6 Best Spotify Alternatives You Can Try (Free/Paid)

Spotify is a great all-around music streaming service with AI-powered curation, slick social features, and a large selection of music and podcasts, offering ad-based free tier and Premium plans. But it isn't the only music streaming service that's worth a listen. Most importantly, Spotify will increase monthly pricing again in July 2024. You might already have subscriptions to Spotify, but if you're weighing up the pros and cons of your current platform. We're here to help you find out which alternative option you might want to consider. Explore the top Spotify alternatives by reading our guide here!

Contents Guide 1. Apple Music2. YouTube Music3. Tidal4. Amazon Music5. SoundCloud6. DeezerExtra Tip: Download Spotify Music Without PremiumConclusion

Today's music streaming services offer a world of exploration and convenience, giving you access to your favorite tunes easily and quickly. The following part will list the best alternatives to Spotify. Features, pricing, advantages, and disadvantages for each music streaming service will be listed. Read on our recommended picks to find the one that works best for you.

1. Apple Music

Apple Music is the best Spotify alternative you can try, especially for Apple users. Beyond Apple’s hardware and software ecosystem, Apple Music also works great on other devices, such as Android devices, ChromeOS devices, Sonos speakers, and more. If you go for Apple Music, you’ll find particular benefits you can’t find on Spotify.

For instance, Apple Music has a lot of exclusives, more than other platforms out there. Plus, Apple Music offers excellent bang for your buck, featuring lossless audio, Dolby Atmos support, Siri compatibility, and Hi-Res Audio. These amazing features help to make it the biggest rival to Spotify right now and better value than a Spotify Premium subscription. Spotify still lacks hi-res audio now. If you are a music audiophile, ditch Spotify comes with the news that you can access high-quality music streams on Apple Music.

In terms of pricing, Apple Music offers several plans, including an Individual plan, a family plan, and a plan for eligible students. The Individual plan starts at $10.99 per month, while the family plan allows up to six family members to share an account for $16.99 monthly. If you are a verified college student, you can access Apple Music at a discounted rate of $5.99 per month. Apple Music is also part of the Apple One bundle.

2. YouTube Music

Another alternative to Spotify you should try is YouTube Music. Music streaming is just a part of YouTube Music. It also includes lots of videos. Most streaming music services only serve official music videos, but YouTube Music gives you official content alongside karaoke tracks, people performing covers in their bedrooms, and other random uploads. In terms of audio quality, the streamed music sounds good. However, YouTube Music only offers compressed audio streams, there are no lossless or high-resolution options.

YouTube Music has a free plan and Premium options, but its free tier limits set in place are very different from Spotify. With the free YouTube Music plan, you can skip tracks as many times as you want, making it much more helpful than Spotify in this regard because Spotify Free only allows you to skip six times per hour.

The Premium option costs $11.99 monthly and gives you ad-free and offline listening. In addition, playing songs in the background even if you turn off your phone is possible. It also has a $16.99 family plan that can be used by six users. Then, there’s also a $5.49 plan for students.

3. Tidal

Are you up for high-quality music as a Spotify alternative? Are you okay with shelling out more money? If you answer yes to the two questions, then Tidal would be your best bet. Audio quality on Tidal’s free tier is comparable to Spotify. But Tidal's paid plan utilizes FLAC to deliver more than 110 million lossless tracks (16-bit, 44.1kHz audio files) that are significantly higher quality than the basic, compressed streams of Spotify. Tidal also supports Sony 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos spatial audio.

When it comes to pricing, the service no longer offers a free tier. There are several subscription options. The Individual Tidal Premium plan starts at $10.99 per month and provides access to high-quality audio. If you want to access Tidal's expansive catalog on software like Djay Pro or Serato, you must pay an additional $9 for the DJ Extension. Tidal also offers a family plan (up to 6 members, $16.99/month) and a student plan ($4.99/month), making it accessible to a wide range of users.

If you are a true audiophile, who has no problem paying a little extra for improved quality, and decent Internet connectivity, then you’ll fall in love with Tidal. Overall, Tidal can easily stake the claim of being among the top alternative to Spotify.

LEARN MORE: If you want to know more about the differences between Tidal and Spotify, see Tidal vs Spotify: Which Should You Choose?

4. Amazon Music Unlimited

If you’re an avid Amazon shopper and already have an Amazon Prime membership, then Amazon Music Unlimited is a natural choice for you. Operating as a separate Amazon streaming tier from its Amazon Music service, this Spotify alternative offers a very strong 100 million songs in its library with access to CD-quality streams and higher and supports both Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio content. The service is less focused on curated content than some of its rivals, though, and the playlist it generates appears to be rather generic.

At $9.99 for Prime members to upgrade to Music Unlimited, or $10.99 if you don't have Prime. The single-device plan starts at $5.99 per month, while the family plan allows up to six family members to share an account for $16.99 monthly. If you are a student, you can access Amazon Music Unlimited at a discounted rate of $5.99 per month.

5. SoundCloud

SoundCloud is the most popular free Spotify alternative. Founded in August 2007, SoundCloud has become a popular place for up-and-coming artists to share their work with the world. SoundCloud is excellent for discovering unofficial music remixes and mashups because ordinary users can upload songs to SoundCloud but Spotify doesn't support it. SoundCloud has an excellent range of social sharing features. You can like and repost songs, and another advantage it has over Spotify is the ability to comment.

6. Deezer

Deezer is the most popular commercial Spotify alternative. Deeze's blend of traditional streaming music, live radio, podcasts, and exclusive video makes it worth your consideration. For content and music discovery, the differences between Spotify and Deezer are not massive. they do the job brilliantly. But in all honesty, the audio quality is where Deezer has Spotify beat. Spotify Premium streams audio up to 320kbp only. On the premium plan offered by Deezer, you get high-fidelity sound which means you get music files encoded in lossless format (16-bit, 1,411 Kbps). It is packed with extra features like SongCatcher. When you’re out and about and hear a great song you aren’t familiar with, all you have to do is launch SongCatcher, and it will tell you the name of the song and artist.

When it comes to premium plans, the two services share many similarities as well. The basic plan on Deezer costs $11.99 monthly allowing you higher quality music, offline saving, and unlimited skips. A student’s package will cost you almost half of that at $5.99. A Duo plan gives you two accounts with all of these features for $15.99 per month. A family plan that supports up to six accounts is available for $19.99. However, Deezer allows you to pay for an annual subscription upfront, saving you around $30.

LEARN MORE: Curious whether you should choose Deezer or Spotify for an optimal music-streaming experience? We’ve analyzed each platform's strengths on Deezer vs Spotify.

Extra Tip: Download Spotify Music Without Premium

Spotify or Spotify alternatives, which platform provides a better music listening experience? There is no such thing as a perfect streaming service, but Spotify comes closer than most by offering a large catalog of audio-based entertainment and outstanding recommendation algorithms. It is more than enough for the needs of most people. If you still choose to use Spotify, here we recommend the best music tool to use with Spotify, offering an uninterrupted listening experience.

As we all know, the download feature is a privilege for Spotify Premium users. If you have a premium account, you can download Spotify songs for offline playback whenever you want. If you don't have a Spotify Premium account, you can use AMusicSoft Spotify Music Converter to help download Spotify songs for free. Whether you have a Spotify Premium or a free account, you can download Spotify songs, albums, playlists, and podcasts with the help of AMusicSoft.

AMusicSoft can change the format of the songs into another format that is more accessible and supported in most devices. It can produce MP3 files, FLAC, WAV, AAC, AC3 and M4A. Aside from that, all of these converted files are already free of DRM. With these DRM-free and flexible format files, you can play Spotify on Alexa, PS4, or any device. The good audio quality of the converted files which are just the same as the original.

Step 1. Get the AMusicSoft Spotify Music Converter application from the official website by simply hitting the Download button. Once the download is complete, you should proceed with the installation.

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Step 2. Launch the AMusicSoft Spotify Music Converter and its built-in Spotify Music web player will load your music library automatically. Then add songs you want to play offline to the interface.

Step 3. The output formats supported in AMusicSoft include MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, AC3 and M4A. Select one format to utilize and select the destination folder to save files.

Step 4. Now click on "Convert" button to start converting your Spotify songs to MP3 at up to 5X faster speed. Soon you will get the DRM-free Spotify songs and play them anywhere you want.

Conclusion

Spotify is hiking its prices again, and if you’re looking for the best music service with good value, these fantastic Spotify alternatives are worth exploring. It’s hard to single out one service as the best one as it depends on what features of a music app are most important to you. It could be the price, the user interface, the content library, or something else. Thankfully, all of them have a free trial for new users, so you can easily test their service before subscribing.

Additionally, if you are still a big fan of Spotify, don't miss the AMusicSoft Spotify Music Converter. AMusicSoft enables you to download songs from Spotify and keep them on multiple devices even without Premium. This will save money even if Spotify increases the price.

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