5 Reasons Why Users Ditch Apple Music

Apple Music has a lot going for it. The service offers lossless audio without charging extra for it, supports Dolby Atmos, and is deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem, making it easy to use across all your devices. There are plenty of reasons former Spotify subscribers have moved to Apple's service. However, none of that really matters much if using Apple Music actually starts to get on your nerves.

Over the years, we've seen complaints about Apple Music pop up, some which might be enough to cause users to switch from the service completely. Users say simple navigation requires too many taps and that despite the improved search features in Apple Music, the search still struggles unless you type exactly what the app expects. There's also complaints that the recommendations can veer wildly from what you were listening to. Others are frustrated that Apple Music still can't move an active listening session between devices as seamlessly as Spotify can.

Experiences obviously vary, and plenty of subscribers prefer Apple Music. But if you're wondering why some users eventually choose to ditch it, these are five of the biggest complaints that pop up.

Music recommendations are always going to be subjective, but Apple Music users complain that the service doesn't always understand what they want to hear. That's especially noticeable when someone wants to pick one song and let the algorithm handle everything that comes afterward.

A Reddit comment by a subscriber who had used both Spotify and Apple Music said Spotify's music algorithm, curated playlists, and recommendations were better for their tastes. They tried favoriting songs and even adding them to playlists to help "train" Apple Music but said its suggestions still felt off. Another user said that they wanted background music for a gallery and expected Apple Music to continue playing songs with roughly the same mood and vibe. However, instead of continuing with similar artists, the recommendations began playing music with a much different vibe. "It should be pretty simple to just play similar vibes at the very least," the user wrote, adding that they didn't didn't have time to build out a large playlist and had hoped that Apple Music would be able to pull its weight.

Not everyone has had such a bad experience, of course. Other Apple Music subscribers prefer Apple's recommendations to those offered by other streaming services. However, if you're relying on a streaming service to do most of the music discovery for you, repeatedly having to skip songs that don't fit can quickly undermine one of the biggest conveniences you're paying for.

One of the perhaps most annoyed of complaints has to be about Apple Music's search. Back with the release of iOS 18, Apple added support of natural language search to Apple Music. That should technically make finding music on the platform much easier. However, complaints from the community show that even doing something as simple as missing an apostrophe when searching for music can be enough to keep a song from showing up in the list.

Other theads on Reddit have come up with mixed responses, with one poster noting that they had trouble finding the album they were looking for despite listening to it right at that same moment. Others noted they've had no issue with searching for music, so the outcome here definitely seems to be hit or miss. Still, an unreliable search that makes it hard to find what you're looking for is not something people always want to deal with.

Apple's ecosystem is famous for continuity, which means you move across devices more seamlessly. However, Apple Music still lacks one of the most useful features its biggest competitor, Spotify, offers. Spotify Connect lets you easily control playback on another device and even move between devices while keeping the same songs playing, and it is one of a few Spotify features Apple Music users are missing out on.

That omission generated nearly 2,000 upvotes when one user complained about it in May 2026. After pausing Apple Music on an iPhone and moving to a Mac, the user said there was no simple way to continue playing and that it felt like they had to start from scratch each time. And this isn't the only user unhappy with that lack of feature. Another user responded that the missing continuity feature was the only reason that they continued using Spotify over Apple Music.

Considering Apple devices already support Handoff to move tasks across devices, it seems like this would be something easy for Apple to implement. Of course, that isn't necessarily true, but it still makes sense why some users might be upset about the lack of any kind of Handoff for Apple Music, especially across Apple devices.

Apple Music's interface has received plenty of visual changes, but some users think navigating it has actually become more cumbersome. In a February 2026 discussion that received hundreds of upvotes, one user complained that the interface forces them to take so many actions just to bring up more buttons that used to be immediately accessible.

A June 2026 complaint compared Apple Music with Spotify and Tidal and said having to open a menu before getting where they actually wanted to go was "infuriating." An Android user in the same discussion simply called the newer Liquid Glass-inspired design "horrible." Some of these complaints do overlap with some of the disadvantages Apple Music still has compared to other services, especially when it comes to how consistent the experience feels across different devices.

Another subscriber who spent several months trying to switch from Spotify described experiencing "constant friction with the user interface across all platforms." Their complaints included the fact that Apple hides the Add to Library button behind another menu and that navigation controls collapse when the search is opened. None of these make Apple Music unusable, of course, but the complaints could add up over time and push users away.

In the past, Apple Music handled libraries and playlists differently from Spotify, sometimes with nasty consequences for people who don't understand exactly how the system works. You'd think that playlists and the songs saved in your actual library would be different somehow, right? Well, previously Apple Music didn't treat it this way.

One user complained about how they had added an album to their library, took a few of their favorite tracks from it and then put them into a playlist before removing the album from their library after they were finished with it. Because of the way Apple handled playlists and their library, though, all of the songs were moved from the playlist at the same time. The user complained that the behavior made them angry and specifically pointed out that Spotify allows albums to be removed from the library without touching songs saved to user playlists.

However, Apple appears to have listened to what the community wants and is addressing some of these longstanding frustrations with new Apple Music changes coming to iPhones with iOS 27. Beta users have already discovered that you can now delete songs and albums from the library without it touching your playlist, which has led to some rejoicing from the community. It's good news, as this issue could definitely have driven some users away from Apple Music.