Most of the mainstream services have access to the same collection, encompassing tens of millions of tracks from major labels and most independents, and some (but not all) offer free versions. What do paid subscribers get? For starters, ad-free streaming, along with the ability to save content for offline listening and stream any song or album on demand. Most also offer some combination of custom playlists, smart DJs, artist-inspired radio stations, and other new music discovery options based on your previous listening history. A few of the services in this list of best music streaming services also offer the option to buy music and add it to your collection, and several others include tools to upload tracks from your personal collection to mix and match with the online catalog. For an extra few bucks a month, music fans with golden ears and high-end hardware can upgrade from compressed audio to ultra-high-quality lossless streams. The 800-pound gorilla of music apps earned its top status by being downright addictive, with some of the best smart playlists around and extensive support for podcasts. It also has the best social connections, as long as you’re willing to connect your Facebook and Spotify accounts. You can share playlists easily without having to involve Facebook, and you can always stream your guilty pleasure tracks in a private session if you don’t want your music snob friends to know you’re crushing on Coldplay or Nickelback. There is a big gotcha in Spotify’s family plan, which allows family members to share the account only if they’re at the same address. That’s a problem if your kids are away at college in another city. Our favorite Spotify feature, by far, is the ability to switch outputs on the fly, so you can flip in midstream from the smart speaker in your office to your living room’s big sound or from your desktop app to your phone without missing a beat. The service also lets you upload personal content, although the procedure for doing so is cumbersome. For years, Spotify’s 10,000-song limit was frustratingly easy for a diehard music fan to hit. As of May 2020, however, that limit was officially removed. If you love iTunes on your iPhone, you’ll love Apple Music. Steve Jobs and his successors have been leaders in digital music for two decades, and even if they were late to the subscription and streaming party, they’ve since made up for lost time. Apple Music has an enormous library that includes some iTunes-exclusive albums and tracks, as well as curated playlists and live radio. The service is available on a surprising number of platforms, including Android devices and even Samsung Smart TVs. Using a signature feature of the service, you can upload your personal music collection to the iCloud Music Library. The good news is that your quota is a generous 100,000 tracks, and those you purchased from iTunes or downloaded for offline listening don’t count in that total. The bad news is you’ll need to use the iTunes software on a PC or a Mac to accomplish that upload. Those who have a love-hate relationship with Apple’s legacy music client will just have to grin and bear it. For years, Google’s subscription music service was called Google Play Music. In true Google fashion, the company killed off that product in 2020, replacing it with this spin-off under the YouTube brand. As a longtime fan of the original service, I’m happy to report that YouTube Music Premium is a worthy upgrade. (The music service also includes an ad-free YouTube Premium subscription.) If you’re comfortably ensconced in the Google ecosystem, this service has a lot to offer. Its algorithmic playlists are extensive and smart, its streaming catalog is huge, and the apps for iOS, Android, and the Chrome browser are slick and easy to use. Even with a free account, you can upload up to 100,000 tracks from your personal collection using a desktop browser. Unlike other services, which limit uploads to compressed MP3 or AAC formats, YouTube Music allows you to upload FLAC, M4A, OGG, and other high-fidelity tracks. And even with a free account you can play those uploaded tracks in the background and download them for ad-free, offline listening. Audio quality, though, is where Tidal stakes its main claim to fame. The Hi-Fi Plus “Tidal Masters” plan promises the highest quality music available in a streaming service, with Dolby Atmos support, while the Hi-Fi plan delivers uncompressed tracks for lossless audio. Whatever you do, though, don’t sign up from inside the Tidal app on an iOS device, unless you are eager to give an unnecessary 30% tip to Apple. Also be aware that Tidal users report (and I can confirm) that the iOS app doesn’t play well with Apple CarPlay, so use that free trial period to do your own tests before paying. Did your home audio system cost as much as your car? Then please allow us to introduce you to this service, founded in France in 2007, which is laser-focused on delivering recordings (for streaming or purchase) that are “as close to the original studio recording as you can get.” Those recordings sound perfectly good on more modest systems, too. Qobuz has a quirky vibe, with podcasts and playlists that cover far different territory than the mainstream pop/rock content you find in other services. If you’re looking for the extensive selection of algorithmic playlists you get with Apple Music or Spotify, you’ll be disappointed; but if you know exactly what you like, you’ll appreciate the easy-to-navigate interface. The mobile app works smoothly with Apple CarPlay, for those who paid for the upgraded sound system in their car. Like Tidal, Qobuz supports a long list of high-end hi-fi equipment; it’s also available as a Progressive Windows App that plays well with Chrome and Microsoft Edge on Windows PCs and Macs. This service also wins the contest for coolest name: The founders say they borrowed the Qobuz name from the ancient word Kobyz, a sacred musical instrument that originated in Kazakhstan. I know what you’re thinking: Napster, the poster child for music piracy that was shut down by court order two decades ago, is still around? Yes, it is. Well, the brand name survives, anyway, after being bought by Best Buy in 2008 and then sold to Rhapsody (another 1990s hit) in 2011. The service is now mostly used to power third-party services like iHeartRadio but the standalone service still has a small but loyal following. If you’re in the mood to party like it’s 1999, you can still pay your money and stream away with a feature set that’s pretty generic. Deezer was the first streaming music service in France, and more than a dozen years later, it survives worldwide with a decidedly non-corporate vibe. A free account gives you 30-second previews of tracks in the web browser but plays full tracks (with ads) on mobile devices. Upgrading to Premium unlocks playback in the web browser (and in the Windows progressive web app) and removes the ads. Deezer’s special sauce is an algorithmic recommendation feature it calls Deezer Flow, which generates “an infinite mix of favorites and new tracks” based on your feedback. You can choose lossless audio for $20 a month. You can also upload personal MP3 tracks using any web browser, but you’re limited to 2000 such tracks. Pandora is the original set-it-and-forget-it, just-play-me-what-I-like service. It started with the Music Genome project, which led to the algorithm that powered Pandora’s personalized playlist builder, fine-tuned by thumbs up/down recommendations. Pandora Premium is an effort to compete with the more album-focused services that go beyond the usual stations and allow subscribers to choose individual tracks. The service includes comedy and podcasts as well as music.
Idagio Premium+: Classical music fans are inevitably frustrated by the most popular music services, which treat symphonies and concertos like third-class citizens. If you prefer Bach to Beck and would rather listen to Mozart than Maroon 5, check out Idagio. It offers two million tracks, a fraction of the 50-60 million tracks that the big pop-focused alternative services deliver, but its selection is exclusively focused on classical labels like Deutsche Grammaphon, Decca, and ECM. The paid plans offer major upgrades like lossless audio and the ability to connect to dedicated audio devices.Primephonic: Join Primephonic and you’ll be in an exclusive club with about 150,000 members, run by absolute classical music fanatics. (Check out their “company values” page for details.) The service boasts of its “definitive catalog” of major labels and obscure indies, as well as smart search that’s built for classical music. (If you’re a classical fan, you know exactly how frustrating it is to find a specific performance on a mainstream music service.) The Premium plan delivers 320 kbps compressed tracks, while the Platinum option uses lossless FLAC streaming. The player streams at the highest sound quality available, including 24-bit recordingsNugs.net: The tagline “Live music lives here” and the name, which comes from a slang for high-quality buds, tells you almost everything you need to know about this service. You won’t find the traditional pop/rock labels here. Instead, you can stream audio from more than 15,000 live shows, with jam bands like Dead and Company, Metallica, Pearl Jam, and the Dave Matthews Band topping the bill. Mobile apps on iOS and Android allow subscribers to download concert recordings for offline listening. (You’ll find your saved shows in the My Stash section. Old hippies will get the reference immediately.) The service also offers a selection of live concert videos on demand, and you can upgrade to a higher audio quality or purchase live recordings so you can burn them to CDs or even (shudder) cassette tapes.LiveXLive Plus/Premium (Slacker): If we had to describe this service, we’d probably go with something like “quirky, but in a good way.” The Slacker-powered LiveXLive focuses on concert and festival livestreams, with “handcrafted audio stations” as well as an interesting lineup of original shows and podcasts. For fans of live music who aren’t jam-band enthusiasts, this is well worth checking out.
Using those criteria, we chose not to include a few services that were a less than perfect fit. That list includes SiriusXM, which is more of a radio network than a music service, and 7Digital and eMusic, which focus more on selling music than streaming.
