GrapheneOS (Android) & Fedora (Linux) – Harmony Music
iPhone (iOS) – Brave Playlist
Because the playlists aren’t synced across these platforms, I have to recreate the same playlists on each device, which is time‑consuming. I’m okay with unsynced playlists, but having the playlists synced would save me a lot of effort.
I’m thinking about switching to Apple Music so my playlists sync automatically across all three devices. Before I make the change, I’d really appreciate any advice you guys can share.
I use both Apple Music and Spotify currently, I find with Apple Music that the second you want to use it on a device that isn’t within the Apple ecosystem the entire experience is ruined, I personally find that Spotify is great for sync across platforms, although I don’t know what it is like on Graphene or Fedora, but I personally wouldn’t touch Apple Music unless you had every device as an Apple product.
For me both Apple Music and Spotify work quite well on both iOS and Android, however there are a few things to consider:
Apple Music contains less trackers on Android than Spotify does
Apple Music pays artists way more than Spotify
Spotify is from the EU, which may or may not be important to you (for me it’s a plus)
Spotify provides both music and podcasts, which Apple Music does not do.
So depending on what’s most important to you, one can be better than the other
Edit: I realize that it’s not a Spotify vs Apple Music thread, so to answer your original question: Apple Music on Android is something I use myself and I like this setup, works very well for me.
Plus, if you have a family cloud and a spare slot, you can create a new user that you will use only on Android Apple Music, so that the IPs are not connected to your iPhone identity. The playlists you want to sync would then need to be shared with the new user, so a little bit of friction there.
I use Apple Music without issue on iOS and Android (Samsung)
The android interface hasn’t updated to match iOS 26 yet, but iOS 26 is also a bit of a dumspter fire for the moment on my end.
I’ve always treied to keep my local library separate from Apple music, so if you plan on importing music externally I don’t know how well that would work.
There are third party clients on Linux but only the web interface is actually supported.
I’ve since found out that Linux can essentially act like a bluetooth speaker and started doing that instead.
I love many of Spotify’s features, but I prefer Apple Music because it tracks less compared to spotify. As long as the listening experience is smooth, that’s what matters most to me. I’ve also heard that Cider on Linux offers a good user experience.
I’ve tried Cider and I find that it’s incredibly laggy, and really doesn’t offer anything noteworthy, and in fact you lose out on a lot of features that Apple Music provides.
Edit: This is probably controversial but I don’t really find the tracking of Spotify to be anything super malicious and in fact it’s more for their recommendation engine. You can have a Spotify account relatively privately, use a email alias or temp email and a password.
Currently I don’t use any family cloud and I’m planning to get an individual subscription. The main reason I am preferring apple music is because it tracks less compared to Spotify as you mentioned, also in my current setup of using harmony music or brave playlist the sound quality drops noticeably at higher volumes. Additionally, using apple music means that I paying the for the music I listen to.
I’m using an iPhone XR, which can’t run iOS 26, so I’m not worried about UI changes. I just want uninterrupted music playback on Android or Linux. When I switch to Apple Music, I’ll build my playlists from scratch.
I’d probably find the music you’d want, download it without a DRM (where it’s lawful to do so), and self-host it. Then, when you want it, you can find your music on said self-hosted solution, copy and and import it to different local-first music players. On Android, I can’t recommend Sono Beta enough. On iOS… I need to look for a local-first solution that isn’t compromised by Big Tech.
For Linux, since you’re on Fedora, maybe I’d look for either Audacious or QMMP (either or is Winamp-like if you’re into that), since they look similar. Otherwise, you could potentially use something like Rhythmbox (I listen to podcasts using Rhythmbox with RSS feeds) or similar to that. I heard Fooyin was good as well.
Thanks for the detailed suggestions! I appreciate the effort you put into outlining self‑hosting options and local‑first players for Android, iOS, and Linux.
However, I’m not into setting up a self‑hosted music library. My goal is simply to have uninterrupted, high‑quality playback. Thanks again for the ideas!
Any music streaming service would do in your case:
Amazon Music
Apple Music
Qobuz
Spotify
Tidal
Youtube Music
Each one of these have a native app for iOS and Android and a web-player you can use on desktop.
The downside is twofold. You are paying big companies to screw over (especially small) artists. - The amount of screw over depends on the service you use. - And you are locking yourself into that service, because all the work you put into “your” collection and “your” playlists can only persist as long as you are paying for that service.
If you are OK with that, just pick the one you like most. Maybe try each one for a month and read a little bit about how each service treats its artists. Switching services is easy as long as you are not invested (curated “your” collection) too much.
I’d prefer Tidal since it pays artists more, but it lacks some songs I listen to. So, I chose Apple Music, which pays artists more and has fewer trackers than other music streaming services.