If you’ve yet to join the world of online music—or you’re looking for a new way to listen to your favorite artists—there’s never been a better time to shop around. No matter your musical taste, the best streaming services offer instant access to millions of songs, intuitive discovery features, and even offline listening, allowing you to stream your favorite tunes to your favorite or mobile devices smart speaker or headphones. But, with so many music-streaming sites available, finding the one that best suits your needs can be daunting.
After a significant amount of research and testing, we found Spotify Premium to be the best way to listen to music for most people because of its widespread availability, ease-of-use, and personalized features that help you discover music. We also found Spotify’s free plan to be the best offered by any service. It gives you the same type of user-tailored benefits found in the premium plan, albeit with a few key trade-offs—namely, ads that interrupt your music, as well as more limited listening options.
Here are the best music streaming services we tested, ranked in order:
Spotify Premium
Spotify
How We Tested
What You Should Know About Music Streaming Services
Other Music Streaming Services We Tested:
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Available on multiple platforms & devices
Great personalized recommendations
Simple, intuitive interface
Flexible plan options
No high-resolution audio
Same personalized features as Spotify’s premium plan
Full-featured desktop app
Ads can be annoying
Mobile app is more limited. No offline listening
Spotify's premium service offers the best balancing of features and pricing.
Spotify's free, ad-supported service is a great option for those uninterested in paying a monthly subscription.
It took us hours of listening, comparing features and pricing to figure out which music streaming service is best for most people.
I’m freelance writer and longtime technology journalist Don Melanson. I listen to a lot of music from a number of sources, including a vinyl collection, digital audio files that I’ve purchased or ripped from CDs and, of course, streaming services.
In the case of the latter, I’ve used a number of services over the years. I am always striving to get the best sound quality possible—both from my audio equipment and my music sources. I appreciate any service or device that improves my listening experience.
To determine which music services are the best options, we started by first narrowing down the list of services to test to a manageable eight, relying on previous experience, as well as expert opinion from trusted sources. We evaluated premium and free versions of each service, too. Next, we assembled 21 popular and lesser-known songs, representing a wide range of genres from various eras. We used these songs to build a playlist for each streaming service in our test group, in order to assess:
Beyond this, we also used each service to listen to music that we ordinarily listen to on a daily basis. This helped to judge how well each service’s music recommendation features worked. We also spent time exploring extra features each service offered, such as live radio, videos, curated playlists, and exclusive content.
The cost of plans offered by each service was also considered, as well as podcast support, offline capabilities, each service’s overall sound quality (is it really CD quality like they tout it to be?), and availability on smartwatch apps.
While conducting these tests, we used each service’s web interface and desktop application (where available), as well as their Android and iOS apps.
(Note, in our initial round of testing, we did not evaluate Pandora Premium, but we are testing it now, and will it add it to this guide in the coming weeks.)
While there are exceptions, most streaming services will offer the majority of the music you’re looking for.
They all offer decent sound quality, and should be available to use with iOS, Android and Windows and Mac computers. You’ll find some are available to enjoy using your smartwatch or a smart speaker, while others are not.
The biggest differences between music services are found in their interfaces, ease of use, and additional features beyond basic music streaming. The latter, in particular, can vary considerably. Some offer exclusive content, live radio, custom playlists, and music recommendations that become more tailored to your taste the more you use them.
The audio quality offered by basic music services will satisfy most people. However, it may not satisfy audiophiles who listen to music on high-end sound systems and headphones.
Audiophiles may want to look for a service that offers high-resolution audio, sometimes referred to as hi-res or HD streaming. These options are considerably more limited. Of the eight services we tested, only three currently offer hi-res audio—Amazon, Tidal, and Deezer. You’ll also pay a premium for this higher level of sound quality.
Music streaming services are notorious for not paying artists well. While most of the services don’t release official figures, information collected directly from musicians and other sources indicates that artists can expect to make anywhere from $0.00069 to $0.019 per stream. That’s a tiny fraction of what they make from actual album sales, and the variables between how much one artist makes over another are opaque.
The convenience of streaming music is tough to beat, but if there are artists you want to support, you might want to consider also buying a copy of a song or album after you’ve sampled it on your service of choice.
High-resolution, “Master Quality” audio
Exclusive content
Easy-to-use interface
HiFi plan pricier than Deezer or Amazon
No free plan available
Deep integration with Apple devices
Lots of exclusive content. Music syncing across devices
Still for iOS/Mac users than Android
No free option
Streamlined interface
Hi-res plan available
Some exclusive content
Podcasts not available in all countries
Desktop app mostly identical to web interface
Discount for Amazon Prime users
Hi-res audio plan available
Dolby Atmos music support
Additional features limited at present
Less attractive if you don’t have Amazon Prime
YouTube integration adds exclusive music
Solid recommendations and personalized content
Unavailable on some devices and platforms
Light on features
Tons of indie and community-created tracks
Variety of subscription options
Lots of free music available
Web interface is clunky
Not as widely available as other services
Plenty of live content and exclusive programming
Less expensive plan available for more limited streaming.
Sluggish, confusing interface
No family plan
No free trial option
Don Melanson
Contributor
Don Melanson is a freelance writer and journalist based on Canada's East Coast. His work has appeared in a range of publications including Popular Mechanics, Motherboard, The Globe & Mail, and Engadget, where he also served a long stint as a senior editor.
We use standardized and scientific testing methods to scrutinize every product and provide you with objectively accurate results. If you’ve found different results in your own research, email us and we’ll compare notes. If it looks substantial, we’ll gladly re-test a product to try and reproduce these results. After all, peer reviews are a critical part of any scientific process.
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