5 Disadvantages of Apple Music You Should Know About

Apple Music, Apple’s eponymous music streaming service, has undergone several changes over its decade of existence. As a subscriber from day one, I remember all the different logos and UI interactions, every time Apple removed all my songs from my library, and even when it tried to create a social media platform within Apple Music, but artists were the only ones who could post. Over time, the service has greatly improved. However, it still suffers from fundamental drawbacks that Spotify and other competitors solved or developed solutions for long ago. One of the downsides of being an Apple Music subscriber is that the app is very inconsistent across platforms, lacks social features, and yes, Spotify Wrapped is still much better than Apple Music Replay.

One of the main things holding Apple Music back from being a better service is the way it’s tied to different operating systems, meaning Apple simply doesn’t add new features every week to the platform, like Spotify seems to do quite often. Subscribers have to wait anywhere from 45 days to a few months for something new, as Apple only updates Apple Music through major software updates.

For example, iOS 26.5 didn’t add anything new to Apple Music, meaning the last time we received a significant update for the platform was in late March with iOS 26.4. In the meantime, Spotify announced several AI features, improved social features and more. Here’s what else you’re missing with the way Apple Music works now.

During last year’s WWDC keynote, Apple made a very important revelation: it was unifying the different operating systems through a similar language, the Liquid Glass design, making everything more integrated and simpler. Apparently the company hasn’t told the Apple Music team because the experience across platforms is horrible.

Let’s take an old example. For the longest time, Android users supported crossfading on Apple Music, but iOS users did not. Only iOS 17 brought this feature to iPhone users, although it has always been available on Mac. Now, newer issues can be numbered against iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe. iOS 26 features custom actions for pinned albums, and iOS 26.4 added a Concerts tab and a new UI tab for playlists and albums. None of these features are available on Mac.

On top of that, Mac is the only platform that offers play counts on songs, but if I compare the play counts with my All Time playlist, created by Apple, the results are very different. Long story short, these inconsistencies make me avoid Apple Music’s Mac app, and even other options, like the Apple Watch or iPad, whenever I can, simply because it seems like Apple only cares about improving the experience for iPhone users. The same can’t be said for Spotify, which is much more consistent when users switch between iOS, Android, desktop, and web apps.

Apple Music Replay has come a long way. Over the years, Apple has improved the experience by offering monthly flashbacks and an updated playlist throughout the year with my 100 most listened to songs from that year. However, can anyone explain why, when Spotify releases its Wrapped, all I can think about is that I wish I had used the other music streaming service instead?

The final Apple Music Replay compares data from your current year to the previous year, including your most listened to songs, artists and albums, plus a detailed experience of your top artists, songs, albums, playlists, stations and genres. However, because Apple only tweaked the experience starting in 2024, Spotify added literally a dozen new ways to dig deeper into the songs and artists that shaped your year.

Even though Spotify has millions of users, it has still managed to make the experience very unique. Besides what’s usually most listened to, the company created a Listening Age feature, a Top Song Quiz, user comparisons with other fans of the same artist and implemented a bigger push into podcasts and audiobooks. Spotify also created Clubs and Listening Archive experiences. The former uses your streaming habits to put you in a club, while the latter uses AI to provide unique reports on your daily listening. That said, I just know that Spotify is planning an even bigger Wrapped, while Apple Music probably isn’t.

Again, compared to Spotify, there are some things that the biggest music streaming service does even better than Apple Music. For example, you can share songs with friends on the platform, and if you’re using the desktop or web versions of the app, you can check what your friends are currently listening to. This can be incredibly interesting when there’s a big new release or if you just want to talk to a friend about something they’re listening to. With Apple Music, Apple only shows which albums a friend has listened to, but if they’re listening to it right now or if it was a week ago, you can’t tell.

Besides technological innovation, Apple has always had a great influence on the music industry. iTunes, for example, changed the way people consume songs, but it was Spotify that made streaming services popular. Spotify quickly realized that music is a shared experience and the more you can tell friends and family about it, the more interesting it becomes. Apple seems to have forgotten this.

As the company hosted iTunes Festival events, the company gradually phased out its most shareable experiences. Although the latest software offers users the ability to create playlists together, join a queue, and even react to a song, none of these experiences feel as personal as those offered by Spotify. Take advantage of the ability to match your tastes with your friend’s on Spotify and create a unique playlist. Unfortunately, Apple Music never can.

Some of the most interesting data you can get from Spotify is an artist’s most popular songs and the number of monthly listeners. Apple Music offers this information exclusively to artists, but my guess as to why it’s not available on the service to all users is that it probably doesn’t have the same numbers as Spotify.

When the company celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2025, it released a playlist with the most played songs of all time, and Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” was number 1. What was so interesting about this issue is that we always hear how Taylor Swift continues to break records album after album, reaching the number of most streams in 24 hours, a week, a month, etc., and on Apple Music, her most streamed song is “Cruel Summer” in position 57? I’m not saying the numbers are wrong or that his fans are all on Spotify, but one would assume his numbers should have been better.

Spotify still highlights when songs reach 1.2 billion or more streams, but that’s not something we see Apple Music doing. In other words, even though Apple Music is my favorite music streaming service, it’s always felt like a party for one, while everyone who wants to have fun and enjoy music together is seemingly on Spotify.

If you want to know the biggest downside of Apple Music, I’m glad you stuck around until the end of the article. If you’ve ever used Spotify, you’ll know about Spotify Connect, that continuity feature that lets your song play no matter what platform or device you’re using. So if you’re listening to a song on your iPhone, you can quickly switch to your Windows laptop, but if you realize you’re late to class and need to get in the car, you can always continue your song right where it was.

In the case of Apple Music, users can transfer from iPhone to HomePod and have their Mac AirPlay a song they’re listening to from their iPhone, but they can’t just continue the song they’re listening to on their iPhone with their iPad.

Apple has never addressed the lack of this Continuity feature, which is also available on other streaming platforms, and so far it is unclear whether the company plans to add this frequently requested feature by users. For now, if you’re constantly moving between devices and operating systems, you have to manually tap what you want to listen to, because it doesn’t sync your search history or remember what you played on another device. With iOS 27 just around the corner, subscribers can only hope that Apple is ready to address these and other missing features in Apple Music.