Explore the Best Online Music Streaming Services in 2021
There’s a ton of music streaming services out there, but which one should you use? Well I’ve done the work and compared five of the most popular services in North America to compare their features and sound quality, and put all that info together for you in this article. So the streaming services I’m comparing are Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music & Media Leap.
I used each service for about a week, and did some technical tests comparing the audio quality which I’ll get into later in this post. I also compared Tidal and Amazon’s HiFi and HD quality services. Prior to trying out each service I was using Google Play Music, so I’m going into each service with the same amount of experience, which is none.
Perhaps most notably absent from this test is Pandora, which I strongly recommend against using. It has by far the worst audio quality, features, and usability of all of these services. Please use literally anything other than Pandora. There are also some other services that are pretty popular outside of the States like Deezer that I didn’t include. Definitely hit the like button and leave a comment if you’d like to see me compare those services in a future article.
What Music Streaming Services Has to Offer
To begin with, let’s break down the pricing. All of the services except Apple and Tidal offer free, ad-supported streaming with lower quality and fewer features. For Premium features, the pricing starts at ten dollars a month. All of the services offer a discounted price of five dollars a month for students. Tidal also offers a price of six dollars a month for Military and First Responders. If you’re a Prime member, Amazon gives you a discounted price of eight dollars a month, or four dollars a month for students.
Some of the services also give you other bonuses with a subscription. If you have a Student Spotify subscription, you can get a Hulu and SHOWTIME plan. YouTube Music also comes with Google Play Music, and for two dollars a month more, or one dollar a month more for students, you can get YouTube Premium. Besides the individual plans, there are also options for family plans for fifteen dollars a month, which gives you six total accounts including your own, with the exception of Amazon which limits you to streaming on six simultaneous devices for, as far as I can tell, unlimited accounts.
If you want a higher-quality service, there’s even more options. Tidal’s HiFi service starts at twenty dollars a month, or ten dollars a month for students and twelve dollars a month for Military and First Responders. You can also get a HiFi family plan for thirty dollars a month. Amazon’s HD service starts at fifteen dollars a month, or thirteen a month for Prime members, making it cheaper than Tidal. I’m not positive on this since Amazon’s pricing and advertising is a nightmare, but it appears students can get HD for ten dollars a month, or nine dollars if you’re also a Prime subscriber. In case you didn’t catch all of that, I made this handy chart. Okay, moving on.
What Is Spotify music and How Does It Work?
Now it’s time to talk about general features and usability of these services. A quick disclaimer; I only spent about a week with each service, and obviously my thoughts are based on my own personal experience and how I use music services, so anyone is welcome to disagree with my opinions here. First let’s talk about Spotify. Overall I like the Spotify interface a lot. It has a great layout on both desktop and mobile devices; it’s fast and easy to get to what you’re looking for. Besides that, you also get great synchronization between different listening devices, and you can even use your phone to remotely control a desktop listening session. I never had any issues with crashes or freezing, and downloading tracks on Spotify was way faster and smoother than any other service I used.
You also get a ton of options for customizing your listening experience, from selecting audio quality for streaming and downloading, to adjusting and disabling audio normalization. You can also choose whether to crossfade or automix songs on playlists. On the desktop app you can select internet proxy options, block cookies, and even choose your output device, which is very handy. Besides the general user experience, Spotify has great social features, as well as the option to keep your listening private if you choose. Thanks to the Spotify API, there’s also a ton of third-party integration with everything from social media sites like Discord and Instagram, to dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, and even Google Maps. Spotify has pretty much total music availability; I didn’t encounter any situations where I couldn’t find an album or song.
The playlist experience is also excellent. If you try to add duplicate songs to your playlist, you’re given the option to skip them or add the songs again. The track queue shows you the track name, artist, album title, and song duration. My only complaint is that you can’t see the album art, which I find very useful for quickly identifying what’s up next in my playlist. Speaking of the queue, you can easily access it while listening, but unfortunately you can’t see what songs have already played, which is a tad annoying. It’s also annoying to remove individual songs from the queue, but you can quickly remove several songs. It’s also easy to drag and drop songs to rearrange your queue.
Does YouTube Music Count as a Best Music Streaming App
Alright, now let’s talk about YouTube Music. Overall the interface isn’t great. It’s very clunky, and genuinely really slow on desktop and mobile. It’s hard to find things until you get into the Library section. On the upside I didn’t have any stability problems, and download speed and simplicity was bested only by Spotify. You can set audio quality for streaming and downloading, but unfortunately there’s no options to disable audio normalization or select an output device. There’s also not really any social features beyond sharing playlists, and not much third-party integration to speak of. The music availability on YouTube is also a bit odd.
On one hand, you get access to a huge library of independently published music by small artists who primarily post their music to YouTube, but on the other hand I found some major album releases were missing. Unlike Spotify, YouTube will duplicate songs in a playlist without warning. Fortunately the playlist queue is super easy to access, and it shows you the track title, duration, artist, as well as the album art, which as I mentioned I greatly appreciate. The queue is also easy to adjust by swiping to remove or rearrange songs.
The Ins and Outs of Apple’s Music Streaming App
Alright, on to Apple Music. I was not particularly impressed with the overall user experience. The app would crash and refuse to play audio, and this was on an iPhone 7 Plus running the latest version of iOS. Even when it did work, the interface was clunky and hard to navigate. User-made playlists are buried under auto-generated playlists, and things are just generally hard to find. You have to click twice to get to an artist’ page, and when looking at an artists’ page, song collections are broken into what I consider to be way too many categories.
You have albums, singles and EPs, live albums, and compilations. I don’t get why you can’t just have one, maybe two, different categories. The experience is even worse if you’re using Apple Music through iTunes on a desktop. On the upside, Apple Music gives you quick and easy access to lyrics for tons of releases, and song identification is pretty neat. I didn’t have any problems finding music releases on Apple Music, though the deluxe version of one album was missing, but that just meant there were a few instrumentals I couldn’t add to my playlist. Like Spotify you get a warning about adding duplicate songs to playlists. Even more useful, when you add a song to one of your playlists, it also gets added to your library.
It’s super frustrating to be unable to find songs and albums you’ve added to a playlist in your library, even if they’re downloaded. That was a huge complaint I had about Google Play Music. The overall playlist experience was solid, at least on iOS. The queue shows the track and artist name, as well as the album art. You can see past songs as well. Rearranging the queue is quite easy, but unfortunately removing them is not quite as simple.
Tidal — High Fidelity Music Streaming
Now to Tidal. Overall the Tidal interface is pretty good. Playlists and music in your library is quick and easy to access, and it’s not hard to find things. I also didn’t have any issues with stability. On the downside, downloading songs on Tidal was an awful experience. Downloads were sluggish, and would frequently freeze up. Occasionally songs would straight up just refuse to download, and I had to remove them from my playlist to get the rest of the songs to download. The search function is also pretty bad. It doesn’t utilize “fuzzy logic”, which means you have to type exactly what you’re looking for. For example, typing Florence and the Machine won’t help you find Florence + The Machine. And good luck if the song you’re looking for has non-traditional characters in it.
Besides that, though, things were good. You get easy access to track and artist information, including an artist bio and track credits, which I find quite interesting. The interface also shows you your current streaming quality, including when Master quality isn’t available. In the settings you get typical options for audio quality, and the option to turn off loudness normalization. On desktop you can also select what output device you want Tidal to use. Music availability with Tidal was pretty good. There were a few major releases from my playlist missing, which was annoying, but nothing too bad. There’s also a solid selection of Master quality albums, as well as 3D music streaming on mobile devices with Sony 360, and Dolby Atmos on Android Devices. The selection isn’t huge, but it’s still pretty neat.
Like most of the services, Tidal warns you about adding duplicate tracks to a playlist. The playlist queue shows you the track name, artist, and album art. Even though the album art is included, the queue is still not great. It doesn’t autoscroll to keep up with where you are in a playlist, which gets really annoying if you’re deep in a playlist. On the upside you can see previously played songs, and rearranging or removing songs from the queue is easy enough.
Music Streaming on Amazon Music
Let’s talk about Amazon Music. The desktop app is absolutely atrocious, but to be fair it’s almost impossible to find a download, so clearly Amazon isn’t pushing that experience. Unfortunately the mobile app is just as bad. It’s clunky, ugly, and there’s an entire tab of the interface dedicated to Alexa for no discernible reason. Downloading music is a painful experience; Amazon somehow made it worse than Tidal. Downloads are slow and get stuck frequently. To make it even worse, as far as I can tell there’s no way to see what tracks are currently downloading, and you can’t tell what you’ve already downloaded without enabling Offline mode, which is a pain to turn off and on.
On the upside, after digging through some menus you can set streaming and download audio quality, and turn off normalization if you want. Both the desktop and mobile app also show you the current streaming quality, including the bit depth and sample rate, as well as what your device is capable of, which is really neat and handy to see if you’re actually hearing Master quality audio. You also get easy access to song lyrics. Music availability was perfectly fine. There weren’t quite as many albums available at Master quality as with Tidal, but there was still a solid selection. You can also stream 3D music with Sony 360 and Dolby Atmos, but unfortunately only on an Echo Studio.
Unlike any of the other services, Amazon actually lets you set how to deal with playlist duplicates. Like Apple Music, adding music to a playlist also adds it to your library. The playlist queue shows you the track title, album art, and artist, and it stays current with the music you’re playing while still showing previously played songs. Unfortunately removing songs from the queue is pretty slow, and there’s no way to rearrange songs.
Media Leap — Music Locker & Cloud Storage Hi-Res Music App
Media Leap is a personal music streaming service allowing you to upload your music and listen to it online via a web browser, mobile app (both iOS and Android), and download music onto your devices allowing for offline listening. It was built to make it easier for people transitioning from physical audio sources such as cd’s to digital and allowing you to manage any digital tracks you have making it easier to access your music 24/7.
It is a music streaming service that caters to both casual users and high fidelity users. This is why they allow the uploading and streaming of MP3, ogg and FLAC files. This App is a music locker service for web and mobile platforms. The app provides 1TB of free space to create playlists. You can experience hi-fi music listening through their cloud locker. It offers various features all under one roof allowing you to have the best experience with the product.
With this music app, you can upload various music formats such as mp3, ogg, and flac! You can upload one file or multiple files in one go saving you time. It lets you create playlists so you can have a custom listening experience to your needs! With a built-in search function you can search your library for songs, albums, artists and playlists. It works via web browser, iOS and Android allowing you to take your music everywhere. With built in casting ability you can cast your music via chromecast to your devices.
It automatically makes use of your medias metadata and grabs song info and album art for you. However if you want to customize it to your liking you can edit various song information such as song name, artist, genre, release date etc… and even upload your own album art. When you upload your music you can download the tracks back onto your computer or phone in the original format you uploaded in. Downloading music also allows you to use the app for off-line listening. All music you upload will be available on all your devices.
Comparison of Music Streaming Apps Audio Quality
Alright, now for probably the most interesting part of this article; how each of these services stack up when it comes to audio quality. I’m going to throw up the results so you can see them, and then explain how I got these results.
I’ll also give some analysis of the results after that. So these numbers are based on an album I produced that was released on all major services, and are a comparison to the original master file. The decibel numbers are measuring the loudness of any noise and distortion added, as well as any detail removed. The original master files would have a score of negative ninety six dB for reference. I reached these numbers by tracking playback of three songs through a virtual interface into my DAW. When possible, the highest audio quality was selected within the streaming app and audio normalization was disabled. The recorded tracks were each individually normalized to the same level by me, as differences in normalization would have an unfairly dramatic impact on the results.
I then added the 16 bit master file with the polarity inverted to the recorded tracks from each streaming service, which gives us the difference between what you hear through the streaming services and the original masters. The value you see is the integrated loudness of the difference in dB LUFS measured with iZotope Insight 2 without any gating. Okay, so some more info on the numbers. For whatever reason, even after I disabled track normalization in Amazon Music, the tracks were still clearly normalized to an aggressive degree. That meant the noise floor was way higher after I normalized the tracks, resulting in the really bad numbers for Amazon. I was surprised that Spotify and Tidal Premium did as badly as they did. I wonder if Tidal intentionally nerfed the quality of their standard service to make the HiFi service seem more attractive, but obviously I have no evidence to back that up.
I was also surprised that YouTube did as well as it did, since it historically has had pretty bad quality, but clearly that’s been improved recently. Apple Music’s excellent showing is likely due to their high-quality encoding. Apple’s AAC encoder has long been documented to produce better results than other encoders from the likes of Fraunhofer, and I imagine that is what gave them the edge among the standard services. Unsurprisingly, the HiFi and HD services offer the best quality. Ironically, Amazon and Tidal have both the best and the worst streaming quality. Amazon HD does edge out Tidal by a decent amount, but either one is a massive improvement over the likes of Spotify and YouTube.
The results do raise the question of whether it’s worth it to pony up for a higher quality streaming service, especially since Apple Music is so close in quality. When comparing the test files I produced, I found that the higher quality services had basically no added noise or distortion, and it was just a minor loss in detail, which translates to a larger difference when listening than the numbers show. Theoretically there should be no loss in quality converting to FLAC, but obviously that isn’t the case with however they process the music. Based on my personal listening, I found there was a noticeable improvement in fidelity, but not by much, and it was only in certain environments that I could hear it.
For the most part the higher quality translated to subtle background elements being less obscured. Of course if you’re listening in noisy environments like in a car, or on low-quality speakers or headphones, you probably won’t be able to hear much of a difference. Most Bluetooth devices will also kill any quality difference when the audio is compressed for transmission, except perhaps on Apple devices which have higher Bluetooth streaming quality than their Android and Windows counterparts.
The best part about this app is after you upload your music, you can download it to your computer or phone in the original format you uploaded it in. The app lets you download content for off-line listening. All music you upload will be available on all your devices. Audio quality is Hi Res which is amazing. Okay, so all of that brings us to the final question; which of these services would I recommend?
Which Music Streaming App You Should Prefer & Why?
I think for the average listener, Spotify is a great choice. It has by far the best user and social experience, and lots of third-party integration. It might not have the greatest audio quality, but a typical listener won’t notice the difference. Hulu and SHOWTIME bundled in for students is also a big draw. If you want the best audio quality without ponying up for a more expensive subscription, or if you’re totally invested in the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is a great choice.
Of course for Military and First Responders, Tidal’s discounts for those individuals make it a compelling option. If you use YouTube frequently, the option of getting Premium with the Music subscription for only two dollars a month more is very compelling. You also get the Google Play Music experience in the same subscription, even with the standard subscription.
If you have an Amazon Prime subscription, then Amazon becomes a decent option, though I still find it hard to recommend since you can get a much better experience for only two dollars a month more on any other service. It’s also a decent option if you want higher-quality music, though I’m still tempted to recommend Tidal over Amazon even if you have Prime, just because of how mediocre Amazon’s music experience is.
Media Leap lets you upload, stream and sync your music on multiple devices supporting various audio formats including hi-fi formats such as FLAC. Pick a plan that suits you. With their free plan they offer 1TB of free space, unlimited streaming and comes with all features! In free plan you’ll get — Free 1TB of space, unlimited streaming, which you can use on 5 devices at the same time. In the $5 monthly plan, you’ll get unlimited space, unlimited streaming which you can use on 5 devices at the same time. In the $60 yearly plan, you’ll get unlimited space, unlimited streaming which you can use on 5 devices at the same time.
Anyway, that’s it for this article. A pretty long one, but hopefully you found it useful and interesting, and if so please hit that like button or clap for me. If you have any questions or comments, please leave those down in the comments section down below. And, as always, if you wanna see more articles like this one, please choose the music streaming topic you want to know about and send me in the comments section.
I would like to answer your questions in the best possible way through my articles. Till then keep listening to your favourite music with your choice of music streaming app & last but not least please do mention what you liked about my article.
I hope this helps you improve your music listening experience.. Enjoy..
