Which Music Streaming Service Should You Invest In?

Technology facilitates change, and the internet is the most profound technology in our lives in the twenty-first century. It didn’t take long for people to figure out how to listen to music on the internet. Now, close to a third of all people worldwide are making use of streaming services.

This change is for the better as far as music discovery goes. People in the past had to listen to songs they heard on the radio or attend local concerts/dive through record store bins to find less mainstream content. Now, they can head to their favorite music streaming service and discover new artists with ease.

But if you’re new to the world of music streaming apps, you’re probably wondering where to start. The free version of these new apps all have limited options, so you’re going to need to shell out a little money for a monthly subscription to gain the full benefits.

This article will walk you through everything you need to know about the most popular music streaming applications so you can figure out which one to invest in.

Spotify

Spotify is the most popular music service in the world. Spotify has 345 million monthly users. That’s more people than the entire population of the United States.

Spotify is a great music service to invest in because it’s where culture is at right now. A lot of the best new musicians release their songs exclusively on Spotify, and many up-and-comers can be found there.

On top of that, if you’re a fan of a dead artist who made a lot of recordings in their lifetime, such as Frank Zappa, Miles David, The Grateful Dead, etc., Spotify is a great option for you. Representatives of those artists upload live recordings, B sides, and unreleased albums all the time, so you can have the experience of finding out your favorite musician putting out new music.

When you mention Spotify, you have to mention playlist culture. While it is very possible to listen to albums as they were originally intended to be heard, it’s extremely easy to become a musical postmodernist and create your very own playlist mashups of your favorite artists.

Not only that, but it just takes a click of a button to send the playlist you made to your family and friends. You can create a whole culture where you’re constantly sharing music with each other. When you share music, you make memories.

Spotify also helps to curate music for you. Just take your favorite artist and click on the little button that says “go-to artist radio”, and you’ll be taken through a whole listen of songs similar to that artist you love.

At the end of the year, Spotify will rap up for you who you listened to the most, and let you know about your habits.

Apple Music

Never to be outdone when it comes to the internet, Apple Music is Apple’s response to Spotify. They feature many of the same features, with some unique benefits.

Apple Music has a unique curation program in which you can open up a tab containing all of your favored songs by an artist, and listen to them all in one go.

If you’re a particular fan of Apple devices — which many people are — Apple Music is probably the best option for you. Apple is extremely horizontally integrated, and owning many of its products can give you many benefits.

If you own an Apple HomePod, Apple TV, or still have your old iPod Touch lying around, Apple Music can work wonders. You can sync your Itunes library up with your Apple Music Library, so you can have a much quicker time adding music.

Yes, that’s right, we mentioned iTunes. For younger readers, back in the days of a (slightly) earlier internet, iTunes operated as an in-between state for music. People still had to shell out money for individual artists rather than monthly subscriptions, but they could buy music directly through iTunes to download onto their iPods and phones.

Many people are left a little sad that all of the music they bought on iTunes doesn’t help them much in this contemporary age. However, with Apple Music, you can make it all worthwhile. Just make sure you delete any duplicated files.

For more information, check out these detailed steps on how to remove duplicates in iTunes.

Tidal

You most likely haven’t heard of Tidal before. Tidal is an alternative music streaming service that audiophiles have raved about due to the high quality of the music files it’s capable of playing. If you truly consider sound quality a priority, head over to Tidal.

Tidal has over 70 million songs that you can choose from, all of which you can play from their patented master sound quality. It should be noted that Tidal used to focus mainly on hip-hop. It’s fixed the problem, but it might lean away from more old-school genres.

Tidal is cheaper than many options, however, providing you a competitive music service for only ten dollars a month.

Make Use of the Best Must Streaming Service Out There

Technology always changes the way our culture lives. Now, the concept of “mainstream” and “underground” music is dead. Could albums as strange as Tyler the Creator’s Igor become as popular as they did without services like Apple Music?

We recommend you invest in a great music streaming service if you care about having music in your life. Keep on listening to new things.

For more articles like this one, check out our “technology’ section.