A guide to help you choose

There’s never been more music to listen to, and fans have never had more choice in how they want to listen. While YouTube Music and Spotify take up most of the streaming bandwidth, deep-pocketed competitors like Amazon Prime and Apple Music are pushing for your eardrums, and disruptors from Tidal to Qobuz are hoping to differentiate themselves by tweaking or improving the listening experience.

So what’s best? Well, that depends a lot on your needs. Are you concerned about artists’ payout rates or are you more concerned about your own wallet? Are you craving a premium audio experience? Are you interested in podcasts? Is there ever a reason to get out of Pandora?

Consequence is here to help. Our streaming guide ranks eight of the best and most popular streaming platforms based on a variety of criteria, from the easily quantifiable (how much does it cost?) to the more poetic (how good does the drum break sound on Phil Collins’ song). “In the air tonight?”). Read on to find the platform that best suits your needs.

Amazon Music

Price
Amazon offers three different tiers of its music platform: Free, Unlimited and Prime. The free version only requires an Amazon account and offers an extensive library of songs and podcasts – but not all of them. Similar to Pandora, there is a skip limit. This means that when you listen to a radio or a playlist, you can only skip a limited number of tracks in a row. Amazon Music: Free also has advertising.

Meanwhile, anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription is automatically eligible for Amazon Music’s Prime tier, which has no skip restrictions and allows listeners to shuffle albums, playlists, and artist catalogs (with the exception of dedicated All-Access playlists , the). offer on-demand streaming for the Prime tier).

However, to get the ultimate Amazon Music experience, the Unlimited tier is the best of the best. Priced at $9.99/month for Amazon Prime subscribers (and $10.99/month for non-subscribers), it gives users access to Amazon’s full music and podcast library online or offline, with unlimited skips and an ad-free listening experience. Additionally, the Unlimited tier was recently integrated into Audible, giving users access to over 1 million audiobooks.

Currently, Amazon also offers a three-month free trial of Amazon Music Unlimited.

Podcasts?
Yes! Amazon Music has an extensive podcast library. Add in the Audible integration, and the platform has a huge offering of spoken content.

Audio quality
The audio quality is solid and has improved in recent years. While it’s not quite on the same level as platforms like Qobuz or Tidal, it still offers an excellent listening experience, including access to CD-quality recordings. Additionally, Amazon Music offers a growing selection of spatial audio content mastered in Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that speakers are important – many Amazon Music streamers use Alexa or Fire TV to stream, which are convenient options, but if you really want deep listening, you might want to opt for headphones.

How good does the drum beat on “In the Air Tonight” sound at this service?
With high-quality speakers, it absolutely serves its purpose.

Artist payouts
Amazon Music offers artists around $0.004 per stream. An artist would need 250,000 streams to earn $1,000 in royalties.

Greatest strength
Amazon Prime is already a very popular platform for shopping and streaming TV shows and movies, so it’s definitely a strength that they basically offer unlimited music streaming with the package. It also integrates easily with Amazon products.

Additionally, for those who prefer spoken content, podcasts and audiobooks are also very well represented on Amazon Music – given the Audible integration, they may be the best choice for any streamer.

Biggest mistake
The free tier isn’t much considering the skip limit, reduced library, and advertising. The unlimited tier, on the other hand, has an extensive library, but navigation can be a bit unintuitive due to the design of the interface.

Subscribe if you…
You already have Amazon Prime or want higher audio quality at a cheaper price. Amazon’s library is huge and the connection to actually purchasing physical records or artist merchandise through Amazon is a nice plus.

Additionally, there seems to be a greater focus on using Amazon Music as a radio à la Pandora, rather than building its own song library. So if you are the kind of music streamer, this is a good choice.