THE BEST STREAMING PLATFORMS

01 TIDAL

It may be partly owned by Jay-Z, but Tidal isn’t only for hip-hop; there are millions of tunes available, from every genre and every era. Tidal’s USP used to be that it was the only service of any size to offer CD-quality streaming, as well as a decentsized selection of hi-res tracks, albeit requiring an MQAcompatible speaker. Amazon HD offers the same for less, but Tidal’s excellent interface and recommendations engine mean it remains a great choice.

02 AMAZON HD

Giving Jay-Z a 100th problem to ponder, the new Amazon HD now also offers millions of CD-quality tunes (dubbed ‘HD’ by Amazon) and several million hi-res ones (‘UHD’) as well. There’s also a smattering of tunes in Atmos-style 3D audio. However, to get the most of the UHD tunes, you’ll need either an Echo Studio or Bluesoundcompatible speaker – nothing else supports it. And for the 3D tunes, of which there are few, it’s a Studio or nothing.

03 QOBUZ

Another hi-res streaming option, Qobuz is popular with audiophiles because its 24-bit hi-res tracks stream without MQA encoding. That gives wider compatibility in theory, although not many speakers directly support Qobuz. Uniquely, this French service offers both hi-res streaming and the option to buy and download tracks, although it must be pointed out that Tidal and Amazon both allow downloads for offline listening.

04 SPOTIFY AND APPLE MUSIC

We doubt anyone needs to be told about either of these services, but we’re going to anyway. Both offer millions of tunes, with Spotify having a ‘free’ option – although frankly we’d rather pay than endure the ads it runs to fund this. Neither service yet offers streams of CD quality or above, but both sound surprisingly good on the speakers reviewed here. It’s just the options to the left will sound even better…