There are numerous venues by which entertainment seekers can listen to free music online that won't incur the wrath of the RIAA. Spotify, Slacker, Pandora and a sea of other streaming music services serve up a mix of quality audio that lets you tune into your favorite bands. With the sheer number of options available, selecting a streaming music service can prove quite a difficult task.
We've taken it upon ourselves to help guide you toward the streaming music site that bests suits you. On the surface these streaming music sites simply deliver audio through the internet, but if you dig a little deeper you'll discover that the various services each have their own unique traits that appeal to the different segments of the listening population.
If you're curious about which streaming music service bests fits your needs, check out our guide which will point you in the right direction. We highlight which streaming music services are best for music downloaders, station tweakers, passive listeners, social networkers, and our core audience—nerds.
From Spotify to Jango, we've got you covered. All of these stations play music, but depending on the selected station, you can fire up comedy if you're in the mood for stand up, and news channels if you want to stay on top of global happenings. Those with more eclectic tastes can even dive into anime and video game soundtracks . Feel free to chime in with streaming music station suggestions of your own in the comment section below.
Best for Downloaders
Free
Got a large digital music collection that you’d like to blend into your streaming music? Check out Spotify, the recently-launched (in the U.S. at least) service that lets you upload your collection to the cloud for anytime, anywhere access. You build cloud-based playlists (up to 10,000 tracks per grouping) with any songs you want, as long as they're in Spotify's 15 million-track catalog. Once your tunes are uploaded, you can post music links to Facebook and Twitter.
Best for Tweakers
Free
Slacker may be known for its quality audio and slick interface, but the service's customization options is its meat. You can dive into Slacker's deep catalog by selecting one of the nearly 20 pre-made stations or keying in an artist or song title into the search engine and build a station around that. A heart-shaped icon lets you favorite tracks, a ban icon lets you ditch songs or artists, and with a premium account you can build playlists (as seen in the image above) and stream songs, or entire albums, on demand. Slacker is also our favorite service overall, earning an Editors’ Choice.
Best for The Laid Back
Free
If you’re not much of a tweaker, check out Pandora, which offers a very solid hands-off experience (as evidenced by its minimalist interface). Powered by the Music Genome Project, an in-depth taxonomy and complex algorithm that reads hundreds of musical "genes" that enables the service to find like-sounding songs, Pandora Radio delivers excellent song recommendations for those who want to discover new artists without doing much work. Keying in Jimi Hendrix creates a killer classic rock station that includes tracks from Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones. Pandora even explains why songs are matched (it examines not only the style of music, but the musicianship), so you don’t even have to think about that.
Best for Social Networkers
$4.99 per month
Rdio may not have a free version like other streaming music services, but for the asking price you get an excellent social networking experience. You can personalize the Rdio experience by signing to your Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, or e-mail accounts to see what your friends are listening to, follow them, and view their playlists, and the songs in their collections. You can even follow known music-related brands such as the pictured Pitchfork music magazine account. The best feature, however, is Collaborative Playlists, which lets multiple people manage playlists together.
Best for Nerds
Free
Quick, name a music genre that you won't find on AOL Pandora, Slacker? If Romanian underground hip hop came to mind, you would be correct, but we were leaning in far nerdier directions. AOL Radio is one of the few mainstream streaming online music services that lets fans tap into anime and video game soundtracks—like the Final Fantasy song that’s playing in the photo. Certainly, there are dedicated sites that offer that—GameThemeSongs.com come to mind—but few sites combine those with more mainstream artists as well as AOL Radio.
Best for Aspiring Musicians
Free
If you're an up-and-coming musician looking to spread your tunes to the masses, you can subscribe to the pictured Jango Airplay. This isn't just placing you at the kids' table; the content gets fed into the rest of the Jango mix alongside other established artists. Jango Airplay helps unsigned artists and indie labels to see Jango promotion—$10 gets 250 plays, $30 nets 1,000 plays, and $100 scores 4,000 plays.