Spot the difference. A User's Perspective of Apple Music and Spotify.

One of the talking points on Twitter this week has undoubtedly been the launch of Apple Music. This is a streaming service which allows you to hear songs of your choosing, together with finding new music to listen to and the introduction of a dedicated radio platform hosted by DJ's in America and the UK.

I am not going to go into all the complexities of this service here, nor will I compare what it offers to all users (whether they be visually impaired or fully sighted). There are plenty of articles in the mainstream media which are doing that. But I've used both Apple Music and Spotify extensively this week and I had a few things I wanted to say. Please note this is not an authoratative article, just my own thoughts as a user of both of these services. We both love music and listen to a lot of it each day and use screen-readers.

Most notably, I have been disturbed by a number of tweets which have indicated that Apple Music is the first truly accessible music streaming service for the blind. That disturbs me because it is not accurate. That is suggesting to people that they really will get a tremendous accessibility experience across all platforms. Anyone seeing such tweets could well be lulled into a false sense of security. Yes, it is true that Apple Music works very well on iDevices, and so it should, but that is not the case on a windows PC. It is usable, but to say it was completely accessible would be a falsehood.

The other primary comment I have seen this week is what I can only describe as an "attack" on the Spotify music streaming service. I've read comments to the effect that Spotify do not care about accessibility. Let me remind people that accessibility at even a rudimentary level was not implemented into iTunes for a number of years. I know, I was there! Many of us bought iPods because we wanted to purchase mainstream audio players which our friends or family members had. But how to get songs onto it? We were desperate to do that.

iTunes was very very difficult to use for a long time. But we got through it because the company did absolutely nothing about it. We had to find our own way around the program, be creative and find any way we could of working with it just so we could hear songs on the device. It was hard work. I would also say that many people still feel iTunes is a struggle to get around because it is such a large application, and with iTunes 12.2, it is offering even more. More features means more controls which are not always accessible, more difficulties for the user in terms of finding where they need to get to, and so on.

My point is that Spotify have implemented accessibility now for the Windows PC, so do try to give them a chance. It's not perfect, but nor is iTunes or Apple Music.

Why I Like Spotify As a Music Platform.

As indicated previously, one of the reasons I would not use Apple Music on a computer personally is because I need to use iTunes. This program is large, it is often quite sluggish on a PC to respond particularly when using the iTunes Store, and I would have to deal with all of that just to spontaneously hear some songs I felt like listening to. On the other hand, the Spotify application is for the purpose of streaming content. It doesn't come with all the other paraphenalia that iTunes has. Its a standalone client, lovely and responsive. I know if I want to start streaming songs, I can launch Spotify, type in what I want to search for and within just a few seconds, I can be hearing it. This includes selecting one of my playlists.

With our Leasey product, the job is made far easier because it has been scripted not only to make it more usable, but you can manage all aspects of playlists and, best of all for me, (a person who is somewhat fanatical about hearing the original version of a song), if I have not selected the correct rendition I can simply press Down Arrow, Enter, and there I am playing the next instance with no delay whatever. If a person does not have Leasey, it is slower to do but it is achievable.

With Apple Music, I cannot do that. I have to make sure Apple Music is selected, type what I want to search for into the Edit Field, press Enter, wait for the search results page to load, find it, and start exploring. Granted, the page is quite clean, so it is easy enough to find what you are looking for. The results page is a little like browsing a webpage. It is divided into headings, but you cannot quickly skip between one song result and the next. Moreover, the Play button is unlabelled, (an accessibility quirk), but given its the only Button below each song it is fairly obvious that this is what it is meant to do.

Because when viewing this page you are in a screen-reader's virtual environment, this means that some of the keystrokes to adjust the volume, pause and restart etc, do not work when in that results window. So I need to focus somewhere else to do those things, making sure of course I am not located on a button which will cause something else to happen. A good example would be to ensure focus is not located on an alternative Button which, when activated with the Space Bar, would cause something else to happen rather than pausing.

If on the other hand I do want to move to an alternative version of a song, I need to arrow down that page, find the next Play buttton which, because it is unlabelled I have to assume it pertains to the song I've just found, then press the Space bar on it.

In summary, you need to explore the page in a systematic way and take a mental note of which song you are bypassing in order to ensure you play the correct one. It would be much better if the Button was labelled "Play", followed by the song title, such as, "Play Loving You Could Never Be Better by George Jones". If this was implemented, the user could Tab through, or even bring up a list of Buttons so as to view the results without any intervening text. Now that approach would have been high quality accessibility implementation! Spotify does give me that flexibility.

Having said all that, everything with Apple Music is achievable under Windows if you are not expecting a perfect solution. If for example I find what Apple Music is recommending for me, such as a series of Playlists, none of those items have Buttons or Links associated with them. However, pressing Enter on the line of text relating to the suggestion does work. It is possible that by so doing you will be "thrown out" of the application altogether, but pressing ALT+Tab will take you back into it.

As a side note, when listening to a playlist, I have not found a way to skip a song yet. That can be done with spotify by pressing a keystroke.

How Does It All work On an iDevice?

Very well is the answer. As you would expect, most aspects of Apple Music seem to be very accessible indeed. Apple Music has a really cool feature as it is tightly interwoven with Siri. So I can say to my iPod, "Play Gilbert O'Sullivan, Out of the Question", and it should do it. I've had very mixed results with this. Most times it will play the song, on one occasion it thought I was my wife Louise for some reason, and sometimes it just says that the song is not available for streaming even though I have previously streamed the song using apple Music on the PC. But it works most of the time, and we have to give Apple a lot of latitude here. It was only launched this week after all. I do like the idea though of grabbing my iPod and just asking for a song that comes into my head that I would like to listen to. That is very cool.

It is also possible to say, "Play the number 1 hit from 9 August 1972", and Apple Music should be able to accommodate it, although this appears to be the American chart rather than relative to your country.

Spotify though is also very accessible using their app. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that browsing for new music causes some problems, and I do hope this is fixed soon for those people who want to do that. It has to be. But in terms of finding songs or albums to hear, selecting a playlist and so on, it's all very very achievable.

Conclusion.

Spotify V. Apple Music is going to be one of those arguments similar to which screen-reader or even operating system one prefers. There's no right or wrong answer, and a person will of course choose the one which is best suited, both in terms of financial and also to meet their level of skill in terms of getting over the accessibility difficulties, and both platforms have them.

But I would not want anyone to run away with the idea that Apple Music is a 100 percent, fully accessible, music streaming solution. My wish for the future is that both companies will give more careful thought as to what accessibility and usability really means, take some advice from people who can give full and constructive comment on that implementation, so that the consumer can then make an informed choice. The choice one makes should be based upon the content and financial offers which may be applied, rather than which one is more accessible. The ideal situation would be for the consumer not to have to think about the accessibility and usability.