Products featured are independently selected by our editorial team and we may earn a commission from purchases made from our links; the retailer may also receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Vinyl ruled the Sixties and Seventies, cassettes helped define the Eighties, CDs caught fire in the Nineties, and digital music stores like iTunes took over in the early aughts, but nothing has made music more accessible than the streaming services launched in the past decade. Major tech companies and startups alike are offering you access to millions of songs for the equivalent of one CD purchase per month, and the benefits are clear: easy access to a huge library of music, streaming anywhere from mobile devices, with the option to download music for offline listening, curated playlists based on your music taste, and a constant flow of new music. These services are available on computers PC and Mac , smartphones and tablets iOS and Android , and directly through smart speakers from companies like Sonos and Sony. With that restriction aside, Prime Music stacks up really well against other music streaming services. Those first two features are typically only available for paid music subscription services. Spotify recently reported it has million active users , which makes it the most popular music streaming service by several orders of magnitude. Spotify has a lot going for it, but free subscribers are restricted in a few big ways.
The best overall
How to choose among Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, and more
The following is a list of on-demand music streaming services. The services offer streaming of full-length content via the Internet as a part of their service, [1] without the listener necessarily purchasing a file for download. Many of these sites have advertising and offer non-free options in the style of an online music store. For a list of online music stores that provide a means of purchasing and downloading music as files of some sort, see: Comparison of online music stores. Many of both types of sites offer services similar to an online music database. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Matthews, Paul.
Hand-picked playlists
For many of us, the days of buying albums are over. Music streaming services have put millions of songs at our fingertips, ready to play through our smartphone, tablet, computer or smart speakers whenever we fancy. Clever algorithms suggest artists and albums based on your listening habits, expanding your musical horizons daily. The tracks available on music streaming services have been compressed to save space, meaning audiophiles may find the sound quality disappointing. Some apps, including Tidal and Amazon Music, let you pay more for a hi-res stream that offers CD quality or better. The improvement is noticeable, but these bigger files will eat through your data allowance more quickly.
Subscriber Account active since. When you buy through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more. Music listening has come a long way over the past few decades. Gone are the days when you had to buy CDs, vinyl records, or cassette tapes. You don't even have to buy digital downloads anymore. These days, you can simply sign up to a music streaming service and have access to all the music you'll ever need on a device that sits in your pocket.
