by Spotify is raising the price of its premium subscription in the UK, increasing the price from £10.99 per month to £11.99 per month for individuals.
A two-person subscription costs £16.99 for two people, and a family plan for six costs £19.99.
With subscription costs rising, music fans may be wondering which streaming platform is right for them.
So which music streaming service should you choose? Here are the main players, along with their main strengths and weaknesses.
How to choose a music streaming service
During this roundup, we value four main areas: unique features, value, community and sound quality.
With more than 70 million tracks listed by all the major players, the size of their online catalog is not as divided as it used to be (but check for black spots before signing up to any service via a free trial). Instead, we tried to identify each person’s unique selling points.
In terms of pricing, all of the options below represent good value, but there are ways to make them even better. For example, they each offer 50 percent off for students and offer family memberships for up to six people to share, which really adds value.
The community doesn’t seem that important, but it is. Being on the same service as friends, colleagues and family is a great way to discover new music and makes sharing playlists much easier. Not to mention social features such as the annual Spotify Returns event.
Is sound quality important? Yes and no. A higher bit is very welcome, but while audiophiles will be concerned about lossless sound – where there is little or no compression for higher fidelity – for casual listeners, it’s no less of a priority.
This is especially true if you do most of your listening with Bluetooth, as lossless headphones require a wired connection (although FLAC can be played on hi-fi via a Wi-Fi connection).
Some offer high-rate, lossless audio for the price of a regular subscription. Just be aware of the listener’s preferences and remember that the quality of your headphones or speakers ultimately plays a bigger role in how good music sounds.
The best music streaming services
Spotify
Price: From £10.99 per month (student, couple and family plans also available.)
Secret Weapon: A huge community.
Holding it back: It really wants to force podcasts on you.
Just as the iPod was established for “MP3 player”, Spotify is close to that kind of dominance in the music streaming market.
That comes with huge advantages in terms of connectivity (you can play it on anything from smart speakers to TVs) and social features. Not only will you have a critical mass of Spotify – using friends to follow, but things like the Spotify is back event has become an annual social media tradition.
The music catalog is huge, with the company claiming more than 80 million tracks and pricing is fair, too. Not only can you get membership for £5.99 a month if you’re a student, but the family plan allows six people at the same address to share an account for £16.99 a month.
Disadvantages? There are a few. First of all, Spotify Hi-Fi – the company’s brand name for the lossless format loved by audiophiles – which is not yet here, despite being promised for many years. On top of that, Spotify Seriously trying to get you into podcasts and audiobooks, and it’s making the whole thing a lot less user-friendly, and pricier, for music people.
Music Apple
Price: From £10.99 per month (student subscriptions, family plans and Apple One also available.)
Secret Weapon: Great value with Apple One
Holding it back: Some odd quirks.
Apple Music has “over 100 million songs,” according to the company, which puts it on par with Spotify, but it has two main advantages: sound quality and pricing.
In terms of sound quality it offers lossless audio in each of its tracks, but also Spatial Sound, where the music surrounds you with dynamic head tracking (on compatible Apple headphones, of course). It does this at no additional cost, which Tidal does not.
And on the pricing note, Apple Music might be the biggest deal around. As well as a £5.99 per month student option, a sub £16.99 per month allows up to six people to share the same account, but it gets even better if you want other Apple services.
Apple One bundles Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade and 50GB of cloud storage for £18.95 per month per person. Or if you want to share it with five other people. It is £ 24.95 per month, and the storage up to 200GB. That’s simply unbeatable value.
There really aren’t many downsides, and Apple is currently running a three-month free trial for new iPhone, iPad and Mac users. There are some unusual quirks – like the habit of adding one-off songs to your playlist – but it’s generally a great choice, especially if you’re embedded in the Apple ecosystem.
YouTube music
Price: From £10.99 per month (student and family plans also available.)
Secret Weapon: Many unexpected things.
Holding it back: Lots of confusion, low-quality filler.
YouTube Music is an oddity in the music streaming world, because it’s basically just YouTube. Yes, the company has deals with the major record labels to make sure the albums you want are there, but the biggest advantage of paying for YouTube Music is the lack of ads and the introduction of “background play” that allows you play audio with the screen off or while using other apps.
Taking it to YouTube means it has tracks you won’t find anywhere else, thanks to the user-generated nature of the platform: think live recordings, covers, remixes and obscure tracks from labels that no longer exist. The flip side of this, of course, is that there is a lot of low-quality content to sift through when searching for gems.
Like Spotify and Apple Music, there are student (£5.49) and family (£16.99) options to save money. But if you watch a lot of YouTube regularly, you would be wise subscribe to YouTube Premium for an extra £2 a month instead. It covers YouTube Music, while also killing ads on regular YouTube.
Amazon unlimited music
Price: From £9.99 per month (echo individual, student and family plans also available.)
Secret Weapon: Bargain-basement pricing.
Holding it back: Poor user interface.
Undoubtedly, the biggest advantage of Amazon Music Unlimited is its pricing, which is just £9.99 per month for Prime Subscribers. Said Prime subscribers already have access to around two million ad-free tracks, but Music Unlimited bumps this up to 100 million, as well as adding better sound quality and Spatial Sound. That’s right: Amazon doesn’t make you pay extra for higher quality.
Like its rivals, there are student and family options for up to six people, and it also lets you pay for a single Echo smart speaker for £5.99 a month.
Getting access to music that you didn’t pay a lot for really sucks. Neither the web interface nor the apps are very intuitive and offer a more stripped-down experience than their competitors. But for frugal types who don’t mind a little fiddly exploration, it’s still a solid choice.
Tide
Price: From £10.99 per month (student and family plans also available.)
Secret Weapon: Better sound quality.
Holding it back: There is no free series.
USP Tide has always had sound quality. It offered lossless audio long before it was a buzzword elsewhere, and is also committed to high-resolution audio around the world, through an audio format called MQA that is used on over 70 million tracks.
Earlier this year, Tidal consolidated its subscription options and stopped charging extra for higher-quality streams. So, for £10.99 a month, you can get all the benefits that cost £19.99 a month right now.
That’s good, but there are still some drawbacks: To take full advantage of the upgraded sound, you’ll need a dongle for your phone or laptop. With the changes to its subscription, Tidal has scrapped its free tier, which is bad news for those who want to try before they buy, and charges £9 a month for DJ integration.
Tidal also promises to pay up to 10 percent of your subscription fees directly to the artists you listen to the most – which is a welcome thing since musicians have benefited little from the move away from records and CDs.
Deezer
Price: From £11.99 per month (student and family plans also available.)
Secret Weapon: Live radio included.
Holding it back: Its relatively small user base probably makes social features redundant.
Deezer is undoubtedly the underdog in the current world of streaming, despite being one of the oldest platforms around (it opened in 2006 – the same year as Spotify).
Frankly, it doesn’t really deserve that status, with access to 90 million tracks and a solid user experience throughout. Unlike its competitors (Apple Music aside), it also has access to live radio stations, meaning you can tune in to LBC, Heart, TalkSport, Virgin Radio or others all within the app (although there were all BBC stations removed earlier this year.)
Pricing is flat with £5.99 student options and a £19.99 family of six account available, but the main thing holding Deezer back is its relatively small size. The chances are that your friends are not using it, which means that the social functions are limited. If that’s not a problem for you, there’s no harm in meeting him.
