Novelty suffers, too. By one estimate nearly three-quarters of streamed songs are over 18 months old. Compared with the raucous explosion of genres that characterised popular music until the 2000s—hip hop in all its iterations, the innovation of golden-era British dance music—contemporary music can seem oddly flat.

Compared to Spotify, Apple Music is one of the better-paying platforms for artists. Here's the payment difference between the streamings.

A new report analyzed artist payouts in 2024 and found that Apple Music paid more than double Spotify’s average rates.