6 Streaming Alternatives to Apple Music

Later this month, Apple will finally embrace streaming music with Apple Music, launching first on your iPhone and eventually on Apple TV and even Android.

Apple Music will feature 24-hour live Internet radio, and subscribers can pretty much listen to whatever they want in the catalog for $9.99 per month.

If that all sounds pretty familiar, it's because it's pretty close to the business model used by all the other streaming media services around, many of which are offered on far more platforms than Apple Music will be at launch. Maybe the biggest difference, though, is that Apple says it will have experts (not algorithms) curating playlists based on your initial song selection, plus the ability for unsigned artists to add their work to the service. Its Beats 1 live radio station will also be available to anyone, even if they don't subscribe.

Should you subscribe? How does Apple Music compare to other music services? Here's the rundown.

Spotify

Spotify has ad-free, on-demand streaming if you pay for it and ad-supported, free listening if you don't. It also has Internet radio options, offline playback for certain songs, and now videos. Available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows, Mac, PlayStation, Web. Check out our Spotify tips and tricks.

Catalog size: 30 million + songs.

Cost: $9.99 per month for individuals after three-month trial, $4.99 for students, and 50 percent off each additional account when you upgrade to a Family plan.

Slacker Radio

The perennial PCMag Editors' Choice in this category, Slacker Radio provides some excellent curated Internet radio stations already—exactly the kind of thing Apple Music will provide. Its tagline: "Powered by Humans." It even provides ESPN Radio! The only downside is a more limited library of tunes. Available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, Xbox, and Web .

Catalog size: 13 million songs

Cost: Free with ads; $3.99 a month to remove ads and get unlimited skips; $9.99 a month caches songs for offline playback and allows stations creation around a specific artist.

Pandora

Internet radio only—you pick a song, the service picks songs to play on the "station" created, based on the artist, genre, and other features. If you pay, you get to skip ads and songs. There's no going back to previous songs, you just have to wait until the one you gave a "thumbs up" comes back. Available for iOS, Windows Phone, Android, Kindle Fire, Nook, Blackberry, Pebble Watch, and Web. Check out PCMag's tips and tricks.

Catalog size: 2 million tracks

Cost: $4.99 per month or $54.89 per year for Pandora One, but you don't need it.

Tidal

Haven't heard of Tidal yet? Think of it as "that service by Jay Z" even though it's originally from Europe. It only got its start recently in the U.S.—just ahead of Apple Music's announcement. Like with Spotify, you can choose a song to listen to as desired. It also have music videos, but there's no ad-supported free listening. Available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Web.

Catalog size: 30 million songs.

Cost: $9.99 a month or $19.99 per month for lossless CD quality audio. Student pricing ($4.99 for the standard tier and $9.99 for the Hi-Fi tier) arrives in the next few weeks.

Google Play Music

More on-demand streaming + Internet radio. The nice thing Google Play Music does is let you integrate your local tracks into your catalog so you can listen wherever you are, offline. It's from Google, so of course it pairs with YouTube, specifically YouTube Music Key, to show music videos. Available for iOS, Android, and Web.

Catalog size: 30 million songs

Cost: $9.99 per month after 60-day trial

Rdio

Say it are-dee-oh, like it's a Star Wars droid. Rdio provides you with a personal radio station (You FM) or pick another song to create a new one. You can stream or download whole songs and albums, for offline listening. The Internet radio stations are free, with ads, while the paid version provides audio as pristine as 320kbps quality. Available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows, Web.

Catalog size: 20 million songs

Cost: Free for ad-based listening; $3.99 per month with no ads and unlimited skips, plus 25 song downloads; $9.99 a month for any song on demand, no ads, unlimited skips, unlimited downloads.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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