can easily switch over to Spotify, with pretty much anything I want to hear, and it connects right away and sounds far better.
Well your ears are better than mine then I can’t tell if theres any “flat”ness to itunes. You should go get tidal then and wait between caching of the ultra high quality. It will be worth the wait for your ears.
Don’t get me wrong, my whole collection is between 256 and 320… I certainly can’t hear the difference after that. But there’s a big difference between the streaming capability of the two services, and it seems like iTunes low-res’s the stream to be able to connect. No idea if this is correct or not, but nevertheless, Spotify is just way faster and holds the connection better.
Again, for me.
This is using Beats on the backend though, which I’ve never had any problems with as far as streaming capabilities. I think internally they know Match is a mess and that’s why they spent 3 billion to acquire Beats to begin with.
Well, i don’t know if this is true.
It’s just like the megapixels on phones that is not the only point that defines the quality. Here we talk about bitrate but not format. The iTunes store has 256kbps aac, these sound better than 320kbps mp3, but i do not know for sure what spotify uses, but i quess like above!
And i think apple will just use the songs that are already in their itunes database, and this is known for good quality, not lossless but good
It looks like that my iPhone 4 won’t be able to use Apple Music – well I can use Spotify, Google Music and Deezer under iOS7, but I bet an Apple Music app under ios7 won’t be coming.
256K AAC sounds the same as 320K MP3 to me, so no advantage here. I’ll be switching from Spotify in a couple of weeks or so.
Ahhh 256 acc is actually a little better than 320 mp3. I’m not even sure Spotify uses mp3, I think it’s their own proprietary ogg format. As an audio engineer, iTunes sounds much better than Spotify in my studio.
Ogg is a container, Vorbis is the codec, both of which are free and open-source software projects headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. — “As an software engineer”
“As an audio engineer” you don’t seem to know much about audio.
You seem to be an 80 year old virgin.
So you say it’s an advantage, then you say it’s not.
Good reporting there.
Nice point Killian, except Spotify doesn’t use MP3 but Vorbis.
And? You left out “a point,” like whether Vorbis is better than MP3 and AAC.
If you are using an Apple headphone jack from an Apple device then you are not going to benefit from higher bitrates than what Apple currently provides. There is a limitation in the jack itself. You need a whole different device to have a chance of hearing an improvement. The lowest device/connection in your chain of things is going to dictate the quality of outcome, and most people’s ears are not going to appreciate the difference in any event — so one of the “devices” in that chain of things is the ability of your own internal “hardware”. There is also the limitation of the quality of the original recording, most recordings are not worthy of outputting to high quality equipment to begin with.
So, unless you want to spend a lot of money on a lot of things for the possibility of enhancing your music experience, what Apple provides is a premium experience already. At least this composer/producer/performer thinks so. I personally hear no difference from the recording experience with all my fancy stuff to the playback from my iPhone’s headphone jack fed back through my fancy speakers.
My only option is apple music since spotify, rdio,pandora or tidal arent available in my country.
256 Kbps AAC files sound better than 320 Kbps MP3 files.
another advantage is the app, Spotify’s is sleek, modern, elegant, gorgeous! Apple’s is.. well…
Apple Music needs to look more like Beats Music. I love the Beats interface with the wheel control for tracks. You’d think Apple would’ve adopted that for Apple Music, since it hearkens back to the wheel on the original iPod.
Exactly
People need to get over this whole bitrate thing. I bet you that 99.9% of people will not be able to tell the difference between 256kbps and 320kbps. All you blogs need to get over it.
You won’t be able to tell the difference b/ween 256 kbps and 320 kbps imo
Also, Spotify is available on Sonos, Apple Music will not be.