There are many streaming music services and for the price of a CD each month, you can have not one album, but tens of thousands containing millions of tracks. It makes sense to subscribe if you love listening to music and with unlimited access to so much, you will discover new sounds you never knew existed. See also: Best media streaming boxes: Chromecast vs Apple TV vs Roku
In this comparison we look at Rdio, Spotify, Google Play Music, Deezer, MixRadio and Blinkbox. Yes, there are more, but these are among the most popular and most people use one or the other. Which is the best though?
Each service has a different number of tracks, but all try to cover the most popular artists and albums, so the chances are that your favourite music is on all of the services. There are a few exceptions though and it is hard to find anything from the classic rock band AC/DC on any service, and Taylor Swift recently had a bust up with Spotify and pulled her music.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Blinkbox Music
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Price: £1 per week
This service is owned by Tesco and along with the music are adverts for tins of beans, chocolate bars and other supermarket items. Actually, they aren’t as irritating as you might imagine. There are apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, and the website can be accessed on the PC or Mac. There are only 12 million tracks, which is over 20 million fewer than Deezer and it makes you wonder what is missing, but a lot depends on what music you like. The missing music may be foreign, or genres or artists you don’t listen to, so don’t immediately dismiss the service. Perhaps more important to audiophiles is the 192Kb/s streaming, which is lower quality than most rivals. Not everyone can hear the difference though.
The free service lets you search for artists and tracks, and it creates radio stations based on them. Liking a track while it is playing ensures that it is played more often and more music like it is played. There are also many ready-made radio stations to listen to, such as the top 40, number 1s, new rock, dance and urban, and many more.
Subscribe for £1 a week and you get all the free radio station features minus the ads, access to the latest albums, the ability to create playlists of your favourite tracks, and you can play albums. It is a cheap service that has good support for mobile devices, but the quality and range of music may not be adequate for some people. It’s fun for free.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Deezer
Price: Free or £9.99 per month
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Deezer has the largest music library with around 35 million tracks. This means there is a greater chance of finding music you like than with Blinkbox for example, which has just 12 million. There are free and Premium+ accounts, with the latter costing £9.99 a month. The main benefits of subscribing include the removal of the adverts that interrupt the music in the free version, offline access means that you can continue to listen to music even when you don’t have an internet connection on your phone or tablet, and you can increase the music quality.
Social networking is built in and you can share tracks or albums to Facebook, Twitter or Google+. A favourites button enables you to build a list of your most liked tracks and albums, and playlists can be created and they can be private or collaborative with comments from other people and fans.
An Explore feature enables you to browse and discover new music. Select the genre or region of the world and album after album is displayed. There are Deezer picks and new releases. The Charts section is another way to browse the music and you can see the most popular tracks, albums, artists and playlists in any genre you select. There are numerous radio channels too, and these are organised by artist and genre.
Deezer is very impressive, it is a great service and the website and mobile apps are excellent. The way you can view a discography, similar artists and a biography is useful. This service is one of the best.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Google Play Music All Access
Price: £9.99 per month (Free if you upload your own music)
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Trying to describe streaming music services is like trying to hit a moving target because they are under constant development. Google Music Key is in beta and and its launch is imminent. This consists of high quality ad-free music videos from YouTube and included in the subscription will be Google Play Music All Access. At the moment you just get streaming music, but eventually streaming music videos will be included in the £9.99 per month subscription fee.
Google Play Music also lets you upload 20,000 tracks of music from your PC or Mac and stream them to any computer, phone or tablet for free. This means that if you have a CD collection, you can create your own streaming music service.
Go to the Google Play store on a computer, phone or tablet and select the music section. When you subscribe, the prices are removed and you can play any of the music. There are fewer tracks than some services, but 18 million isn’t bad. You can search for artists and tracks and create your own playlists. You can also create Instant Mixes and this is an automated playlist creator. It instantly builds a playlist containing the selected track or artist and similar ones.
Custom radio stations can be created by selecting an artist or track and the songs played are all from similar artists in the same genre. There is an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ station too. The free online storage of your own music collection and the upcoming Music Key service make this a serious contender in music streaming.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: MixRadio
Price: £3.99 per month
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MixRadio was originally run by Nokia for owners of the company’s mobile phones. Microsoft took over Nokia and ended up with two music services, Xbox Music and MixRadio. The latest news is that MixRadio is being spun off as a separate company. The £3.99 monthly cost makes it the cheapest music service, but before you rush and join, there are some serious limitations. The only mobile app is for Windows Phone. This eliminates over 90% of potential customers, although once a separate company, MixRadio would be able to create Android and iOS apps. At the moment, most people are limited to web browser access on their computer.
The radio in the name hints at the music this streaming service provides – radio stations. There is a good selection and they cover a wide range of genres and interests. Examples include MixRadio Most Played, Top 40 UK Singles Chart, UK #1s, pop, jazz, indie, hip hop, dance, decades and so on. A search facility enables you to find your favourite tracks and artists, and you can listen to a radio station based on them. There is an interesting facility to create mixes – radio stations – based on a list of artists. Just type in your favourites and then sit back and listen to the station play their songs and similar music and artists.
The future is uncertain for MixRadio. It has to stand on its own without the backing of Microsoft/Nokia and it desperately needs Android and iOS apps in order to build membership. It’s only useful for Windows Phone owners.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Rdio
Price: Free or £4.99 or £9.99 per month
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There are four types of account and a free one provides access to the full 30 million track music library on the web and on mobile devices. You can search for artists or tracks, but then you can only listen to a radio station based on them. Subscribing enables you to select and play individual tracks as well as stations. For £4.99 a month you can stream any tracks to your computer and for £9.99 this applies to mobile devices too. There are family subscriptions with discounts for second, third and fourth users.
The home page shows music you recently listened to and there is a search facility to find tracks, albums and artists. There are sections that display new releases and trending music, and there is a recommendations section that shows music similar to tracks you have previously listened to. All these are useful if you want to discover new music or see what other people recommend. Playlists can be created and there are options to make them public or private. You can even collaborate on them with other people too, such as those you follow, which is interesting. People can be added from Facebook and Twitter, and there are suggested popular people to follow too.
The mobile app is good and there is a useful facility to set different bit rates for mobile data and Wi-Fi, such as low and high respectively. Music downloads are available and you can listen offline. Rdio is good, but not quite the best.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Spotify
Price: Free or £9.99 per month
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When streaming music is mentioned, Spotify is one of the first services that springs to mind. There are apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and it can be accessed in a variety of ways on PC and Mac. For example, there is a web browser interface, a downloadable program, and a Chrome extension.
It can be used for free provided you don’t mind adverts, a slightly lower quality, although 192Kb/s is hardly low, and the inability to select which track to play on mobiles. There are fewer limitations when using a web browser and any track can be played whereas mobiles must use shuffle play. Select an album for example, and the tracks play in random order. Subscribing for £9.99 a month removes the ads, provides better quality streaming, offline listening, and no adverts. Students and family members get a 50% discount.
Select the Browse mode and you can view over a dozen top lists, such as Top Tracks in the UK, Top 100 Pop Tracks, Top 100 Hip-Hop Tracks and so on. Music is available in over 20 moods, such as Workout, Club, Party, Travel, Romance and so on. There are New Releases and a Discover section where you can find various suggestions.
Radio stations are available in numerous genres, but you can also create them based on artists or tracks. While any track is playing, you can start a radio station or share it on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. You can follow people and it shows Facebook friends already on Spotify, and suggests people to follow.
Spotify is an excellent service and is our pick of the bunch.
Best streaming music services 2015 UK: Verdict
Blinkbox and MixRadio are cheap, but are not really worth it and you are better off with the free ad-supported versions of the other services. There isn’t much to choose between Deezer, Rdio, Spotify and Google and all are good services that cost exactly the same, offer identical streaming quality, offline listening, social features and so on.
The services are so similar that really this streaming music comparison boils down to who has the best software. Spotify’s website and apps are preferred to the others, making it the best service, but Deezer is very good and is very close behind in second place. Google offers a broader service with online storage of your own music, streaming, and (coming soon) Music Key videos, which some people may prefer.
Music streaming services compared
Blinkbox
Deezer
Google
MixRadio
Rdio
Spotify
Website
blinkboxmusic.com
deezer.com
play.google.com
mixrad.io
rdio.com
spotify.com
Price/month
Free/£4.33
Free/£9.99
£9.99
Free/£3.99
Free/£9.99
Free/£9.99
Songs
12m
35m
18m
26m
30m
20m
Best quality
192 kb/s
320kb/s
320Kb/s
192Kb/s
320kb/s
320Kb/s
Offline music
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free limitations
Ads, no playlists, not latest albums
Ads (including on free mobile version), no offline, lower quality
Upload your own music
Only useful on Windows Phone
Ads, stations not tracks, limited skips, lower quality
Ads, no offline, shuffled music, limited skips, lower quality
Devices
PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone
PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, some TVs, Hi-Fi, cars
PC, Mac, Android, iOS, some TVs
PC, Mac, Windows Phone
PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Roku, Sonos
PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Roku
Score
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