Sad. The UI of Spotify is much better - less taps to get where you want to go, dark theme, and it actually has song handoff between devices and a dedicated desktop app for the Mac, none of which Apple Music has. I can't help but think this is because of Apple's monopolistic practice of only allowing Apple Music to integrate with Siri.
Not in a dedicated app. The integration with iTunes is a bit of a mess and brings all of the iTunes weirdness along for the ride. I really wish Apple would break iTunes apart...
Yea, it still forces you to listen through the spotify player rather than itunes (which is not at all surprising) and they never supported smart playlists.
Again, not surprising, but certainly enough for me to prefer apple music. The player is just way, way better for my needs.
Also (forgot before I can’t edit) spotify has no way of syncing your music not in their catalogue to your other devices. So my many bootlegs, mixtapes, and music not in the spotify catalogue is a real PITA to manage across devices, and is not even possible in some cases (eg I can’t think of a way to listen to my mixtapes on the xbox spotify player).
Meanwhile apple has the “itunes match” program (...I think?) which solves this.
I miss Tomahawk :( It integrated all kinds of music sources in a single, nice player. It's no longer being developed, but you can still see what it was like at https://www.tomahawk-player.org/