Music STREAMING Services

Which subscription gives you the biggest bang for your musical buck?

Most of the holdouts, such as The Beatles, have now embraced music streaming

Owning things is so 20th century; these days all the cool people are streaming things instead. The pros of streaming music are obvious – for a flat monthly or annual fee you get instant access to pretty much any music ever recorded, along with videos and other interesting content – but there are plenty of major differences between the various players.

The first and most obvious difference between the apps is that some artists aren’t available on some services. Most of the holdouts, such as The Beatles, have embraced streaming, albeit reluctantly, but there are still some notable exceptions. Not all Beyoncé’s albums are on Spotify, for example, and we’re starting to see artists offer exclusives to one streaming service and not others. We’re also seeing some artists hold back new releases from streaming services to maximise physical sales of CDs.

The other key differences are sound quality and compatibility. You’ll find desktop and mobile players for all the services, but not all services have Apple TV apps, or support smart TVs and other connected kit. And not all services offer the same level of sound quality, so for example Amazon’s sound quality is considerably poorer than Tidal, and all services suffer by comparison to Tidal HiFi, which streams uncompressed FLAC files. Then again, Tidal HiFi costs twice as much as its rivals.

Food of love

We’ve explored the six biggest music services in this group test – Amazon, Apple, Deezer, Google, Spotify and Tidal – to put them through their paces. We’ve not just compared them in terms of sound quality, but also in terms of how easy it is to find the good stuff and fall in love with music all over again. Is Apple Music the best option for your Mac, iOS device or connected home, or does one of its streaming rivals strike a sweeter chord? The answer may surprise you.