The easiest and most convenient way to listen to music is to stream it. You can open an app or use your voice (via a smart assistant like Alexa, Google Home or Siri) to play basically any song by any artist, ever. It’s really quite amazing.
There are quite a few music streaming services to choose from. Spotify and Apple Music continue to be the most popular, but there are other options like Pandora, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer (and that’s just naming a few) that are excellent, too. So, if you haven’t yet subscribed to a service (or if you’re considering switching to a new one), how do you choose?
In the past, you could more easily separate music streaming services by superlatives — for example, Spotify had the biggest library of songs, Amazon Music was the most affordable (especially if bundled with Prime) and Tidal had by far the best selection of high-resolution tracks — but the truth is that these days most music streaming services are a lot more alike than they are different.
They all require a subscription fee to listen to ad-free music, but all these fees are now roughly the same (about $10/month). If you’re willing to pay a little more, some of these streaming services now offer a lossless tier (which again are all priced similarly). Every service now has a vast catalog of music, so you’ll likely find the songs you’re looking for. And they all have pretty great apps, so the user experience won’t be that much different between services.
That said, there still definitely are reasons to choose one music streaming service over another. In 2023, those reasons can be mostly narrowed down to these things:
The Factors to Consider
How will you listen to your music? You want to make sure that the hardware you already have — smartphone, headphones, speakers, wireless receivers — work well with the music streaming service you subscribe to. For example, you want to make sure your wireless speakers support Spotify Connect or AirPlay if you plan on subscribing to Spotify or Apple Music, respectively. Also, many of Apple’s products work best with Apple Music; for example, you need an Apple Music subscription to use “Hey Siri” voice commands with a HomePod. And finally, for those considering a lossless streaming service, you also want to make sure that the headphones or speakers that you have are capable of playing those high-bitrate tracks properly.
Podcasts. If you plan on listening to a lot of podcasts then the music streaming service you subscribe to is vitally important for two reasons. First, not every music streaming service has podcasts; Apple Music doesn’t have podcasts as Apple has designated a separate app, Apple Podcasts (no subscription required), for people to listen and discover podcasts. And second, not every podcast is available everywhere as some music streaming services have signed exclusive deals so that podcasts only appear on its platform. (This is the case with Spotify for popular podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, Armchair Expert and Call Her Daddy.
