Best Free Alternatives To Spotify

Apple Music is the Spotify alternative for iPhone users. It is a music, audio, and video streaming service launched by Apple Inc.

The service was announced on June 8, 2015, and launched on June 30, 2015. It offers a wide variety of services like Internet Radio stations, Apple Music Hits, and many more which are accessible in more than 200 countries.

In terms of the music library, Apple Music claims it's ahead of Spotify boasting some 90 million available songs and many curated playlists.

As far as pricing goes, Spotify has the upper hand, since Apple does not offer any limited free music plan. However, both of their premium plans start from $9.99 per month.

Pricing: 

• Apple Music Individual: $9.99/month
• Family Plan: &16.99/month
• Student Plan: $5.99/month

Sound Quality:

• AAC format up to 256 kbps
• ALAC up to 24 bits/ 192 kHz

Amazon Music is one of the Best Alternatives To Spotify. It is a music streaming and online music store from the multinational technology company Amazon.

Upon its release on September 25, 2007, Amazon's library included 2 million songs from 180,000 artists. As of now, it has gained 68 million subscribers who can enjoy the catalog of 100 million songs.

Amazon stands out from its competitors for its sizeable Hi-Res at a pretty reasonable price with its lossless music in HD quality.

Pricing:

• Prime Music: Free
• Unlimited Ad-Supported Plan: Free
• Unlimited Individual Plan: $8.99/month for Prime users or $9.99/month for everyone else
• Unlimited Single Device Plan: $4.99/month
• Unlimited Student Plan: $60/year
• Unlimited Family Plan: 15.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Standard: 320 kbps
• HD: FLAC format up to 1411 kbps
• Ultra HD: FLAC format up to 9216 kbps

YouTube Music is a free alternative to Spotify. It is a music streaming service developed by the video-sharing platform Youtube, launched on November 12, 2015.

It provides a seamless interface for the service, giving users a great choice of songs and music videos based on genres, playlists, and YouTube recommendations.

Although the platform is not as competitive as its adversaries like Spotify and Apple Music, it provides solid user experiences allowing users to choose from a catalog of over 100 million tracks available across 101 countries throughout the world.

Despite similar pricing plans to its contemporaries, YouTube Music doesn't offer Hi-Res streaming, while you're stuck with the usual 256 kbps format.

Pricing:

• Premium: $9.99/ month
• Family: $14.99/ month
• Student: $4.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Standard: 128 kbps AAC format
• 256 kbps AAC format

Tidal HiFi is Alternatives To Spotify Premium which offers high-quality lossless music. It is a music streaming service from a Swedish company Aspiro.

Launched on October 24, 2018, Tidal claims its library has access to more than 80 million tracks and 35,000 music videos and delivers the highest quality of music available for music enthusiasts who value every minute detail.

The platform also includes a free plan which offers you a sound quality of 160 kbps with some interruptions in between. However, the service provider claims they do not allow any third-party ads.

Pricing:

• HiFi: $9.99/month
• HiFi Family: $14.99/month
• HiFi Plus: 19.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Free Plan: AAC format with 1upto 160 kbps
• HiFi: FLAC format with up to 1411 kbps
• HiFi Plus: MQA format with up to 9216 kbps

Deezer is a Spotify alternative for Android and Desktop. It is a French streaming service originally launched in August 2007 as Blogmusik.

In its early days, the platform offered a limited catalog since it didn't negotiate agreements with major record labels. However, it did gain 773,000 traffic in its first month.

Fast forward now, Deezer has 9.4 million subscribers and is accessible in over 180 countries offering its users a catalog of 90 million tracks.

The French company is one of the limited streaming services, that offer hi-fi streaming at a slightly higher price than Tidal but it doesn't offer any Hi-Res.

In addition to HD lossless music, users can also listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and radio play with multiple radio stations to choose from. The users get excellent recommendations thanks to its start-of-the-art algorithm.

Pricing:

• Deezer Premium: $10.99/month
• Deezer Family: $17.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Free Plan: MP3 format at 128 kbps
• Premium: FLAC format upto 1411 kbps

SoundCloud is a German music streaming service that is a cheaper alternative to Spotify.

Featuring a library of more than 200 million songs, Soundcloud offers more variety of music than any of the big four. From indie artists to Grammy winners, you can find the songs of whoever of desire on this platform.

One of the unique features is that you can become a DJ and create your own remixes by dubbing multiple tracks. However, this features only becomes available to Go+ subscribers.

Pricing:

• Soundcloud Go: $5.99/month
• Soundcloud Go Plus: $9.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Soundcloud Go: 128 kbps
• Soundcloud Go Plus: 256 kbps

One of the music apps better than Spotify is Quboz. It is a French music service that supports High-Res audio and offers to rent and purchase music.

Founded on September 18, 2007, Quboz is available in 25 countries and has a total of 200,000 users worldwide.

Alongside Apple Music, Qobuz is the only other service that doesn't offer a free plan to its users. Similar to Tidal, it mainly focuses on its sound quality; offering its listeners a FLAC 24-bit audio up to 192 kHz.

Qobuz has an extensive library, boasting over 100 million tracks to stream from, and offers its users two premium plans, each of which comes in Solo, Duo, and Family versions.

Pricing:

• Studio Premier: $10.83/month
• Sublime: $15.00/month
• Studio and Sublime Duo: $14.99/month
• Studio and Sublime Family: $17.99/month

Sound Quality:

• FLAC format 24-bit up to 192 kHz

Bandcamp is not exactly one of the alternatives to Spotify but it is free. It is more of an online audio distribution platform or a record store.

Bandcamp is a music platform where upcoming indie artists and podcasters sell their products to the online community and are paid directly by the people. As per the Bandcamp policy, the artists obtains an average of 80-85 percent of revenue from each sale.

The service requires no fee to check out, you can listen to the featured tracks by artists and purchase the digital or physical albums if you're interested. Thus, it's a great way of showing support the independent artists.

As mentioned above, Bandcamp is a free service, however, you will have to pay varying prices for records if you're interested in buying them.

Pandora is a music streaming platform owned by American corporation Sirius XM Holdings. They were originally founded as Savage Beast Technologies.

Introduced in 2005, Pandora is the founding father of music streaming services and one of the earliest to offer playlists developed by listeners' preferences.

Like most of the platforms on the list, Pandora is a freemium service; basic services like browsing through songs and playing are free with advertisements whereas additional features like high-quality streaming, downloads, and offline music are available via subscription.

As of 2022, Pandora has about 47.6 million active monthly users including 6.215 million paid subscribers. The numbers are gradually declining as the years go by.

Pricing:

• Standard Plan: Free
• Pandora Plus: $4.99/month
• Pandora Premium: $9.99/month
• Family Plan: $14.99/month
• Premium Military: $7.99/month

Sound Quality:

• Standard Plan: AAC+ up to 64kbps
• Premium Plans: MP3 format up to 192 kbps

Funkwhale is one of the most popular options when it comes to Open Sources and Self-Hosted alternatives to Spotify.

It is a community-driven project that enables us to listen to and share music within a decentralized, open network.

Unlike any other service, Funkwhale comprises numerous independent pods which communicate together and helps you upload your personal library to share it with friends and family.

One of the key factors to this platform being so popular is it's completely free, giving its user an experience free of advertisements and tracking.