While iPhone owners used to pay to use Spotify on iOS devices, there’s now a free tier that lets you shuffle music and playlists without a subscription (you’ll still need an account). You will have to listen to ads with this version, though. To unlock all the features of Spotify, the Premium subscription is required. With that, you can avoid the ads, save music for offline listening, and enjoy music in a higher-quality audio format than with the free tier.
With a gigantic database of music tastes and relationships powering it, Pandora is a terrific tool for discovering new music. The free version of Pandora lets you create stations. However, you have to listen to ads, and it limits the number of times you can skip a song in an hour. A paid Pandora Plus membership removes ads, lets you listen to four stations offline, removes all limits on skips and replays, and offers higher-quality audio. For a bit more a month, Pandora Premium offers all of those features, plus the ability to search for and listen to any song, make playlists, and listen offline. But that’s not all it does. In addition to music stations, you can also tune into news, talk, sports, and comedy stations. There are also podcasts available in the app from iHeartRadio-affiliated sources, and you can create custom stations, Pandora-style, by searching for a song or artist. That’s all in the free app, but some upgrades deliver more features. The iHeartRadio Plus subscription lets you search for and listen to virtually any song, provides unlimited song skips, and lets you immediately replay a song you heard on a radio station. If that’s not enough, iHeartRadio All Access adds full offline listening, gives you the ability to listen to any song in the Napster music library, and lets you create unlimited playlists. Apple Music delivers virtually the entire iTunes Store to your computer and iPhone for $10.99 a month (or $16.99 for families of up to six). If you don’t mind missing out on features like lossless audio, on-screen lyrics, and music videos, you can also sign up for the Voice Plan, which only costs $4.99 a month. A 30-day free trial lets you try it out before you sign up. Save songs for offline listening, create and share playlists, follow artists, and more. The service includes a Radio service, featuring the Beats 1 station. Beats 1 is an always-on, worldwide streaming radio station programmed by top DJs, musicians, and tastemakers. Besides Beats 1, Radio includes a Pandora-style music service that builds playlists based on the songs or artists you like. Apple Music offers all the features you could want in a streaming app, and it’s right on your phone. YouTube Music lets you start with a song or video you choose and creates stations and playlists based on that song. Like other apps on this list, stations learn your taste over time to serve up more music you’ll like. Upgrade by subscribing to YouTube Premium for to remove ads from the app, download songs and videos for offline playback, and play music when your phone’s screen is locked. The app delivers streams of over 100,000 radio stations that offer music, news, talk, and sports. Included on those streams are some NFL and NBA games, as well as the MLB playoffs. Also available for free in the app is a giant podcast library. Sign up for the TuneIn Premium service, and you’ll get a lot more. Included in Premium are more live sports, over 600 commercial-free music stations, over 60,000 audiobooks, and 16 language-learning programs. And it removes ads (though not necessarily from the radio streams). The app doesn’t allow for uploads—the SoundCloud Pulse app covers that. However, it offers access to all that music and the site’s other features, including the discovery of new artists and social networking. The free version of SoundCloud lets you access 120 million tracks and create playlists. The SoundCloud Go tier adds offline listening and removes ads. Upgrade to SoundCloud Go+ to unlock access to over 30 million additional songs. The app, which can display text in English and Spanish, offers access to over 65 Latin radio stations as they broadcast live. There are also streaming-only stations that are exclusive to Uforia. Discover these channels by city, genre, and language, and locate playlists to match your moods and activities. Cool features include saving your favorite station for easy access later and a car mode that presents the key features of the app in a larger format for easy access while driving. Unlike many other apps on this list, all features are available for free; there are no upgrades. Spinrilla is your way to access those mixtapes without searching your local record shops and street corners. This free app delivers new releases and trending songs, lets you comment on music, share it, and download songs for offline playback. The free version of the app includes ads. Upgrading to a Pro membership to remove those ads from the experience is a bargain at $0.99 per month. The free version of the app delivers all the core features, including creating and sharing playlists and listening to those made by others. However, it has ads. 8tracks Plus, the paid version, removes ads, delivers unlimited listening, cuts out interruptions between playlists, and lets you illustrate your playlists with GIFs. Plus is free for the first 14 days, then it costs $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year for a subscription. The paid tiers of the service offer more features. The paid Plus version removes ads and skip limits, lets you listen to stations offline, customize ESPN Radio, and enjoy high-quality 320 Kbps streaming. The more expensive Premium subscription delivers the already-mentioned features, plus the ability to stream songs and albums on demand like Apple Music or Spotify, offline listening of that music, and the ability to create playlists.
