Music streaming apps

HOW TO GET THE LATEST TUNES AND OLD FAVOURITES ON YOUR SMARTPHONE AND DESKTOP — AND FOR FREE.

WHETHER YOU’RE SAT at your desktop computer or on the go with your iOS or Android device, there have never been more ways to enjoy listening to music. These days, there’s an absolute wealth of apps out there that make it easy to discover, browse, stream and enjoy your favourite tunes on whichever device you wish.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or still using some form of ancient listening contraption (there used to be something called a Discman that took actual CDs!), you would have heard of the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music, as well as the plethora of others available either for free or with a paid-for monthly or yearly subscription. In fact, your mobile phone provider may have bundled in a service with your contract as an added bonus, so before you do anything else, why not have a look at the fine print in your contract?

Of course, there are simply too many music streaming services online now to cover them all in just a handful of pages, so we’ll focus on the most popular ones. But don’t forget: the likes of Pandora, iHeartRadio, YouTube, MusicBee, MediaMonkey, Dopamine, VLC Media Player and Kodi also exist, and might just be the one you’re looking for.

So without further ado, we charge up our phones and whip out our favourite pair of headphones to dive into the world of music streaming services to bring you a juicy guide on what’s out there, how much they cost (if anything) and which devices they play nice with.