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| 26 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Platforms | Offline Download | Paid Plan Audio Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 Spotify· · · | 95 | 7 | Web; Android; iOS; Linux; Windows; MacOS | Premium | 320Kbps |
| #2 Google Play Music· · · | 53 | 5 | – | – | – |
| #3 SoundCloud· · · | 25 | 8 | Web, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Desktop | Premium (partial) | – |
| #4 Deezer Music· · · | 12 | 3 | Web, Android, iOS, Windows Phone | – | 320kbs |
| #5 Groove Music· · · | 8 | 2 | Web, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, iOS | Yes | 192kbps |
| #6 Pandora· · · | 16 | 5 | Web, Android, iOS, Windows Phone | No | 192kbs |
Pro Generous free music streaming service
Spotify allows access to virtually all of its catalogue for free. The free plan has certain important limitation and includes ads, but is one of the very rare ones offering access to the catalogue of all major labels without requiring a subscription.
Pro Huge collection of music
The Spotify music streaming service has over 30 million songs.
Pro Available on virtually every major platform
The Spotify music streaming service is available on all major desktop operating systems - Windows, macOS and Linux, it's accessible from the web and Spotify is supported on almost all mobile platforms including iOS (dedicated iPhone and iPad apps), Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and Blackberr...
Con Not available in many countries around the world
You can see the list of countries here.
Con Free plan has very annoying audio ads
Expect to hear a 15 second audio ad after every song. This can become aggravating pretty quickly.
Con Some artists have missing album or tracks
Due to copyright issues some artists on the service have albums or tracks missing.
Pro Offers free cloud storage for personal music streaming service
Up to 50k songs can be uploaded to an online cloud storage and streamed directly from there at up to 320kbps without a paid plan. Additionally, during the upload process user's library will be scanned to see if any songs match Google's catalogue. The ones that do don't need to be uploa...
Pro Subscription includes YouTube Red in certain countries
YouTube Red is a paid video streaming service that allows you to play all YouTube content ad-free as well as offers original and exclusive series and films creating in partnership with major YouTube networks and personalities. The YouTube Red service is however only available in a few countries,...
Con Limited options without a subscription
Free users can only listen to music they uploaded or purchased through Google Play, or ad-fronted radio stations that are curated or based on a chosen song or artist. They can't play specific songs from Google's streaming library on demand.
Con No support for Education or Work (formerly Google for Apps) accounts in the family plan
If you have a custom domain tied to a Google for Apps account then the family plan is not an option.
Pro Free access to a huge selection of underground music
The SoundCloud music streaming service has over 115 million tracks accessible for free. Majority of those free tracks are uploaded by musicians that aren't backed by major labels. As such SoundCloud is a great place to discover new content that often will not be available on other music servic...
Pro Creates a true sense of a community
By emphasizing user comments (attached to specific points in songs) SoundCloud brings the community aspect of listening to music to the forefront more so than other music streaming services. Additionally, the ability to follow users and artists, liking, sharing and reposting songs helps strengthen...
Con Promoted tracks will appear even with a SoundCloud Go subscription
A promoted track is an advertisement that remains even with paid subscriptions. This negates any form of paying in order to remove any advertisements.
Con Lots of variation in audio quality for user-uploaded music
The quality is extremely inconsistent. Which leaves a lot to be desired when wanting to listen to quality sounding music.
Pro Built-in lyrics
Deezer comes with a lyrics feature where users can see the lyrics when the selected track is playing.
Pro Available to customers living outside the US
The Deezer music streaming service is available in 182 countries. There are 192 countries on this world, which means Deezer is available in all but 10 countries.
Con Elite is only available on Sonos systems
Elite is the highest subscription tier that Deezer offers. However it is only available on Sonos systems in the US.
Con A lot of songs are cut at the end
Many songs are not played until final chords, and many others are of very low quality records, showing audio distortions. This is frustrating.
Pro Available on cross-platform
A Groove Music application is available for Windows 10, Xbox, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. There is also a web app that will open all of your music with a simple sign in.
Pro Huge music library
Groove Music has a massive music library with over 40 million songs, more than Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and Google Play Music,
Con Inconsistent updates to Android app
It's a lot better than it used to be, but the update cycle is a slow and painful process.
Con Poor music quality
Bitrate quality is not explicitly stated by Microsoft, but music is reported to be streamed at 192kbps WMA which is lower than most comparable streaming services. While music is downloaded at 256kbps WMA, an improvement but still lower than Google Play Music and Spotify.
Pro Most personalized radio experience
The Pandora music streaming service is the best at predicting which songs the user would enjoy hearing. Unlike services which have rudimentary recommendation algorithms, Pandora uses over 400 selection attributes that are combined to form over 2,000 focus traits including rhythm syncopation, key t...
Pro Extremely versatile stations
Unlike other music streaming services, Pandora allows you to create a station from a single song, artist, album, or genre, and the service has a huge library of over 800,000 tracks from 80,000 artists. More importantly, Pandora lets you mix and match an unlimited number of input criteria to crea...
Con Not available outside the US
For those that live outside the US, the service is not available to them, which greatly limits users from around the globe.
Con Limited skips
Pandora makes it very difficult by limiting your playlist to only a specific song or artist. The player also does not allow you to rewind or repeat any songs. You are only granted six skips per station per hour, and even this is limited to 72 skips per user per day. This is often frustrating if...
Pro Playlists created by people
The Apple Music streaming service focuses on playlists selected by curators rather than intelligent radios in other streaming services. Choosing playlists selected by the curators improves the experience with another method of music discovery. Of course you can still heart or disheart any song on...
Pro iTunes Store has a huge selection of media
iTunes has a huge catalog of videos, songs and podcasts in the iTunes store.
Con Heavyweight
Appears to get bigger and bigger with each update, without really adding more value to someone who just wants to listen to and organize music.
Pro Interesting options for creating own 'radio' streams
You can generate from 1 to 3 artists/tags and manage the stream with liking / disliking currently playing songs.
Pro Perfect integration with Spotify
Clicking on a song in Last.fm list will start playing it in your Spotify music streaming service desktop application, if you have it running.
Con Unpredictable quality from 3rd-party sources
They bring together music from a variety of different sources so the quality can be inconsistent.
Pro Large catalog of music
Huge variety of music to pick from including rare recordings, covers, mixes, etc.
Pro Community created mixes and remixes
Because anybody can upload to YouTube, it has content from remixes of popular songs to hour long mixes and everything in-between. Much of this content can't be found on other music streaming services.
Con Confusing service for music
There is a Youtube Music app, which allows one to stream music videos as well as just the studio audio versions of songs. This feature is not accessible on the Youtube website, or the regular Youtube app. In order to get ad free service on the site as well as the music app, ones needs to subscri...
Con Lots of ads unless you buy a subscription
There are lots of ads on YouTube, even in the middle of long songs. Some of them can be skipped, however others cannot. Most of the time ads are only displayed between songs.
Pro Possible to transfer purchased music between devices with no limitations
Purchased music can be downloaded and transfered to other music players/file storage devices.
Pro Great web app
This service's web app works really well.
Con Clunky desktop app
This service's desktop app is clunky and nowhere near as nice as its web client.
Pro High quality streaming
Music streams at 16 bit, 44.4 khz, Flac, CD Quality. Also, high-res is available.
Con Officially available in a limited number of countries
Qobuz is only officially available in 10 countries (which does not include Canada and the US). You can use a VPN in order to pay for the service in an unsupported country. Some users have mentioned success with contacting the country and being added manually (you can read more here).
Pro Individualistic and personalized user playlists
The site is human-curated not automated. This can give a more personal feel, as each playlist on the music streaming service has been curated by a user.
Pro Great for discovering new music
Due to how the service works, listening to user created playlists allows for pretty good discovery of new or undiscovered bands.
Con No way to find certain songs
8 Tracks allows you to search for a playlist based on keywords, then requires you to listen to most of that playlist without skipping. As such, it's not so good for hunting down a specific song, but is great for discovering new music.
Pro Great selection of electronic music
DI has a large selection of curated channels with a great variety of electronic music.
Pro Curated music 24/7
The free account gives you access to over 90 curated channels. These are channels created by music lovers who take the opinions of listeners into consideration.
Con Electronic only
DI.fm is electronic-music only, so you'll be limited to exploring within that genre.
Con Can't save songs for listening offline
You're limited to streaming with an internet connection.
Pro Curated music streaming service
Actual human beings take time to decide what should be played, and on what stations. Sometimes people curating these stations are professional DJs who have experience in curating music content. This makes the music streaming service feel much more organic.
Pro Large music library
Offering such a large library ensures there is enough music of different kinds to appeal to anyone.
Con Rather intrusive ads
While it's understandable that the free tier will have ads, between video, audio and banners, they can be quite intrusive.
Con UI is too focused on social media
About half of the UI wastes space on social media info posted by Slacker Radio hosts and DJs. Basically advertisements (but different from their regular advertisements), but in a social media setting.
Pro Fun terminal-like interface
Using a terminal interface as the front end of the player is quite the unique twist for a music player on the web. It can be fun for those that are/aren't familiar with such an interface due to how original and easy it is.
Pro Easy music discovery
Just type in the command to play a particular genre you are interested in and it will play that style of music randomly. This allows for a way that you can discover new music you may not be familiar with.
Con Only uses the Soundcloud music streaming service
There is no way to get other licensed music, you can only play what is available on the Soundcloud music streaming service.
Con Limited genres
For the available genres the user can pick from, there are only so many listed. Any more fine grained controls of being able to play genres not listed is not supported. This means the eclectic and more niche genres can only be played by directly selecting the bands that play that style of music.
Pro Amazing quality
The Tidal music streaming service has a maximum streaming quality of 1,411Kbps bit rate with FLAC-formatted lossless files. This is quite an upgrade compared to most music streaming services, which go at about 320Kbps bit rate.
Pro Built-in audio search
The Tidal music streaming service mobile app has a built-in audio search, similar to Shazaam and Soundhound.
Con Expensive
At $19.99 per month, it's one of the most expensive streaming services out there (there is a cheaper subscription available at $9.99/month).
Con Songs may take some time to load
the Tidal music streaming service may take up to 10 seconds of buffering to load and play a song, sometimes even stopping a song mid-way to buffer.
Pro Great way to discover indie musicians
The Earbits music streaming service is open to independent artists only and does a great job of helping you discover lesser known music.
Pro Paid for by the artists, not the users
The Earbits music streaming service has an interesting business model that allows the service to be complete free (and ad free) to listeners. Some musicians pay for added profile features or other different tools that aids in exposure for them. See the full explanation here.
Con Underdeveloped
Some areas of the service are lacking in polish and design. The user profiles are pretty sparse, making it difficult to customize. Navigation can be a bit unintuitive at times, which makes it a pain to browse the site. There are also issues with playback as well, adding up to many unpolished areas...
Con Limited to independent artists
You won't find much of the Top 40 type music on Earbits as it's limited to independent musicians currently.
Pro Easily save music for offline use
You can download MP3's to your mobile device for offline use, this is convenient for those that do not have an internet connection throughout the whole day.
Pro Free to stream music
The service is completely free, meaning you never need to pay in order to stream what is available on the site.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro SoundCloud integration
Allows importing SoundCloud tracks if you have a SoundCloud account.
Pro Multi-language
hearthis.at is a multi-language website with several languages available.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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