Spotify vs YouTube Music – Audio Quality

I didn’t set out to compare music streaming services. A casual car ride and a familiar song were enough to pull me into questioning how much audio quality really matters anymore.

The other day, someone close to me played a Tollywood song in his Volkswagen Taigun. He first played the song on YouTube Music and then on Spotify. The experience was startling to me, with Spotify sounding far better in terms of audio quality. To be fair, he was using Spotify Premium, while YouTube Music was on a free account.

We then played the same song in my car, which has a Bose audio system—obviously a premium brand. This time, the difference in audio quality was too subtle to confidently say that Spotify was better. That alone was enough to get me thinking.

I have been considering purchasing a pair of Bose headphones from the QuietComfort series—very high-end headphones by any standard. I was hoping they would deliver a noticeably superior experience, especially when paired with a premium music subscription. But the more I dug into this topic, the more it felt like the entire exercise might be futile.

I believe I have a reasonably discerning ear. I have owned and used studio-quality Audio-Technica M50 headphones, often considered a golden standard in the headphone world. When those were paired with self-ripped CDs played on an iPod Classic, nothing really beats that experience even today.

The problem begins with how we listen now. Most of our listening happens over Bluetooth, and audio gets compressed heavily in that process. A lot of data is lost before the sound even reaches our ears. Add to that the fact that lossless music does not truly play well over Bluetooth, and what we end up hearing is already compromised audio.

Then there is the smartphone itself. Unlike the iPod, it does not have dedicated amplifier and codec hardware focused purely on audio. That is another sacrifice we quietly accept. On top of that, a smartphone processor juggling multiple tasks does not exactly help matters either.

At some point, it all seems to boil down to this: perhaps the real value lies in paying attention to lyrics, melody, rhythm, and emotion—rather than obsessing over one subscription versus another.