4 Best Music Stream Services (2025): Spotify, Apple Music, and more compared
Spotify has the best Music Discovery algorithms and SlickStest, Snappest user interface. It leads me down rabbit holes to find new artists and old favorites, based on what I’ve already liked and listened to on the app.
The free tier, with ads, defaults to 96-Kbps low 96-KBPS rates, but you can burst up to 160 kbps. At $12 per month ($1 increase since the last time we updated this story in January 2024), the Premium Tier ditches ads entirely and streams them up to 320 kbps, which is standard streaming quality these days. These are the minimum app values; The Web Player sticks to 128 kbps and 256 kbps, respectively.
Spotify’s lossy library, announced in February of 2021, finally began to roll out in September of 2025, and supports music up to 24-bit at 44.1kz – or as I write this, most lossy songs are 16.1kz. Not every user has access yet, but the mobile and desktop app will notify you with a visual screen if you’ve been invited, or you can check your audio quality settings to see if you have the option to sign in. In the desktop app, you can click to see the details.
Spotify allows you to add an unlimited number of songs to your library. As a long requested feature, the 10,000 song limit is gone, and now you can add unlimited songs to each playlist. If you turn on Community Sharing, you can see what your friends are listening to and create sessions where the group has been simultaneously streaming playlists. There is an option on each artist page to listen to their favorite songs, which is a big change from last year.
The way Slotify albums albums, compilations, and songs in one place – with the option to separate them – is much simpler and easier than the old setup, which forced you to look at them all separately, all the time. Playlists and albums get their own shuffle buttons, which is a nice touch that lets you know when to shuffle and when to listen to everything in order.
