It's $4.99 per month for desktop-only access and $9.99 per month to use the desktop app and mobile app for your smartphone. All you do is pay a monthly fee to use the service. Spotify works just like iTunes, except you don't need to buy any songs. It's called iTunes Match and allows you to listen to songs that you've already purchased on your iPad or iPhone without having to sync with a computer. Individual songs range from $0.99 to $1.29.įor $29.99 per year you can add your entire music library to the cloud. Albums range from approximately $7.99 to $13.99. A lbums can be bought in full or individual tracks can be downloaded. But before you buy you can listen to a 90-second preview. ITunes is free to use, but if you want to listen to a full song you have to buy it. Fans of owning music and burning it to CDs or saving the files to an external hard drive may also see iTunes as a better fit. The bottom line: iTunes wins this round simply because it has more songs available.

But you still need to pay a monthly fee to get some of Spotify's best features. Users can download apps that recommend new songs to check out and apps that tell you when your favorite artist is coming to town. Spotify is much more social than iTunes, it also has the added benefit of its own free app store. Premium users that pay $9.99 per month can download songs to smartphones, tablets, and computers. Users don't own songs, but can stream them as many times as they want. With Spotify, users have access to over 20 million songs from almost any genre. Apple sells individual songs or full albums for roughly the same price through iTunes. After you pay, the songs are yours to keep and you can do what you like with them.

ITunes maintains over 28 million songs across almost any genre. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Spotify and itunes