It isn't perfect, but it actually feels like an app designed to be used to play back music. Apple Music feels like a big, clunky, advertisement.
There is usually some degree of uniformity in streaming apps :
- all the services tend to get the same deals from the majors. Let's say service x gets terms A, service y will push to have the same A.
- they all solve the same problem .
Personally, I am not a big fan of spotify's UI :
- I despise Blur, it is the autotune of design and Spotify uses it a lot.
- As much as I like an app that is easier on my eyes without all these white areas everywhere, spotify is way too dark for my taste .
- it is surprisingly unpolished for such a big mobile team. To be fair a lot of the complexity is self imposed and comes from the fact that the UI is rendered based on the configuration sent by the server (display 3 columns of artists, etc)
Spotify does shine on the playback tech though. ogg vorbis, loudness equalization, etc they are on top of their game here.