Over the past year, I’ve spent a good amount of time switching between Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music, trying to figure out which one suits my needs best. All three have their strengths, but after countless hours of listening across different devices headphones, home audio, and now car audio I can confidently say that Apple Music is the best fit for me.

My New (Old) Audi S8

Recently, I picked up a 2007 Audi S8, and what really tipped the scales for me was its 14-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system. It's an incredible setup, especially for a car of that age, and it made me start paying even more attention to audio quality.

When playing tracks through Apple Music in that car, the sound is simply phenomenal:

• Deep bass that doesn't shake the car.

• Clear highs with no harshness

• Mids that feel warm and natural

• Overall soundstage and clarity that just feels right

I don’t know if it’s a mix of the codec Apple uses (ALAC for lossless) or how well their audio is mastered and optimized, but there’s something about Apple Music’s output that just feels more musical in that car. It honestly feels like the tracks are tuned for high-end systems.

Spotify - The Old Reliable (But Not Perfect)

For the longest time, Spotify was my go-to. It's just hard to beat the ease of use, the UI design, and especially the ecosystem flexibility:

• Seamless switching between devices car, phone, PC, headphones

• Excellent music discovery via playlists and radio

• Social features like collaborative playlists, Spotify Wrapped, etc.

However, the audio quality never blew me away. Even on “Very High” settings, it feels a bit compressed compared to Apple Music. On a casual pair of earbuds, it’s fine. But on a proper system like the B&O setup in my S8 it becomes noticeable. Spotify's current max bitrate is 320kbps, and while they’ve been teasing Spotify HiFi for years, it’s still nowhere to be found.

YouTube Music - A Hidden Gem, But Not Quite There

YouTube Music surprised me in a few ways:

• It has a massive library, including remixes, covers, and unreleased tracks you won’t find elsewhere.

• It’s great for discovering underground and lesser-known artists.

• Audio is noticeably louder which some people might like but that doesn’t mean it sounds better.

My issue? It lacks polish. The UI feels a bit clunky, and integration between devices is inconsistent. Also, despite the library size, 99% of the artists I care about are still available on Apple Music or Spotify so the exclusives didn’t justify the trade-offs for me.

Final Thoughts

If I had to summarize:

• Apple Music wins for audio quality and overall listening experience, especially on higher-end systems.

• Spotify is still the king of usability and music discovery.

• YouTube Music is good if you want everything in one place, especially YouTube content and niche music.

The turning point for me was experiencing what Apple Music sounds like on a serious audio setup. I never expected a streaming service to make such a difference, but here we are. It reminded me that at the end of the day, music is meant to be felt not just heard.

Would love to know what others think.
Have you noticed similar differences with your car/home systems?
Anyone still holding out for Spotify HiFi?

I’ve been using YT music since 2018 and for the past few months I’ve been messing around with different streaming apps and now im using Apple Music up until a few months ago. I don’t know if I made the right choice but I’m enjoying Apple Music as of right now. The biggest factor thats going to keep me from switching permanently is that with YT Music you can do more than just download music, you can download videos as well and old tracks you can’t find on Apple Music or Spotify. There’s about 300 songs I have on My YT Music library i can’t find on Apple Music or even Spotify. YT Music is slightly louder and you can tell the difference but Apples Lossless takes the cake, Spotify has HiFi and YT Music doesn’t have anything special just the regular high medium and low audio quality. The main problem that made me switch to Apple Music was with YTM Shuffling. Regardless if i was playing my downloaded songs or a regular playlist, it would be under “queue” and after about 20 songs I would have to restart my playlist, every single time which got really annoying, a really horrible update. Spotify I just never got into, I didn’t feel like I should waste my time building a library on there. Spotify is the type that if you don’t have some type of library built, it ain’t worth it and should build with Apple Music or YTM instead. On YTM I have 4,000+ songs and on Apple Music I have about around 1,500.