Comparing Music Streaming Services: Which One is Best For You??

Almost anyone listening to music nowadays is using some kind of streaming service. We have come a long way from record players, CDs in the 90s, and traditional radio. It has been a gradual process to get where we are today. iTunes was the truly first relevant place to store all of our music in a digital library. 

Sure, there are other types of services out there that offered free music or storage libraries, but Apple made it uniform and widespread. 

Along the way, services like Pandora came by, an internet radio in your hands to control with thumbs up and down to curate to your taste.

We're going to look at the top three relevant music streaming sources and let you decide what's best for you. 

1. Apple Music

After a while out of the streaming game, Apple came back in full force. At a price point of $9.99 for individuals and $14.99 for six family members, the price range is in line with its competitors.

Apple music offers over 30 million tracks and hosts exclusive albums and songs before their competitors, making them an ideal place to pick up early, high-quality music. It syncs up on the go through all your computers and preexisting offline library. 

If you're an Apple fanatic, it works seamlessly with your iPhone and general array of Mac products. Playlists help you find new different music and they host featured music based on popularity or your own individual likes. 

2. Spotify

Spotify has been around before most of these streaming services. It first started back in 2008 before picking up with over 60 million users and 15 million paying subscribers. It has three different payment tiers of free, $4.99, and $10. The latter two have access to all Spotify functions without any restrictions. 

Spotify has again over 30 million tracks with over 1.5 billion playlists created. It is a market leader and one of the most popular forms of streaming websites out there. They also offer Spotify Radio which is similar to Pandora's functions of customizing radio playlists based on your likes.

3. Tidal

This streaming service has a lot of support from leading figures in the music industry. Jay-Z is a major investor and has generated a lot of buzz, specifically, in regards to Kanye West first releasing his coveted album on the service.

The standard service costs $9.99 a month and the premium is $19.99, which includes CD quality music or (FLAC) Free Lossless Audio Codec. It has over 30 million tracks, as some artists are beginning to remove their music from major players like Spotify over to this service.

So which one should I choose best?

Overall, all of these services offer similar price points and a large library of music. The differences is in exclusive content that is going to eventually be released on other platforms sooner or later.

Are you an Apple fan? Go with Apple music. Do you like discovering new music through other people's playlists? Try Spotify. Is there an album not on Spotify that you want? It's probably on Tidal.

Spotify has a lot more playlists, Apple has a refined program that also offers exclusive content, along with Tidal's offerings. Try out all of them you can and decide through personal preference what works best for you.