A subjective rundown of five of the most popular services, based on the experiences of one full-time listener:
Spotify
Grade: B+
$9.99 per month; $14.99 family plan; free ad-supported version
Pros: Premium service offers noticeably better fidelity than Apple Music. The industry leader, Spotify has an excellent interface that encourages interaction, playlist creation and sharing. Because of its scope and user base, the service offers infinite avenues of discovery.
Cons: Last year a number of prominent artists (including Taylor Swift) and advocates criticized Spotify’s free tier as unfair to creators. Like Apple Music, Spotify’s editorial tastes and recommendations lean toward corporate-funded labels.
Apple Music
Grade: B-
$9.99 per month; $14.99 family plan
Pros: Apple Music’s interface is characteristically clear and intuitive. Easy to navigate, it affords numerous avenues to discovery: a powerful search engine, new release and charts pages, a portal to online radio (including in-house station Beats One and NPR), a feed featuring updated info on acts and curators of note and access to personal playlists and catalogs.
Cons: From a fidelity perspective, the platform sounds inferior to Spotify and Tidal. Also, because it’s a mostly closed system, playlist sharing among friends is difficult. The company earned the ire of many power users last year during the transition from iTunes to Apple Music. Many lost files and data.
Slacker
Grade: B-
$3.99 basic per month, $9.99 premium, free ad-supported version
Pros: For some reason — perhaps its name? — Slacker’s demographic skews young. Chances are your kid would prefer to use Slacker — or YouTube — in a pinch. Boasting hundreds of curated stations and infinitely programmable, it works best as a Pandora-style radio service. Premium service allows Spotify-style on-demand listening.
Cons: Thin on data, charts and editorial information, Slacker’s minimally designed interface opts for sleekness over substance.
Pandora
Grade: C+
$4.99 per month; free ad-supported version
Pros: Smart algorithms take the work out of picking music. Hundreds of stations allow mix-and-match opportunity. The simple platform encourages voting on songs and sounds, which it uses to further define your preferences.
Cons: The basic service is designed for the basic user. There’s virtually no visible information on new releases, charts or data, but buried within its metadata is information that skillfully matches tastes and picks good stuff.
Tidal
Grade: C
$9.99 per month, or $19.99 for hi-fi lossless quality
Pros: Exclusive content, concerts, videos and playlists by investors Jay Z, Rihanna, Daft Punk, Beyoncé, Arcade Fire and others. Marketed as the most “artist-friendly” service, Tidal’s best trait is its fidelity, which it claims is CD quality; but Spotify sounds almost as good for $10 less.
Cons: Tidal’s app is tough to navigate, none of your friends use the service, and it’s the same price as Spotify Premium. Its playlists offer little in the way of surprise.
— Randall Roberts
By Randall Roberts
Los Angeles Times
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