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Music consumption has changed a lot since the year 2000. Back then, people purchased CDs, traditional radio still held weight, MTV was hot, and file sharing had become commonplace for those with PCs and fast internet connections. Over time, the music industry morphed to take advantage of the new digital landscape and to find new ways to capture dollars previously lost to BearShare and Napster. Thanks to iTunes and Pandora, digital downloads and online streaming music services eventually became the norm. Those trailblazing services, among others, helped internet music listening go legit and created a new music industry revenue stream. However, that doesn’t mean you must pay for online music. Many popular premium streaming music services offer free tiers that offer no-cost listening. These are our favorites.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Best for Unlimited Skips
Spotify
Free Spotify accounts offer a surprising amount of benefits that make it stand out from competing services, including a deep podcast catalog that includes exclusive and popular shows like Stuff You Should Know, Reply All, and The Joe Rogan Experience. One outstanding Spotify perk is the ability to skip tracks as often as you’d like, as long as you use the desktop app.
People who lack the patience to listen to songs that they don’t want to hear. Spotify is a superb choice for desktop and laptop listeners thanks to its unique song-skipping option. Open Spotify while on your PC, slap on a pair of cans, and enjoy some sweet tunes.
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Best for Scrolling Lyrics
Amazon Music Unlimited
The Amazon Music umbrella can be a bit confusing, but there’s value in its many facets, including this one. Amazon Music Unlimited has a free, ad-supported tier that includes original tracks, varied playlists, radio stations, and podcasts. Even better, Amazon includes stylish, karaoke-like scrolling lyrics for songs that offer them.
This music streaming service is perfect for people who like to sing along to their favorite tunes. You only need an Amazon account to listen and read (no Prime membership needed), so you already have a foot in the door if you shop at the online marketplace.
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Best for Mobile Listening
Deezer
Deezer is an excellent middle ground between LiveOne’s music curation and Spotify’s expansive musical catalog. Unfortunately, free accounts offer just 30-second song samplers on desktop, so stick with Deezer’s mobile apps.
People who like listening to music when out and about. The service is heavily focused on mobile, and its copious content includes live radio.
Best for Live Events
LiveOne
LiveOne lets you create playlists built around the songs and artists you like, and mixes in related content to deliver music it thinks you’ll enjoy based on your preferences. Even better, the service specializes in concerts and online events, which you can enjoy on a pay-per-view basis.
Concert lovers, as live events are the name of the game. LiveOne delivers an impressive selection of live shows throughout the year, which you can watch via pay-per-view. It also hosts LiveOne TV, a video channel that streams live music-related news, interviews, podcasts, and performances.
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Best for Music Videos
YouTube Music
Why We Picked It
It should come as no surprise that YouTube Music is a major contender in the music streaming industry, considering the monumental amount of music on the vanilla video platform. It offers customized playlists, search-by-lyric functionality, community uploads, and official studio releases. YouTube Music is also intuitive and extremely accessible if you are already familiar with the regular video service.
Who It’s For
YouTube Music is an extension of the video streaming behemoth, so it’s a perfect service for video lovers. Not only do you get numerous official music videos, but a veritable treasure trove of covers and community-uploaded videos, too. Plus, you get YouTube Music as part of the ad-free YouTube Premium service.
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Best for Terrestrial Radio Fans
iHeartRadio
Why We Picked It
Freemium service iHeartRadio has been in the business since 2008, and it combines traditional radio, curated artist channels, and podcasts to deliver a listening experience with a little something for everyone.
Who It’s For
Radio may seem like a quaint listening medium nowadays, but there are many excellent stations to enjoy across the country. Not only can you enjoy local radio, but the service also offers its own productions and suggestions to fill in preferential gaps in your area.
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Best for Album Commentaries
Pandora
Why We Picked It
Pandora is a freemium service that offers personalized stations, podcasts, easily accessible lyrics, and some surprisingly insightful music-related extras. Pandora Stories, for example, delivers creator-curated playlists and mixtapes. These are spiced up further with customized voice tracks from artists, which add context or commentary to supplement Pandora Stories.
Who It’s For
This service is perfect for listeners who enjoy bonus audio content to pair with their musical selection. It is fairly common to see music streaming services offer supplemental reading or video content, but the artist insight Pandora delivers is ideal for fans who love album commentary.
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Buying Guide: The Best Free Online Streaming Music Services for 2024
What Is the Best Free Music Streaming Service?
If you think you’ll miss out on good content by going the free route, think again—these streaming services offer a surprising amount of content. For example, LiveOne differentiates itself with Stories, a hosted program that features interesting tales, ranging from love to horror. iHeartRadio blends live, terrestrial radio with playlists. Spotify has many free playlists and podcasts. Amazon Music Unlimited offers the same. Though some of the listed services have price tags attached, rest assured that they all have no-cost tiers.
You may ask, “What about big names, such as Apple Music, SiriusXM Internet Radio, or Tidal?” Those excellent streaming music are definitely worth your time, but they are premium-only affairs with premium-only features. Those for-pay service levels are aimed at customers who really want to explore the depths of what a streaming music service offers. Not everyone needs those features, of course, so free music tiers are extremely valuable.
What Are the Downsides to Free Music Streaming?
Free music listening has its inconveniences, however. You may need to listen to audio ads. You may be limited to just six song skips per hour. You may not be able to listen to songs on demand, or fire up particular playlists. You may not enjoy the sweet sounds that hi-res audio delivers. In many ways, free streaming music resembles classic, terrestrial radio. That’s not too bad, considering you save roughly $9.99 per month you’d otherwise be paying for an individual music streaming plan.
Unfortunately, there are problems in the streaming music space impacting free and paid accounts. Thanks to—you guessed it—money, some platforms gain and lose content over time. The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Prince, and other artists have seen their catalogs vanish from streaming platforms (and later reappear) due to low royalties. It’s not just big names that get stiffed by the record industry; the little guys catch a bad one, too.
Though content restrictions and missing artists and tracks are still a problem in the space, the situation has improved markedly in recent years. Still, there’s been a paring down. LiveXLive absorbed the excellent Slacker Radio (and rebranded to LiveOne after that), and Google sent yet another service to its graveyard when it replaced Google Play Music with YouTube Music. Fortunately, other streaming music services have stepped up to bring you free tunes.
Recommended by Our Editors
Keep Rocking
In our chart below, you’ll find the streaming music services that serve up song lyrics, live programming (be it live radio or streaming video), or non-music content—think podcasts, weather updates, and so on. If you’re ready to take a dip into the free music streaming pool, we’ve got several quality services to recommend. Each of the reviewed services offers Android and iOS apps, too, so you needn’t be tied to your PC to enjoy tunes. So, grab a pair of headphones, or turn up your speakers, and prepare for a good time.
For more on streaming music, check out the best places to stream hi-res audio.