Technologies
Spotify, Apple Music and more: What’s the best music app for you?
We compare the big streaming music services.

Sure, all the audiophiles and cool kids are talking about a vinyl resurgence and squabbling over the best turntables. But admit it, streaming music still is the most convenient way to listen to your favorite songs. While streaming used to mean sacrificing sound quality, that’s no longer the case. In fact, streaming music can sound indistinguishable from, or even superior to, an old-fashioned CD.
The question is, which streaming music service is best for you? We checked out Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer and Pandora Premium to see how each platform stacks up for your subscription buck. While most offer music catalogs of over 50 million songs, each has its own unique pros and cons. We’ve also left out services that only play music in a radio format and don’t offer a la carte listening to allow you to select your own songs.
Services typically charge $10 a month and don’t have a contract, but swapping between them isn’t as straightforward as TV streaming. If you don’t want to rebuild your playlists and library from scratch when you switch, you have two main options — a music locker service such as YouTube Music, or the library import tool Soundiiz. The latter option can read the library from each of your music services and transfer them, and while there’s a $4.50 monthly charge, you can always cancel once you’ve converted your library.
So which music streaming services offer the best combination of price, sound quality and library size? Read on to find an in-depth look at each of the services and a feature comparison, along with a full price breakdown in the chart at the bottom of the page. We’ll update this list periodically. And if you want the TL;DR, these are the top three.
The best of the rest
Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon Music Unlimited is the «grownup» (a.k.a. paid) version of Amazon Prime Music, which any Prime subscriber gets for «free.» It offers a greatly expanded catalog for an extra outlay per month: $8 for Prime members and $10 if you don’t have Prime. Rather than focusing on the cutting edge of music as some others here do, the Amazon music service features recommended playlists and radio stations that are grouped around artists you’ve already listened to.
The Good
- Cheaper than the top three if you’re an Amazon Prime member
- Lyrics automatically pop up on the «now playing» screen
- Offers free music stations for Amazon Echo, Echo Dot ($17 at Amazon) and Amazon Tap (includes ads)
- Step-up Amazon Prime Music HD service ($12.99 for Prime members) includes high-res and surround music from Sony 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos
The Bad
- Artist profiles don’t have biographies
- Officially advertised as «tens of millions» of tracks strong, it’s unclear if the catalog is quite as large as its competitors
- The service no longer includes a music locker
Best for: Amazon Prime members who want to save a few bucks on a decent music catalog
YouTube Music
YouTube Music is the successor to Google Play Music, and if you sign up for the ad-free YouTube Premium you get YouTube Music thrown in for free. The good news is that YouTube Music is a mostly impressive service, and Google has retained the predecessor’s music locker system. If you have a legacy Google Play Music account you may be able to still transfer your library over to YouTube Music. And it’s not just legacy content: YouTube Music allows users to upload new tracks to its online music locker, too.
In even better news, YouTube Music offers a cleaner interface than Google Play Music. Instead of playlists, YouTube Music offers well-curated radio stations, which are the standout features. Unlike playlists, which are finite and contain specific tracks, radio stations play endlessly and are updated often.
The Good
- Monthly fee includes subscription to YouTube Music: commercial-free streaming on YouTube and YouTube Music
- Over 40 million tracks
- Retains Google Play Music’s music locker system: You can transfer existing songs from the old service, plus upload new ones in YouTube Music
The Bad
- The continued existence of Google Play Music is confusing for existing users
Best for: Heavy YouTube users and Android device users.
Pandora Premium
One of the most popular streaming radio services in the US, Pandora also offers the a la carte Premium ($10 a month)and no-ads Plus ($5 a month). The result is more flexibility than most competitors, and Premium has gained plenty more subscribers in recent years, even if the service is behind in terms of overall catalog size.
The Good
- One of the largest user bases, thanks to its free version
- Pandora’s Music Genome Project analyzes each track according to 450 different attributes in order to give better suggestions
The Bad
- Its audio quality is among the lowest available, even on the Premium subscription (192Kbps)
- It doesn’t really offer enough of an incentive for an upgrade from the free tier compared to the others here
- Not available outside the US
Best for: Pandora Premium is of most interest to people who already use Pandora and want to be able to pick exactly what they listen to. We’d recommend it to almost no one else.
Qobuz
Qobuz launched in the US in February 2019 with a clean interface, hi-res audio streams (which unlike Tidal’s don’t need an MQA decoder) and the ability to buy lossless music. It offers two plans — the hi-res Studio Premier for $15 a month and the $249 annual Sublime Plus, which offers discounts on the store. At 50 million tracks, Qobuz’s streaming catalog isn’t quite at the level of Tidal or Spotify, but it should be sufficient for everything but the more obscure artists.
The Good
- The app is really clean and fun to use
- Ability to listen to 24-bit music without needing a specialized decoder
- One of the most affordable hi-res services
- First 24-bit streaming service on Sonos
The Bad
- Some gaps in the catalog
Best for: Audiophiles who want hi-res music for a decent price plus the ability to buy and download albums
Deezer
French stalwart Deezer has been operating in the States since 2016, and it has a lot to offer, including a free tier (mobile only) and 56 million tracks. It has more than subscribers than some others on this list thanks, in part, to its previous affiliation with Cricket Wireless. The main Premium plan is $10 a month but users are also able to upgrade to a lossless version (CD quality) for $15 a month. While it reportedly boasts more users than Tidal, the service doesn’t offer enough to differentiate it from its similarly priced competitors.
What else do you need to know?
Streaming radio vs. on-demand
This guide covers on-demand music streaming services, and for that reason, we’ve purposely left out services that only play music in a radio format. Until recently this list excluded Pandora, but now that the company also offers a Premium tier we’ve included it here. Slacker Radio, TuneIn and iHeartRadio are other radio-style services that play music stations based around a theme or artist, without you explicitly picking tracks.
Music lockers: Your MP3s in the cloud
Amazon was one of the first services to offer uploading your MP3 collection into the cloud, but this was officially discontinued in 2018. Meanwhile, the Apple and Google services listed either allow you to combine your personal music collection with the streaming catalog, though tagging and organization can be a time-consuming challenge (your myriad live Phish tracks won’t organize themselves). Still, if you’ve invested money in digital music over the years, those two services offer a patch to continue enjoying that music online.
Music catalog sizes compared
The number of songs offered by a music service used to be one of the main differentiators, but most now have between 50 million and 70 million songs or more. However, depending on your favored genre, some of them have a more robust catalog that include many under-the-radar, indie or hip-hop artists. If you’re musically inclined, constantly on the hunt for your favorite new band, a streaming service like Spotify or Tidal may be more up your alley. Users who are less ambitious about expanding their musical taste will be satisfied with the smaller catalogs Amazon Music Unlimited or Pandora offer. Apple Music is somewhere in the middle, offering a healthy mix of mainstream tunes and underground unknowns.
Technologies
A New Threads Feature Saves You From Seeing and Posting Spoilers: Here’s How It Works
Didn’t want to see that plot twist? Marvel and Netflix were the first to try out Threads’ new spoiler-blocking feature.

Social media can accidentally spoil a streaming movie or show for those who haven’t yet watched it. Threads, the popular social media platform from Meta, now has a new feature that could save you from spoiling your next watch.
The new feature allows users to mark media and text posts as spoilers. If it’s a photo, the spoiler will then appear blurred in feeds, and text will be grayed out. Clicking on both types makes the spoiler visible. Netflix and Marvel are the first major studios to use the feature on their posts. Meta says the feature is rolling out globally, but we saw it available on Friday.
Speaking of spoilers, you may want to stop reading now if you’re not logged in to Threads, the embedded plot-spoiling posts in this story may not be blurred.
Netflix posted a photo from one of the last scenes of Squid Game’s third and final season, with the caption «do not tap until you’ve finished Squid Game 3.»
Marvel teased the villain in the new Ironheart series in a post. You won’t meet the villain until the last episode. You can stream Ironheart on Disney Plus.
We Were Liars on Prime also added a post that uses the new Threads spoiler text feature.
We’ve seen several other updates from Threads this year, including the ability to copy images, thus replacing the need to screenshot. Threads also only recently started testing direct messaging, despite the app being out for around two years.
How to use the spoiler feature on Threads
Anyone can use the spoiler feature on their posts. All you have to do is highlight what you want to hide, tap and select «mark spoiler.» That will blur the text or image you selected for others.
This feature doesn’t mean you won’t see posts about your favorite pop culture and entertainment topics. It lets you choose when you’re ready to know more. All it takes is a tap.
However, it’s worth pointing out that it’s up to those who make the post to decide if they mark something as a spoiler. So spoilers could abound until most people adopt the feature. Even still, it’s good to see a feature that allows you to stay in the loop without spoiling major plot points along the way.
Technologies
Someone Help Me — I Also Need These Sonic the Hedgehog Magic: The Gathering Cards
Sega’s superspeedster is getting some genuinely awesome cards in a limited drop next month.

Magic: The Gathering hit a goldmine earlier this month when it released its Final Fantasy set based on one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. Final Fantasy was reportedly the best-selling Magic set before it even released, thanks to extensive preorders. Now Wizards of the Coast is hoping to repeat that success with Secret Lair drops themed around video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog, launching Monday, July 14.
Depending on which century you were born in, you’ll either recognize Sonic as the star of 1991’s Sega Genesis video game Sonic the Hedgehog, or as the star of Paramount Pictures’ Sonic the Hedgehog movies. (Or maybe you know him from Smash Bros. or Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, or any of the countless other places he shows up.) Now he’s joining the storied Magic: The Gathering card game in a year where Magic is aggressively investing in crossovers with other properties.
Those crossovers started years ago with The Walking Dead, which became an official Magic series called Universes Beyond when it released a Secret Lair drop for Stranger Things. We’ve gotten Magic cards for everything from Street Fighter to Lord of the Rings, The Evil Dead, Jurassic Park and even SpongeBob. Lord of the Rings was the first full Universes Beyond set, but it set the table for Final Fantasy last month, and we’re getting full sets for both Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender later this year.
The new Sonic Magic: The Gathering cards are different from the game’s Final Fantasy set because these are Secret Lair products — limited-run drops of a handful of cards, rather than a full set of hundreds of Standard-legal cards. Like many Secret Lair crossover products, they seem aimed at the casual multiplayer Commander format that lets you build decks around your favorite characters and play with a group of friends.
Sonic being a legendary creature with white mana, blue mana and red mana in his color identity, means that a Sonic Commander deck allows you to include his allies Tails, Knuckles and Amy Rose in the deck. Shadow costs red and black mana, which means he doesn’t fit in a Sonic Commander deck, but he would fit in a Dr. Eggman deck.
And, gang, these cards are kinda wild. Whenever Sonic attacks, he puts power-increasing counters on other creatures with flash or haste, which not-so-coincidentally includes all of the aforementioned allies that fit in his deck. And Sonic having the haste ability himself means he can attack the same turn you cast him, virtually guaranteeing one activation. Tails can draw cards when flying vehicles enter — a nice nod to his plane, which first showed up in the late stages of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Knuckles has a lot going on, including the ability to create treasure tokens that can help you cast spells — or just outright win the game if you have enough while he’s on the battlefield.
There’s also some mechanical synergy between these cards and the new Final Fantasy cards. Amy Rose automatically attaches equipment when she attacks and then can buff the power of other creatures, making her a great fit for the Limit Break Commander deck led by Cloud (or Tifa), which cares about equipment and power stats!
Similarly, Dr. Eggman gets to draw cards at the beginning of your end step — if you also control Y’Shtola Rhul, you get an extra end step, allowing you to draw two cards instead of one for the low, low cost of ending your turn.
All of that adds up to mechanically fun Magic cards that feature a lifelong favorite character for me. And it’ll add up financially if I can get my hands on either the foil Sonic: Friends & Foes collection ($40) or the non-foil collection ($30), the cards in which are less likely to warp from the foil treatment.
There are two other Sonic Secret Lair drops announced, including one that focuses on reprinted artifacts like vehicles and equipment and another that rounds up existing cards that synergize with the new cards. Both will be available in $40 foil or $30 non-foil versions. All three Secret Lair sets go on sale Monday, July 14, at noon ET/9 a.m. ET.
When they do, and I cannot stress this enough, you gotta go fast to get ’em.
Technologies
Steam Summer Sale: Snag 4 Major Borderlands Games for Under $25 Before Borderlands 4
This is an amazingly cheap way to get caught up before the new game launches in September.

If you want to catch up on the Borderlands series before Borderlands 4 comes out on Sept. 12, you won’t find a better opportunity than this. Every mainline Borderlands game is steeply discounted for Steam’s Summer sale, with many of them in the single digits.
You can currently get Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 3 for a grand total of $22. The first game represents about half that cost, so if you’ve already played that one or want to skip it, you can get the other three for just $12. Various downloadable content is also on sale, if you want to add to the base games.
This is an absolute steal. Borderlands 2 is one of my all-time favorite first-person-shooter games, and despite being more than a decade old, it’s worth about $20 just on its own. For me, it’s the pinnacle (so far) of the series’ hero designs and enemy encounters — for my money, Zer0, Gunzerker and Gaige are three of the most fun vault hunters the series has ever made. And the True Vault Hunter Mode and Ultimate Vault Hunter Modes (the new game plus modes) really add a lot of replay value by ratcheting up the strategy through the increased importance of matching your elemental weapons to the right enemy health type — think type matchups in Pokemon, except with guns.
What I particularly love about the Borderlands series is the customization it offers. The games give you at least four vault hunter classes to choose from, and those classes offer additional options via skill trees that let you adjust the way your vault hunter plays. For instance, Zer0 has options for sniping, stealth or melee. Add in different gun manufacturers whose weapons all have a different feel, plus different categories of guns — pistols, submachine guns, sniper rifles, etc. — and elemental weapon types on top of that, and you end up with a veritable treasure trove of ways to tune your vault hunter’s gameplay.
Also, you can throw grenades that explode money. I almost crashed Borderlands 3 because I was exploding so much money.
The original Borderlands established the formula and some of the regular elements, like soldier and siren classes as well as vending machines for gear and health. It also established some of the recurring characters, like de facto mascot Moxxi. Borderlands 2 refined that formula and introduced an amazing villain who added more narrative depth. The Pre-Sequel shook things up by taking us to space and giving us laser weapons. Borderlands 3 took a step back in terms of narrative and characters, but it added some nice mechanical polish, like being able to mantle up ledges or slide into barrels to send them flying into enemies.
All four of those games will take you about 100 hours total to beat if you stick to the main quests, or closer to 200 hours if you’re the type to get sidetracked occasionally. Pro tip: Talk, finagle or blackmail some friends into playing with you. The games are significantly more fun with other players.
For the complete Borderlands experience, you can also tack on the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired spinoff game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands for $12 and Tales from the Borderlands, an acclaimed narrative choices game, for $15.
With Borderlands 4 coming out in just a few months, you’re not going to get a better chance to start or add to your collection. Catch a riiide, vault hunters.
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