Spotify vs YouTube Music: Know the plans and features before you choose one

Spotify and YouTube Music recently debuted in India, bringing their huge pools of songs and playlists, along with customised local content for users in the country. Here is how the two compare.

If you are a music buff and stream your music over the internet, you would be familiar with Spotify and YouTube Music. Both these music streaming platforms debuted in India recently, bringing their huge pools of songs and playlists, along with their customised collections especially curated to suit the users in the country. Both over-the-top (OTT) audio platforms have a lot in store for everyone. Let’s take a look at what these music streaming services are offering and how they compare with each other:

Pricing

Spotify and YouTube Music, in their basic versions, offer free music streaming supported by advertisement. If you want to remove the ads, you will need to upgrade to their respective subscription-based premium editions. While Spotify provides an option to choose between monthly and yearly subscriptions, YouTube Music offers only a monthly subscription plan.

A Spotify premium subscription costs you Rs 119 for a month, or Rs 1,189 a year. Interestingly, Spotify also offers a one-time payment service, which is like a prepaid top-up plan, for those who do not wish to tie themselves to monthly or yearly subscriptions. These plans are available for Rs 13 a day, Rs 39 a week, Rs 129 a month, Rs 389 for three months, and Rs 719 for six months. A YouTube Music monthly subscription can be purchased for Rs 99.

As part of their introductory offers, Spotify and YouTube Music are, respectively, offering a month and three months of free subscription to the premium edition.

Cross-platform support

Not all users listen to music on their smartphones. They also stream music on laptops, tablets, gaming consoles, and even wearables. Therefore, it becomes imperative for new-age music streaming services to support a cross-platform functionality.

YouTube Music is available as an app on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, so it is compatible with most smartphones and tablets running on these two operating systems. However, there is no dedicated application for desktop, so if you wish to stream music on a laptop or desktop running on Microsoft Windows or Linux Ubuntu, you have to use a web-based client.

Spotify, on the other hand, supports all major platforms. Besides being available as an app on iOS and Android devices, Spotify also has a dedicated application for Windows-based machines, and supports multiple other clients – including PlayStation and Xbox.

Business Standard