Comparing Music Streaming Services

Today, the most popular way of listening to music is through an on-demand streaming service.When choosing a music streaming service, first you should ask yourself: Do I want to choose what music I want to listen to or do I want a more radio-like experience? There are different services for different functions. Nearly every service has a radio-like function, but not every service has an on-demand "choose your own music" function. Hopefully this information will help you decide what you want in a streaming service and choose one.

First, I will cover the "choose your own music" options that are most popular today. This is a table featuring the 5 most popular options and their basic features.

Service	Monthly price	Desktop apps	Web app	Offline storage	Sports channels	Comedy channels	Regional availability	Audio quality
Beats Music	$9.99	No	Yes	Unlimited	No	No	US only	320kbps
Google Play All Access	$9.99	No	Yes	Unlimited	No	Yes	21 countries	320kbps
Rdio	$9.99	Mac, Windows	Yes	Unlimited	No	No	51 countries	192kbps
Slacker	$3.99-$9.99	No	Yes	Unlimited	Yes	Yes	US & Canada	128kbps
Spotify	$9.99	Mac, Windows	Yes	10,000 songs per account	No	No	55 countries	320kbps

Each of these are great services have great aspects. Want the best social integration? Go for Spotify. Want sports and comedy options? Slacker. Want to sync and have access to your mp3 music collection in the cloud? Google Play. Coolest service with artist-curated playlists? Beats. 

If you're wanting more of a hands-off experience where you choose a genre or artist and the services creates a radio station, try an internet radio service. There are many to choose from, such as Pandora, Songza, last.fm, TuneIn Radio, and iheartradio. Each one of the paid services also has a radio function. 

I'm going to pick out a winner from 3 categories: paid on-demand, free on-demand, free radio.

Best Paid On-Demand Option: Beats Music

Beats Music is a great premium service that has everything you would need: social integration, radio, a huge music selection, great UI, and personalized music selection. You can create playlists based on a sentence that you make in the app, as seen in the picture below. Beats Music is our choice for the best premium service available.

Best Free On-Demand Service: Spotify

Spotify is easily the most popular on-demand streaming service, and it's a great one. Their free version is the best available. While being ad-supported, users can listen to any songs in the entire catalog. Users can create playlists, share music with friends, and listen to radio all for free. There's even a mobile free version that limits users to the radio part of the service. I use Spotify Premium using the student discount. It's only $5 per month when you have a valid .edu email address. While not as robust as Beats, the premium version is a great alternative.

Best Free Radio Service: iTunes Radio

iTunes Radio is a free, ad supported radio service that you use through iOS or iTunes on desktop. One of the biggest factors in this decision is how great some of iTunes Radio's stations are. They have exclusive pre-release streaming of upcoming albums, artist-curated stations, genre stations, and much more. The UI is simple and easy to use. There are also some useful features like changing the focus of your station from hits to variety to discovery. You can also enable or disable explicit tracks. All of this adds up to a great streaming radio service. Of course, this is only if you have an iPhone or are on desktop using iTunes. Otherwise, I prefer Songza radio, where endless playlists based on mood or activity are available.