A year ago I set out to find the best music app, testing them all, reading everything I could find, and talking to people in the industry. I came away with a surprising conclusion: Google Play Music, which hardly anyone talks about, is the best app on the market.
More on Play Music in a moment. First, let's clear up a few common misconceptions about the competition.
MYTH: Spotify is much smarter than everyone.
FACT: Yes, the Swedish company bought The Echo Nest in 2014, but the company is going up against digital superpowers in Google and Apple. What's more, The Echo Nest specialized in things like computer analysis of acoustics and internet buzz: those things are cool, but they are nowhere near as valuable as the kind of user behavior analysis that any big company can do. Yes, Spotify has a popular personalized playlist feature, called Discover Weekly, but it isn't that different from personalized radio, found on many services. As someone who worked on Spotify's system told me outright: "The data advantage that Spotify has isn’t substantial compared to Apple and Google."
MYTH: Pandora's Music Genome Project is important.
FACT: Pandora for years has been shifting away from the catalogue of musical traits that was once its core idea. Filtering user behavior data is just a much more effective way of sorting music in almost all cases, and you don't need a Music Genome Project for that. Thus the supposed Pandora killers from Apple, Spotify, and others? By now they really can match Pandora and do it with a much larger library (Pandora has 1 million tracks, other services have 30 million). Even founder Tim Westergren has admitted how hard it is to tell apart custom radio. He said last year at TechCrunch Disrupt: "Could I tell the difference in one hour between three different products? Maybe not, but over time clearly people prefer what Pandora does." That's right, even the founder of Pandora can't clearly tell the difference.
MYTH: Apple Music's expert human curation is revolutionary.
FACT: Yes, human curators are nice — doing things like packaging playlists and spotting when the algorithms misfire — but every major service has human curators.
What does matter? Well, let me tell you about Google Play Music.
—Play Music has deeper personalization than anyone. While many apps predict what kind of music you like, Play is the only one that adjusts to both your tastes and your habits. To open the app is a joy: it predicts six moments that might be relevant to you. On a recent Thursday night, I got Focusing (No Lyrics), Getting Lost in a Story — which is a podcast mix — Unwinding, Stargazing, Love & Romance, and Throwback Thursday, with each of those moments opening up to a selection of music it thinks I'll like. Spotify promises it will add contextually personalized recommendations soon, but it's not there yet, and even when it gets there, it will struggle to match Google's presentation.
—Play Music has an excellent user interface. If you're not in the mood for the contextual recommendations described above, try a list of albums and stations it thinks you'll like. I like how the albums and stations cycle through the page slowly so you have time to try them and can get to know them and treat it like your private collection. Unsure what to choose? Put on I'm Feeling Lucky radio and it will play an unpredictable mix of music based on things it knows you like. Want something else, you can browse ordered and sortable lists of top and new albums and curated stations. You can also browse your own uploaded music. While other services have many of these features, no one puts them together in such an elegant and well-organized app.
—Play Music has bonus features. It lets anyone upload 50,000 tracks for free. The ad-supported version seems to have far fewer audible ads than Pandora. The paid version comes bundled with a subscription to YouTube Red, letting you watch special shows and YouTube videos without ads.
Does Spotify have any advantages over Play Music? It does have a lot of buzzy new music playlists: if you like those, then you'll like it. It has a social platform that some people like. It is the only service that lets you listen to ad-supported on-demand albums (as for ad-supported on-demand tracks, you can also listen to those on YouTube Music, which pairs nicely with Play Music).
Pandora? It's really easy to use and people are accustomed to it. Perhaps it really is better at some esoteric radio functions.
Apple Music? Nah.
Deezer? It does have much more personalization than Tidal, making it the best app with a lossless streaming option, which won't matter to 99% of people on earth.
Me? I'm going to stick with Google Play.
