Syncing Spotify and Apple Music Part 1 — Motivation and Comparison
“Wait, what?” I hear some of you say. “Why would you want to do that? Why not just pick one, instead of paying for both?” Valid question, but let me back up a bit and explain my motivation for wanting to do this.
Spotify
Lets go back to the time I was living in Budapest, Hungary, on my first year studying Computer Engineering at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. This was when Spotify first became available in Hungary. I had signed up to receive a notification about availability in my region, and I remember receiving that email and signing up just minutes after. Up until that point, my entire music collection was in mp3 format (320kbps of course). I had iTunes installed on my PC and I would spend hours on end tidying up my prized collection of favourite songs, downloading album art, etc. When I found Spotify, it was a major game changer. I signed up for premium pretty soon, and I migrated my entire library to the platform.
Back then Spotify did not have all the features it does today. It was very limited, but did the job. As time went on, it just got better and better. I could go into detail about all the amazing features that I use every single day, but suffice to say its my favourite streaming platform, and probably will be for a very long time. So as the years went by, I kept building my library up, and using Spotify more and more.
The Apple Watch
When Apple Music became available in Hungary, I didn’t take much notice. It was more expensive than the student plan I had with Spotify, and it only worked on Apple devices… meh :@ So why and how does Apple Music come into my story? Well, I need to admit something. I’m a massive Apple fan. But my relationship with Apple is a love-hate relationship as you will see later on. The important moment came when I bought a second hand apple watch s2 from someone selling it at a very good price.
I had been eyeing the apple watch for quite some time, but the price tag had me completely disinterested. Now, when I saw the facebook marketplace listing for that watch, and thought how nice it would be to use it with my airpods that I had recently purchased, I had to buy it. At this point, I had an iPhone 6S, a macbook air, and my airpods. The apple watch fit in nicely with the Apple ecosystem, and I really loved how it could unlock my macbook instead of my password and give me notifications, etc. I had also recently taken up jogging in the mornings on Margaret Island nearby my flat. (Its a must-see if you ever visit Budapest.)
So, my plan was to stop bringing my phone with me on my runs, and only take my apple watch with my airpods. Great plan, right? Except, I hit a barrier. Spotify did not have an app for the apple watch! This meant if I wanted to go running without my phone, I would have to manually sync mp3 files (oh God no!) to the watch, or… wait for it… yep, you guessed it. Apple has a solution for us, for a little extra cash each month.
Apple Music
Lets take a quick look at what Apple has to offer with their music streaming service. Similar to Spotify, they have a huge database of music. Anything I had on Spotify, I would probably find on here too. It worked well with most of my devices (since I was already very much in the apple ecosystem), and had an offline mode for listening to music. And the big plus, it worked offline on my apple watch. It also integrated with Siri, which meant I could say “Hey Siri, play Dr. Dre.” and jump up and down like an excited 6yr old when Still D.R.E. started playing.
This was a few years back, and voice assistants were not very common, and rarely used, at least in Hungary. So it was a fun party trick. I signed up for the free trial, and after for the student plan. At this point, I was paying for 2 music subscription services. Naturally, I would prefer to just use one, but each platform had some features exclusive to it, which I needed.
Apple Music was the only one that worked with my apple watch. But I really liked Spotify, and already had my entire library on it. There was absolutely no way I was going to manually build up my collection on here as well, it would just take to much time.I’m actually surprised Apple doesn’t have a solution for importing your Spotify library. If they added this, they would have many more subscribers.
I did find a few solutions to migrating your library from one provider to another, but there was still the case for Spotify offering a web player (Update: Apple Music now have this as well). There are lots of players with Spotify Connect functionality which is cross-platform, like Spotify. Apple Music would not work on my linux workstation for example. And my favourite bit, which I did not know back then, Spotify’s API is lightyears ahead of Apple Music’s, and its free to use. If you read later parts of this series, you will see my rant about how terrible Apple Music’s API is. If you only use Apple Music for streaming music, I would say its comparable and even a strong competitor to Spotify. (especially if you primarily use Apple devices). But if you want to develop something that uses their API? Forget it! You are much better off with Spotify.
For a more in-depth comparison of the two services, read this article.
Why not both?
So this is the point where I decided I wanted to use both. I wasn’t going to give up on Spotify, because its just better in so many ways than Apple Music, and I want to use it. But, I’m forced to use Apple Music because of my apple devices. So what could I do? Well, the first step was somehow migrating my entire Spotify library over to Apple Music, so I started googling away. I found a few solutions, but they were all horrible. Outdated, poorly written, buggy and just bad to use. However, you only have to deal with them once, to migrate your collection, and then you are good to go. So I used one of these terrible apps to get the job done, and more or less I managed to get all my music copied over.
Only later on did I found out about an amazing site: https://soundiiz.com/ which lets you migrate over your music between ANY streaming provider, and they do it properly. I mean it looks amazing, its easy to use, and they even have a free tier. (The pricing is very affordable as well, as you can just subscribe for a single month, move over your whole collection, and then unsubscribe)
Hey, if anyone from Soundizz is reading this, I’m advertising your site for free… :)
Keeping them in sync
I’ve gotten to the point of having my library available on the two streaming platforms I use, but coming up fast is the next problem. Music collections are not static objects. They evolve with time. On average I’ll be adding at least 5–6 new songs to my library every week. I’m a big fan Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” playlists, as they suggest music similar to the rest of my library. The same goes for Apple Music’s “New Music Mix” and “Chill Mix” which I really love. So I’m adding all these new songs, and I’m having to make sure I add them on both platforms every time. This is a massive pain, and often I’ll forget, and end up having an inconsistent state between my libraries. The problem only gets worse when dealing with playlists. I try to organise my music into playlists of different genre or moods, and I’ll spend lots of time finding new songs for them, or removing old ones. Imagine doing all that twice, every time.
But wait! I’m a developer, and both services have APIs. There must be something I can do to fix this. Surely all I need to do is write some code which gets executed every time something changes on one platform, and just mirror the change on the other platform. Seems simple enough in theory. New song added to playlist on Spotify, do the same on Apple Music and vice versa. This would allow me to use either one of the services, and keep them both up to sync, without any extra effort. In theory, I would just need to set this up once, and anyone in my situation would be able to have that sweet sweet automatic synchronisation, and enjoy computers doing their jobs for once, and making life easier for us. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do? Take away work that can be automated?
Join me on my journey through laughs, tears and endless sleepless nights as I run into dead ends, hit walls, find ways around them, realise my solution doesn’t actually work, cry, shout loud obscenities at Apple, find another solution and repeat. I’ll show you the ins and outs of Spotify and Apple Music’s APIs, what they can and can’t do, and how to automate the shit out of everything :)
See you soon in Part 2…
