TL;DR Spotify is way better lmao
I decided to get a two month free trial of Spotify Premium to see what it was like and also try all the cool things on the app. I usually use Amazon Music as I get a discounted price due to Prime and it's cheaper. If I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna miss the past two months lol
Spotify's UI is so much easier and friendlier to use, and it's so easy to search up songs, make playlists, and curate your music experience. Amazon Music, however, lacks in those fields.
For this review, I'm mostly talking about the mobile versions of each app.
SOUND QUALITY
Amazon Music definitely wins when it comes to sound quality. I like how you have a choice between sound qualities. It also takes up less space on my phone for the same amount of songs and same quality. However, for Spotify, higher quality listening takes up a lot more data and downloading high-quality songs takes up a lot of storage (Spotify took up 6 GBS and AM took up 3 GBS for the same amount of songs).
MAKING PLAYLISTS
Spotify wins for this one. It's so easy to make a new playlist and share with friends. You can also make shared playlists, which is a feature I really enjoyed. As well, you can add custom playlist covers, which I'm gonna really miss on AM. Covers add a lot of personality to a playlist and it's way better than just 4 album covers in a square. Additionally, playlists are so much easier to locate on Spotify. When you click Library, a horizontal list of all your playlists shows up, and you can easily pin playlists to your liking. AM, however, stuffs other playlists on the Library tab, and you have to scroll through to find a specific playlist. For some reason, it also puts my main playlist at the end of the list even though it's the playlist I listen to the most?? It's also WAY easier to organize your playlist on Spotify.
USER INTERFACE
Spotify a billion percent for this one. It's SOOOOOOO much better than Amazon Music and I can't stress that enough. Searching for songs is a BREEZE on Spotify. I listen to K-pop and Indian songs, and while it's easier to search up K-pop songs, it's very annoying to search for Indian songs on Amazon Music. On Spotify, I just have to type in the song name. For Amazon Music, I have to type the title with the artist and the movie it comes from. It definitely discourages me from making playlists because it just takes too long and I don't have the time to dig deep into an artist's discography just to find one song. My main playlist consists of over 350 songs, and on Spotify, I can easily search for a specific song in my playlist or scroll to the bottom using the little scroller on the side. On AM I have to scroll endlessly until I find the desired song. Spotify is overall more smooth, fast, and aesthetically pleasing. I also love how Spotify syncs songs across devices.
However, I do like how Amazon Music shuffles better. I just have to press the shuffle button and it will shuffle my playlist. On Spotify, I have to press a song and then press shuffle. Another downside of Spotify is that it really does NOT want you to leave. It shows you 5 different pages before "cancelling" your subscription. Turns out, when it said I had cancelled my subscription a day before the trial ended, it just... brought it back.
Some similarities I found are that AM tries to shove podcasts down your throat while Spotify tries to shove audiobooks down your throat. I'm gonna miss podcasts on Spotify though, because some people would put special songs or instrumentals that weren't officially released as a podcast that people could add to their playlists.
To conclude, Spotify is much better in terms of mostly everything except for sound quality haha