4 Best Music Streaming Services (2022): Spotify, Apple Music, and More Compared

Spotify has the very best music discovery algorithms and the slickest, snappiest person interface. It led me down rabbit holes to seek out new artists and previous favorites, primarily based on what I’ve already preferred and listened to on the app.

The free tier, with ads, defaults to a low-quality 96-Kbps streaming bit price, however you possibly can bump it as much as 160 Kbps. For $10 a month, the Premium tier ditches adverts fully and streams as much as 320 Kbps, which is the usual streaming high quality as of late. If you’re searching for lossless, a Spotify HiFi tier is on its approach, in response to the corporate, however there’s nonetheless no launch date, even a yr and a half after it was introduced.

There at the moment are greater than 82 million tracks on Spotify. That is minus the catalogs of Neil Young, (a few of) Joni Mitchell, and others who requested that Spotify remove their songs in protest of Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan’s continual spreading of Covid misinformation.

Spotify permits you to add an infinite variety of songs to your private library, as properly, and you possibly can put as much as 10,000 in every playlist. If you activate social sharing, you possibly can see what your folks have been listening to and create periods the place a bunch concurrently streams a playlist. There’s an choice on every Artist web page to take heed to solely the songs of theirs you’ve preferred, which is a really welcome change from earlier years.

Since the final time we up to date this story in February 2022, Spotify has mixed albums, compilations, and singles into one location, with an choice to separate them. It’s smoother and extra handy than the previous approach of forcing you to view all of them individually, on a regular basis. Playlists and albums get their very own shuffle buttons, which is a pleasant contact that allows you to know whenever you’re on shuffle and whenever you’re listening to all the pieces so as.

Senior author Lauren Goode additionally has extra tips for getting the most out of Spotify.