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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

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

iPhone WWDC Wishes: What We Want to See Apple Include in iOS 19

Whether Apple calls it iOS 19 or iOS 26, these are some of the things we hope the tech giant brings to the iPhone next.

Apple is set to hold its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, when the tech giant will show the world what it’s been cooking up during the past year for iOS 19 — or iOS 26 — the software that runs the iPhone. Until then, CNET’s experts have their own ideas about what Apple should bring to the iPhone.

While iOS 18 brought some useful new features to all iPhones, like RCS messaging, and Apple Intelligence to newer iPhones, we’re still taking bets on what Apple will include in iOS 19. Reports suggest Apple is planning a significant redesign of the iPhone OS, changing everything from icons, apps, menus and more. But CNET’s writers and editors have a few ideas we’d like to see in the upcoming OS. Some things we’ve asked for in the past, like customizable lock screen controls, have come to fruition, so maybe we’ll hit the mark again this year.

Here are some of the features and changes we hope Apple includes in the upcoming iOS software. 

Bring split screen to the iPhone

Add a native split screen. It’s been available on Android phones and the iPad for years. But on iOS I still have to run my calculator and budget tracking note in two separate windows. 

— Mike Sorrentino

Start a workout right from my iPhone

I’d like the ability to start an outdoor workout from the Fitness app on my iPhone (like I can do in Strava or Polar). That way if I forget to wear my Apple Watch or I don’t have one, I can still record my workout. The Apple Watch uses heart rate data to calculate move minutes but I don’t see why the iPhone can’t give me credit for an actual workout using other indicators like distance/pace on a run. 

— Vanessa Hand Orellana

No more green bubbles, please

I’m overjoyed Apple added RCS messaging with iOS 18, but I’m going to dream big here: I’d love it if texts with Android users weren’t still green! While it’s great to be able to finally send high-resolution media and see typing indicators with folks who aren’t also using iMessage, it’s still far too easy for iPhone users to scoff at anyone turning their text thread green. End the pettiness once and for all!

— Abrar Al-Heeti

An easier way to manage unused apps

I have more apps on my iPhone than I’ll ever use, after years of installing things to try out and then forgetting about them. Shunting everything into the App Library helps get it out of mind, but that’s the app version of keeping a box of cables you think you might need some day. So I’d like a way to clean up apps, similar to how you can identify large apps in Settings > General > Storage. Let me see when I installed them, the last time I used them and be able to delete the ones I no longer want. I know this sounds fiddly but the thought of going through them all manually is exhausting, so that will never happen.

— Jeff Carlson

Searchable clipboard manager for all your copy and paste needs

I want a clipboard manager in iOS 19. The iPhone has a single copy and paste option, meaning if you copy something, and then copy something else, that first thing you copied is lost. For iOS 19, I’d love to see a searchable clipboard manager, one that has a history of all the things I’ve copied in the last hour, day, week or even month. And if I paste something, I’d like to see multiple options that I can choose from appear right at my fingertip.

— Nelson Aguilar

More customization options for all screens

I want more lock screen, home screen and Control Center customization options, please. I’d like to place my lock screen controls elsewhere on the screen so I don’t accidentally open any control — including, yes, my flashlight. Same thing with the home screen. I appreciate being able to place apps anywhere as long as they are within Apple’s oppressive grid that locks our apps into little boxes. If you have large icons — like I do — there’s an entire empty row at the bottom where it looks like apps or folders can go there but they can’t. Let us breathe the air of freedom, Apple! Please, for the love of everything good, let me move the scroll bar on the right side of the Control Center. I keep hitting it when I open the Control Center and it takes me to a page I don’t intend to be on, which makes it frustrating to use. 

— Zach McAuliffe

Long press, double click and more action button triggers

Now that the Action button is on more iPhones, please add support for triggering different shortcuts with multiple presses. In its current setup, I can set the Action button to trigger one action at a time. By default it can toggle between turning on the ringer and putting your iPhone into silent mode. But there are a number of other options for it like being able to open the Camera app and take a photo or make an elaborate automation in the Shortcuts app like to use it to order coffee from Dunkin’.

But the Action button could do so much more if Apple would add support for multiple input clicks. Like it could be a toggle for ringer/silent mode with a single long press, but do something else (like turn on/off the flashlight) with a double-long press. I think this would add so much functionality to the button and as a result open it up to even more people taking more advantage of it.

— Patrick Holland

Better Log video editing tools

I want iOS 19 to add better editing tools for Log video. The ability to shoot Log footage directly on the iPhone is amazing for enthusiastic filmmakers like me but it can only be edited by transferring it off of your phone to an iPad or MacBook. I’d love to see Apple bring deeper editing tools to be able to add cinematic color grades to your Log footage directly on your iPhone. 

— Andrew Lanxon

Intelligently organize photos by event in the Photos app

Okay, we’re all glad that in iOS 18 Apple improved the Photos search by adding AI image recognition to actually bring up all the images of your cats. It slightly makes up for the questionable revamped layout of photos and albums that confuses me to this day. I’d love it if in iOS 19, the Photos app had a new way to view photos: in a timeline intelligently organized by event. Say you go to the park for a birthday and have a bunch of photos clearly from the same occasion — the app prompts you to confirm they’re all connected, asks for a title and, boom, event logged. Then I could look at a vertical timeline of logged events from the past few months or years, all of which can be searched if I can’t quite remember, say, when I last went to the park. Yes, I can do this manually by making albums, but it’s the kind of fastidious labor I just can’t bring myself to keep up with. That’s what I want AI to do for me. 

— David Lumb

Simple volume controls across the iPhone

Sometimes it’s the small changes that can help make for a smoother experience. I want to see Apple clean up volume controls. If I set the volume to a certain level, I want it to stay at that level for all applications. Sometimes the settings can vary depending on what you’re doing. Too often I come across the problem of lowering my volume to prepare to listen to something — but surprise! — the volume is loud again because I put in headphones and it keeps the louder setting I used the last time I listened to music in my headphones. It just leads to unnecessary frustrations, and makes users feel like they don’t really have control of their devices.

— Bridget Carey

For more on Apple, here’s what to expect from WWDC 2025 and our thoughts on the iPhone 16 Pro and iOS 18 months after their launch. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet.

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Technologies

Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’: The Huge Tax and Medicaid Implications You Need to Know

The GOP’s contentious budget bill narrowly passed in the House, faces dissent in the Senate and has drawn the ire of Elon Musk in a big way.

President Donald Trump has made the extension of the 2017 tax cuts one of his major second-term economic goals — you know, aside from all those tariffs — but as the so-called «One Big Beautiful Bill» has moved forward, it’s faced major pushback. Some of this opposition might lead to significant changes to the bill and how it might ultimately impact you, especially when it comes to taxes and services like Medicaid.

After much back-and-forth, negotiation and failed votes, the bill passed in the House of Representatives by the thinnest margin possible, 215-214-1. The bill is now moving through the Senate, where it is expected to face more alterations before getting across the finish line. While the GOP has been attempting to use the reconciliation process to avoid the bill being filibustered by Democrats, it is still expected to face intra-party dissent similar to what it went through in the House over its cuts either being too severe or not severe enough. 

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and one-time Trump adviser who led the «DOGE» government consolidation efforts, spoke out against the bill in an unsparing fashion in a Tuesday post to X, decrying it as too heavy on spending. This disagreement with Trump and his agenda led to a prolonged public spat between the president and his one-time senior advisor.

«This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,» Musk wrote. «Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.»

Despite the broad nature of the bill, one of its central goals remains the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Passed for the first time early in his first term, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as it was officially known, was one of Trump’s signature legislative accomplishments and has generally become known as the «Trump tax cuts.» Given the nature of how that bill was passed initially, a lot of its provisions are set to expire next year if a new extension isn’t passed, so doing just that has unsurprisingly emerged as a major priority for Trump and the GOP-led houses of Congress.

The president and his allies have also tried to claim that his aggressive tariff agenda could help offset the extension of the tax cuts, although, as we’ve touched on before at CNET, that is just one of the often-contradictory stated goals for the tariffs.

Details about the budget bill Republicans have emerged in the past few weeks as it moved through the House Ways and Means Committee approval process. The Congressional Budget Office, an agency that provides estimates about the economic impacts of budgetary bills that is not affiliated with any party, estimated that the cuts called for in this bill would cost millions of people their health insurance and food benefits. The proposal initially failed to pass a vote in the House, leading to its cuts for Medicaid becoming even heavier.

All this comes in addition to the longstanding criticism from Democrats and other critics that Trump’s tax cuts disproportionately help the wealthiest Americans more than the working class. While there is truth to that argument, and to the Republican counter that the tax cuts would provide some help to taxpayers at all incomes, the new proposed cuts unveiled this week have given more weight to the notion that they will be more harmful for the least wealthy Americans.

For all the details about what extending the tax cuts will actually mean and what the current terms mean for things like Medicaid, keep reading. For more, find out if Trump could actually abolish the Department of Education.

How will the budget bill impact Medicaid?

According to the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office mentioned at the start of this piece, at least 7.6 million Americans would lose Medicaid health insurance under the provisions in the budget proposal. That’s nearly 11% of the 70 million Americans who are currently insured by Medicaid. The proposal would, among other things, require people without dependent children or a disability to meet an 80-hour-a-month work requirement to qualify for Medicaid and increase the frequency with which people will need to confirm their continued eligibility.

These new requirements were originally set to take effect in 2029 under the bill’s failed House version, but they were moved forward to 2026 in the bill’s passed version.

What would extending the Trump tax cuts mean?

While the phrase «Trump tax cuts» has become a common media shorthand for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the current conversation around it might suggest that new cuts could be on the way. Although Trump has floated ideas for additional cuts, it’s important to note that extending the 2017 provisions would, for the most part, keep tax rates and programs at the levels they’ve been at since then.

So while it may be a better option than having the provisions expire — which would increase certain tax rates and decrease certain credits — extending the tax cuts most likely won’t change how you’ve been taxed the past eight years. However, some estimates have predicted that extending the cuts would boost income in 2026, with the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation in particular predicting a 2.9% rise on average, based on a combination of other economic predictions combined with tax rates staying where they are.

What would change if the Trump tax cuts expire?

Republicans contend that the tax cuts helped a wide swath of Americans, and the Tax Foundation predicted that 60% of tax filers would see higher rates in 2026 without an extension.

A big part of that has to do with tax bracket changes. The 2017 provisions lowered the income tax rates across the seven brackets, aside from the first (10%) and the sixth (35%). If the current law expires, those rates would go up by between 1% and 3%.

Income limits for each bracket would also revert to pre-2017 levels. Lending credence to the Democrats’ counterarguments, these shifts under the Trump tax cuts appeared to be more beneficial to individuals and couples at higher income levels than to those making closer to the average US income.

If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty numbers, you can check out the Tax Foundation’s full breakdown. Another point in Democrats’ favor? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also cut corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, and unlike many of its other provisions, this one was permanent and won’t expire in 2026.

What would happen to the standard deduction?

This is another area in which a lot of people would be hit hard. The standard deduction lets taxpayers lower their taxable income, as long as they forgo itemizing any deductions.

For the 2025 tax year, the standard deduction is $15,000 for individual filers and $30,000 for joint filers. If the tax cuts expire, these numbers will drop by nearly half, down to $8,350 for individuals and $16,700 for joint filers.

Under the current reconciliation bill, the deduction would increase to $16,000 for individuals and $32,000 for joint filers, but only through 2028.

What would happen to the child tax credit?

The child tax credit is one of the most popular credits. Its current levels — $2,000 per qualifying child, which phases out starting at a gross income of $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for joint filers — were actually set by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

If an extension or new bill isn’t passed, next year the child tax credit would revert to its old levels: $1,000 per child, which starts phasing out at $75,000 for single filers and $110,000 for joint filers.

If the current budget bill is implemented, the credit will be upped to $2,500 per child through 2028, before dropping to $2,000 as its new permanent rate.

Do the Trump tax cuts really favor the wealthy?

Higher-income individuals and couples fared notably better with the changes the Trump tax cuts made to tax brackets. An estimate from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, found that the poorest 20% of Americans would see only about 1% of the bill’s net tax cuts. Numerous similar estimates agree that these small benefits for the poorest taxpayers would be outweighed by rising costs caused by tariffs.

Conversely, ITEP’s estimate found that the richest 20% of US taxpayers would benefit from around 67% of the bill’s net tax cuts, with the richest 5% benefitting from half of them.

How much would extending the tax cuts cost?

Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Tax Foundation have estimated that the reconciliation bill’s tax cut extension would raise the US deficit by $4.5 trillion over the course of 10 years. The Tax Foundation also estimated that it could raise the country’s GDP to offset that number, but only by about $710 billion, or about 16% of the deficit increase.

For more, see how Trump’s tariffs might be affecting the prices of several key products in our daily tracker.

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, June 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 7.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.


Today’s NYT Mini Crossword could be tricky. 1-Down and 5-Down stumped me for a while, but the other letters filled it in for me. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Yoga class need
Answer: MAT

4A clue: Umlaut, rotated 90°
Answer: COLON

6A clue: «That is shocking!»
Answer: OHMYGOD

8A clue: «___ You the One?» (reality TV show)
Answer: ARE

9A clue: Egg cells
Answer: OVA

10A clue: One of two «royal» sleeping options
Answer: KINGBED

12A clue: Bar seating
Answer: STOOL

13A clue: Favorite team of the «Chicago Pope,» for short
Answer: SOX

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Slices of life
Answer: MOMENTS

2D clue: Olympic gymnast Raisman
Answer: ALY

3D clue: Request at the end of a restaurant meal
Answer: TOGOBOX

4D clue: Hayes of MSNBC
Answer: CHRIS

5D clue: Medium for Melville or McCarthy
Answer: NOVEL

6D clue: Wood used for wine barrels
Answer: OAK

7D clue: June honoree
Answer: DAD

11D clue: Sticky stuff
Answer: GOO

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

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