While they are well worth paying for, there’s also plenty of stuff you can access for free.
Most of the paid services also offer free trials. We’ve listed services here with completely free tiers, though you can upgrade to a higher level of service to remove ads, increase the size of the music library, allow more skips, or improve stream quality in bitrate.
Our pick for the best free music service is Spotify. Even though it has paid subscription options, the free version can be easily integrated into streaming devices such as Sonos, which uses its own native UX. But there’s a lot of content here to enjoy and focused genres for rock, pop, indie, moods, new releases, throwbacks, and charts. The free tier is ad-supported, but I do not find it overly intrusive. Pros:
Integrated with streaming devices Access all your playlists, discover new music, and share tunes with friendsListen to podcasts
Cons:
Has ads Cannot listen to songs or playlists offline
Pros: Cons: The search giant has a wide variety of music, with good mobile apps, but it’s heavily ad-supported. It has excellent search features too, with lots of live music recordings. A stand-out feature of YouTube Music is that you can search for songs by their lyrics. Pros:
Search for songs by lyrics Smart downloads feature
Cons:
Little non-music programming like podcastsLacks in audio quality compared to others
Pandora has been owned by satellite radio provider SiriusXM since 2019. With Pandora, music is created “thematically.” You chose a bunch of artists, and it figures out what tastes you have, and it gives you music based on that music style. Ads are frequent. Pros:
Curated playlists based on what you like Listen to podcasts
Cons:
Frequent adsLimited skipping and no custom playlists
iHeartRadio is something of a hybrid between a streaming platform and a radio service, as it has over 20 million songs in its inventory that are classified and searchable by artists. It has over 1,500 browsable radio stations. Stations/Channels can be chosen based on the performing artist (i.e., The Rolling Stones). Music is determined based on that artist’s music style – not necessarily the artist itself, similar to Pandora. Pros:
Over 1,500 browsable radio stationsPersonalized music playlists and offline listening
Cons:
Limited amount of skips in free tier
