- Apple Music offers more than 100 million songs for $10.99 a month.
- Apple Music beats Spotify in the music catalog's overall size and sound file quality.
- You can follow other Apple Music users to explore the artists they listen to.
Apple Music is Apple's streaming music service, competing with similar platforms like Spotify and Tidal and offering a large library of music and podcasts.
Although it's one of the newest music services, it is also one of the most sophisticated, with a large selection of hi-res and spatial audio tracks.
Here is everything you need to know about Apple's formidable streaming music service.
Can my partner listen to my Apple Music?
Ordinarily, your Apple Music subscription is yours alone — the individual plan is $10.99 per month. It gives one Apple ID access to the catalog of 100 million songs across all the associated Apple devices.
If you want to share your Apple Music account with your partner or other family members, you'll want the Apple Music Family plan ($16.99 per month). It lets up to six people share a single subscription. Each family member can stream music and podcasts on all of their Apple devices.
Can you look someone up on Apple Music?
Part of the joy of music is discovery, and there's nothing like discovering new music from friends and family. Apple Music lets you follow other subscribers to see their music.
There are two ways to find other users in Apple Music. For starters, you can browse for users already on your contacts list. To do that, start Apple Music and tap your account icon at the top right of the page. On the Account page, tap View Profile at the top and choose Follow More Friends. You'll see a list of everyone you know (in your contacts list) who is already using Apple Music.
You can also manually search for users. Tap the Search icon at the bottom right of the Apple Music screen and, in the Search bar, type the name of the person you are looking for. Tap Search. If there are a lot of results, you might want to filter by tapping Profiles. When you see the person you're looking for, tap Follow.
If the person you request to follow has set their profile to private, they must approve your request before you start following them.
How do I see friend requests on Apple Music?
If your profile is private, you'll need to approve friend requests before people may follow you.
Open the Apple Music app, tap your account icon at the top right, then View Profile. You should now see a list of anyone who wants to follow you.
If you don't want to approve each person individually and prefer to let anyone follow you automatically, go to your profile page and tap Edit. In the Who Can Follow Your Activity section, change the selection from People You Approve to Everyone.
Can you see who viewed your Apple Music profile?
Apple Music doesn't notify users if someone has viewed their profile or listened to their playlists. That means you can browse other people's profiles in search of new music, and they won't know you've been checking out their tunes. The reverse is also true, though: you won't be notified when someone views your profile. Apple Music doesn't track or record this kind of viewing activity, so you can't later go back and see who viewed your profile or your music.
Can a business play music from Apple Music?
Unfortunately, Apple Music is considered a consumer product, and the licensing model for the music streamed by the service is for private and non-commercial playback. That doesn't allow for public broadcasts in a business setting.
If you operate a business and want to stream music to clients, customers, or employees, you should instead consider a music streaming service for business. Options include SiriusXM for Business and Soundtrack Your Brand, among others.
How do Spotify and Apple music compare?
Apple Music and Spotify are more alike than they are different. They're both subscription music streaming platforms offering a vast library of tunes and podcasts; you can listen on your phone and other devices. But if you're trying to decide between the two, consider the details.
Both platforms have several service tiers, but only Spotify makes it possible to listen for free with an ad-supported introductory tier. From there, Apple Music and Spotify have standard subscriptions for $10.99 per month and discounted $5.99 per month student plans. There's no price advantage for either service aside from Spotify's free tier.
As for sound quality, Apple has an edge. Apple Music's entire catalog is encoded at resolutions from 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD-quality) to 24-bit/192kHz (generally considered hi-res).
Spotify, in comparison, has encoded its catalog at resolutions ranging from 96kbps to 160kbps to 320kbps. None of those quite equal CD quality, much less hi-res. Customers have waited for the platform to offer a premium hi-res tier for several years.
Apple also claims a small advantage regarding the size of the song catalog. Spotify has over 80 million tracks, while Apple Music has about 20% more, or over 100 million songs. But because all the most common and popular artists are fully represented in both catalogs, you might not notice a difference unless you look for deep cuts or less popular artists in specific genres.
Spotify offers the popular Spotify Wrapped feature at the end of every calendar year. Apple Music's answer to Spotify Wrapped is Apple Music Replay.