As someone who switched from Spotify Premium to Apple Music, I disagree.

Of course you can not import your algorithms between services — I mean these are not browsers or password managers. But the reason why I dumped Spotify for a competitor charging $2 extra monthly is precisely because of the algorithm.

Let’s say I want to listen to some music and I don’t feel like bumbling around the app looking for a playlist. It’s fairly safe to say that an app that has a “Random” button of some sort should figure out (to a reasonable extent) the kind of songs you want to listen to, play the on queue.

Spotify has no such “Random” button. They have a Radio that’s named after me but it selects songs like a Random Number Generator, which is not ideal for me.

In Apple Music I usually just go to For You -> <Name>’s Station and relax away. But usually whenever I play a specific playlist in any app, I do not get immersed by it, as my brain sees the songs I’ve listened to and knows what to expect already.

Sure, Spotify’s free tier is compelling but without a good track recommendation algorithm, why should I use that either?

(One thing I do agree with you though, is that both of these services are superior to Youtube Music, as if I want to listen to some song in the background, I cannot watch videos at the same time either. Because the music is actually a video. So I don’t bother paying for Youtube Music).