Tencent Music and Apple Music are teaming up to bring more Chinese music to the Apple Music catalog. Apple Music is the second most popular music streaming service, only beaten out by Spotify. And thanks to the old iTunes days, Apple Music undeniably has the best and most extensive catalog of music around, with Spotify coming in at a healthy second place.

Of course, Spotify is known for its playlist and collaboration features. And as of recently, Spotify has been growing the number of original podcast shows on the platform, bringing even more users to the Spotify ecosystem. Both Spotify and Apple Music are excellent choices for the average music listener, and both streaming services are available on practically all platforms. We're all still waiting on Spotify HiFi to drop, though. The end of the year is coming up soon, and still no news or further details on the Lossless tier for Spotify.

Related: Apple Music Voice Plan: What Is It & Should You Subscribe?

And Apple Music will be continuing its catalog dominance. Tuesday, the Tencent Music Entertainment Group is announcing that it will be partnering with Apple Music to bring "hundreds of thousands" of Chinese artists to the platform. TME says bringing its catalog to Apple Music will "help promote more high-quality Chinese music overseas and realize the global value of Chinese music." Combine that with Apple Music's recent announcement of Lossless audio and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Users are in for a great listening experience with an even larger music catalog.

Is Apple Music Right For You?

Apple Music logo against a dark, red background

Hopefully, this isn't an exclusive deal, and other streaming providers can get in on the action down the road. Exclusives do nothing more than restrict choice to specific providers. And that's obviously no good as it pushes customers to one provider, and if you didn't know about the exclusive, you might never discover the artist in the first place. This is especially important as an increasing number of folks rely on algorithmic playlists to discover new music.

When it comes to music streaming, customers should choose based on features and not how extensive the catalog is. The catalog should be virtually the same regardless of where users decide to go. Sadly, that's not the case. Even outside of Apple Music and Spotify, there are variations in music catalogs among all the music streaming services. And unfortunately, some services having better catalogs than others leads to other music streaming services not being able to compete or ultimately going away entirely. Features and price should be the driving force for choosing a music streaming service, not catalog size.

Next: I Switched From Spotify To Apple Music For 1 Month — Here's What Happened

Source: PRNewswire