Most cost-effective music streaming providers 2024: Spotify options

Spotify is without doubt one of the costliest music streaming providers on this planet, and it’s about to get even pricier. On 4 August, Spotify introduced it could be rising costs in quite a few areas, although it didn’t elaborate on which international locations can be affected.

In a blog post, Spotify mentioned particular person premium subscriptions can be going up from €10.99 per 30 days to €11.99 per 30 days in September, together with Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific. If the value hike involves the UK, Spotify subscribers could possibly be requested to pay £12.99 per 30 days.

The streamer already elevated the value of a person subscription by £1 final 12 months to £11.99, and raised the value of its different plans, just like the household and duo subscription, by £2 per 30 days, leaving many disgruntled customers on the lookout for cheaper options to the platform.

According to Reuters, regardless of rising its consumer base and subscriber numbers, Spotify is having to pay extra tax on worker salaries, which is the rationale for the value hike. If you’ve began taking a look at switching away from the music platform and wish to cancel your Spotify Premium membership, we’ve rounded up one of the best, cheaper Spotify options to subscribe to proper now.

Cheaper Spotify options 2025

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Amazon Music Unlimited is the retail large’s premium music streaming service tier. With a subscription, you possibly can hearken to greater than 100 million songs ad-free, offline and with limitless skips. You additionally get entry to Amazon Music’s HD CD-quality tracks, lossless hi-res tracks and spatial audio.

At the beginning of the 12 months, Amazon hiked the value of its Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service, rising the person membership payment to £11.99, the same price as Spotify. But – and this is a big but – its individual subscription is £1 cheaper than Spotify’s if you’re subscribed to Amazon Prime (£10.99, Amazon.co.uk), and also you get entry to lossless audio.

If you’re a Prime member and don’t subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get free entry to all of Amazon Music’s catalogue already, however you possibly can solely pay attention in shuffle mode and often have to choose songs from Amazon’s all-access music playlists. If you personal a Fire TV stick or an Amazon Echo sensible speaker, there may be additionally a single-device subscription accessible for £5.99 a month.

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Strip out all of the cat movies, low-res vlogs and memes however hold all of the songs, albums, remixes, dwell performances and music movies, then throw in some beneficial playlists. That’s YouTube Music Premium in a nutshell.

If you subscribe to the service, you’ll have the ability to play music within the background every time your telephone’s display screen is locked otherwise you’re utilizing a distinct app. It additionally removes the advertisements and allows offline play. For an additional £2 per 30 days (£1 greater than Spotify Premium) you may get full YouTube Premium, which removes advertisements from all YouTube movies, watch utilizing picture-in-picture mode, and hearken to YouTube movies along with your display screen switched off.

A subscription to YouTube Music Premium is cheaper than all of Spotify’s plans, with the person plan costing £1 much less, and the household plan costing £3 much less.

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Tidal units itself aside as a streaming service with high-fidelity sound. The brainchild of the rapper Jay-Z, it bills itself as offering lossless music that sounds the way the artists intended it, and it pays artists one of the best fees per play.

The streaming service options greater than 110 million tracks, unique releases, interviews and music movies. Tidal simplified its pricing construction in April 2024, combining its two former tiers (HiFi and HiFi Plus) right into a single subscription.

All customers pay £10.99 per 30 days and get entry to the platform’s full suite of premium options, together with high-fidelity FLAC audio, Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) tracks, and immersive codecs like Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio, making it among the finest worth music streaming providers round.

Last 12 months, Tidal launched the DJ Extension, which lets customers combine songs and separate stems, giving them entry to enhanced BPM metadata inside apps like rekordbox, Serato and DJ Pro. It prices an extra £9 on prime of a daily Tidal subscription.

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Apple Music is, unsurprisingly, Apple’s ad-free music streaming service. It has greater than 100 million tracks, over 30,000 curated playlists, dwell radio and unique exhibits, live shows and exclusives. Its whole catalogue might be listened to in lossless hi-res audio, and spatial audio might be enabled on its tracks. You can obtain as much as 100,000 songs to play offline, and also you additionally get entry to Apple Music Classical – the brand new classical-only service – in addition to Apple Music Sing, which is Apple’s karaoke mode.

In October 2022, Apple elevated the value of its Apple Music subscription. An particular person membership at present prices £1 lower than a Spotify particular person membership, whereas the household tier is £3 cheaper. It’s good to notice that you simply do get lossless hi-res audio and spatial audio with Apple Music, and college students get a subscription to Apple TV+ without cost.

There is, after all, the Apple One subscription, which provides you as much as six Apple subscriptions for one decrease month-to-month value, together with as much as 2TB of iCloud+ storage and entry to Apple Music.

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In an alternate actuality, Deezer might have been the Spotify of at this time, having launched a 12 months earlier than the Swedish firm and that includes the identical wealthy library of music and options. Deezer is free in case you’re ready to place up with the advertisements, however the good things is all in its premium tier.

It has greater than 90 million tracks, and Deezer Premium removes the advertisements, provides offline listening and high-fidelity FLAC audio, which Spotify lacks. As nicely as music, there are podcasts and radio stations, personalised suggestions and a Shazam-style SongCatcher characteristic to assist determine tracks round you. Deezer additionally works on smartwatches, sensible audio system and automotive audio techniques.

While Deezer is as costly as Spotify, in case you pay for a full-year subscription, you’ll get a 25 per cent low cost, making it considerably cheaper than Spotify.

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Underground music followers will probably be very accustomed to the music distribution platform SoundCloud. Launched in 2007, SoundCloud is a music streaming service for music producers, unbiased up-and-coming artists, podcast producers and their listeners, hoping to find new music. It additionally has an enormous library of 180 million tracks, largely uploaded straight by artists.

There are two premium SoundCloud tiers. SoundCloud Go prices £5.99 per 30 days – it removes all of the advertisements and also you get limitless offline downloads. However, Go+ prices £10.99 per 30 days and will get you entry to SoundCloud’s whole library, in addition to higher-quality audio.

SoundCloud Go+ remains to be considerably cheaper than Spotify. While it doesn’t have a household plan, there’s a scholar plan for £5.49 per 30 days. The Go+ plan additionally allows you to pay attention on as much as three gadgets without delay.

For extra content material, take a look at our information to the greatest TV streaming providers