What are the best music streaming services?

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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.

score 59 · Answer 2

#2 Google Play Music

The Google Music All Access music streaming service provides unlimited streaming access to the Play library for a monthly fee. All of the music can also be added to the subscribe...

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.

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score 12 · Answer 3

#3 Groove Music

Groove Music (formerly known as Xbox Music) is a music streaming service from Microsoft. It is available for $99.90 for 12 months or $9.99 per month.

Pro
Available 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.

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score 26 · Answer 4

#4 SoundCloud

The SoundCloud music streaming service is a sound sharing platform used mainly for music & podcasts. All tracks are streamable, and artists can mark them as downloadable or l...

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.

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score 14 · Answer 5

#5 Deezer Music

Deezer is an online music streaming service. Created in France in 2007 it is the No. 1 service in Europe.

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.

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score 16 · Answer 6

#6 Apple Music

Apple Music is a music streaming service that combines iTunes with the new Apple Music features.

Pro
iTunes Store has a huge selection of media

iTunes has a huge catalog of videos, songs and podcasts in the iTunes store.

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...

Con
No free plan

While there's a 3-moth free trial that lets you test out features of the service, Apple Music is a subscription-only deal. There's no ad-supported free version or anything like that.

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.

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score 18 · Answer 7

#7 Pandora

Pandora Radio is one of the best and most versatile online music streaming services for radio. Pandora offers a different experience over Spotify and Rdio in terms of the relevan...

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
Easily learns what you like and dislike

The Pandora music streaming service allows you to rate each song played with a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" to signal your opinion of the song that is played. The station incorporates every single rating to intelligently learn your preferences over time, resulting in an extreme...

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...

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score 9 · Answer 8

#8 Youtube

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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.

score 6 · Answer 9

#9 TIDAL

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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.

score 8 · Answer 10

#10 last.fm

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.

Con
Frequent updates to base software requiring restarts

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score 3 · Answer 11

#11 Amazon Music Unlimited

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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.

score 3 · Answer 12

#12 Qobuz

Qobuz, the high-fidelity music website. Listen to music in high quality with a streaming subscription or download in True CD Quality (Flac, 24-Bit HD...)

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).

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score 6 · Answer 13

#13 8 Tracks

8 Tracks is a music streaming service that focuses on socially shared playlists. Create your own playlists or listen to playlists created by other users. These can be based off of

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.

Con
Advertisements in free version

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score 4 · Answer 14

#14 Digitally Imported

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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.

score 3 · Answer 15

#15 Slacker Radio

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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.

score 7 · Answer 16

#16 cmd.fm

Cmd.fm is a command-line radio music streaming service for computer geeks. It uses Soundcloud as the source of the music it streams.

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.

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score 2 · Answer 17

#17 soma fm

Pro
Big number of curated stations in different genres

Con
Low audio bitrate

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score 2 · Answer 18

#18 Earbits