Which is better, Xiaomi Mi Music or Apple Music? Both platforms have two applications pre-installed on our equipment, both called ‘Music’, which serve as the essential players to handle the system’s audio files: songs and discs, but also audio notes or podcasts.
In order to analyze what we like and what we don’t like, what we miss and what should be indispensable, we have compared both. We have analyzed the ‘Music’ applications on an iPad from iPadOS version 15.1, the most advanced at present, and ‘Music’ in a Xiaomi Mi 11 with the Global ROM 12.5.7 and going to the apk of the app, with version 6.1.16i-831, the most advanced available today.
Edit and configure tracks
Within the ‘Music’ track editor – the one from Xiaomi – we have the opportunity to modify any metadata: song, artist, album name, add lyrics – even from a local .txt file, change the cover and incorporate the song into a playlist that is composed exclusively of the same song repeated as many times as we want.
We can also turn that song into the usual ringtone or alarm tone, thanks to a shortcut for it. Another very interesting addition resides in the possibility of editing the file itself, changing its extension through a very simple time editor and integrated within the application. Of course, we can also mark it as a favorite by tapping on the ‘Like’ heart or delete the file.
Within the editing menu of Apple’s ‘Music’ we can delete the track, add it to a playlist, access the album it belongs to, mark it as ‘like’, choose ‘suggest less of this style’ —The equivalent of ‘I don’t like it’— and put that song in the play queue, at the beginning or at the end.
However, all these options are of direct interaction, at no time can we modify the metadata of style and genre, disc date and, much less, change the name of the file, the author or the cover, something that we will have to edit from iTunes , from the ‘Song information’ function. A severe limitation for those who come across a file without metadata, of which they cannot recognize the original source.
As for the playback with pop-up plugin or floating window, the player always stays active in the background and iPadOS 15 keeps the top player and the option to connect via AirPlay, nothing more.
As for Mi Music or Xiaomi ‘Music’, the music app has its own player —with renewed widgets— that not only allows you to pause, continue or go to the next or previous song, but also adds the option to bookmark the track in progress, listen to it in a loop or play any moment of it from your timeline.
Music as a comprehensive service
We are now going to analyze the apps as integral services, as players beyond the local files that we carry inside the device. The Xiaomi app supports (in China) QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music services, the equivalent of Spotify and Amazon Music in the country. It also has improvements within the Control Center.
Within Spain, however, the application is very limited as a third-party service.
Of course, it has a very juicy trick: you can watch YouTube videos and listen to the audio, without ads, without having to wait for the jumps between songs, being able to block the mobile or the screen. The music will continue to play, which makes the Xiaomi application automatically the service with the highest number of music files of all, no need to pay for YouTube Music Premium.
Apple’s has integrated the entire Apple Music ecosystem. This are about 75 million songs in HD, thousands of podcasts and many exclusive playlists. However, the editing and synchronization functions, sound effects and equalization relegate it to a mere showcase for accessing Apple Music, while the old iTunes did have more personalization functions and access to radios from around the world.
Some conclusions
Before concluding, we must point to several ties: the Xiaomi app can be controlled with the buttons on the headphones, just like the Apple application. Tie between both. Audio quality is dependent on the device’s ditto chip, without compression or “tampering through a virtual DAC”; tie.
Now we can conclude that the Apple application is too dependent on its ecosystem. By not including equalizer or functions to listen to music from other platforms, it is very endogamous.
For example, the possibility of editing the duration of a song is a very eloquent addition in order to face both options. In the Apple app we would be obliged to resort to a third-party application like Sampr, Hokusai or even the Garage Band itself, which includes a complete audio editor, inheriting in a simplified way some of the tools from the Logic Studio suite.
However, it is allowed to manage music already linked to the Mac through the AirPlay system -or resorting to Remote-, something that the Xiaomi ‘Music’ app does not include, despite being in front of an application under a system as open as Android .
In sum, Xiaomi narrowly wins, for that always celebrated audio player from YouTube —which is not even available in all territories— and for that complete editor that reminds us of the best times of iTunes.