Spotify's price is going up again, here are 6 cheaper music streaming services
In a blog post, Spotify said individual premium subscriptions would be going up from €10.99 per month to €11.99 per month in September, including Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific. If the price hike comes to the UK, Spotify subscribers could be asked to pay £12.99 per month.
The streamer already increased the price of an individual subscription by £1 last year to £11.99, and raised the price of its other plans, like the family and duo subscription, by £2 per month, leaving many disgruntled users looking for cheaper alternatives to the platform.
According to Reuters, despite increasing its user base and subscriber numbers, Spotify is having to pay more tax on employee salaries, which is the reason for the price hike. If you've started looking at switching away from the music platform and want to cancel your Spotify Premium membership, we've rounded up the best, cheaper Spotify alternatives to subscribe to right now.
Amazon Music Unlimited is the retail giant's premium music streaming service tier. With a subscription, you can listen to more than 100 million songs ad-free, offline and with unlimited skips. You also get access to Amazon Music's HD CD-quality tracks, lossless hi-res tracks and spatial audio.
At the start of the year, Amazon hiked the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service, increasing the individual membership fee 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 you get access to lossless audio.
If you're a Prime member and don't subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get free access to all of Amazon Music's catalogue already, but you can only listen in shuffle mode and usually have to pick songs from Amazon's all-access music playlists. If you own a Fire TV stick or an Amazon Echo smart speaker, there is also a single-device subscription available for £5.99 a month.
Individual plan: £10.99 per month
Student plan: £5.49 per month
Family plan: £16.99 per month (up to five additional members)
Free trial: A one-month free trial is offered with a paid subscription
Strip out all the cat videos, low-res vlogs and memes but keep all the songs, albums, remixes, live performances and music videos, then throw in some recommended playlists. That's YouTube Music Premium in a nutshell.
If you subscribe to the service, you'll be able to play music in the background whenever your phone's screen is locked or you're using a different app. It also removes the ads and enables offline play. For an extra £2 per month (£1 more than Spotify Premium) you can get full YouTube Premium, which removes ads from all YouTube videos, watch using picture-in-picture mode, and listen to YouTube videos with your screen switched off.
A subscription to YouTube Music Premium is cheaper than all of Spotify's plans, with the individual plan costing £1 less, and the family plan costing £3 less.
Individual plan: £10.99 per month
Student plan: £5.49 per month
Family plan: £16.99 per month (up to six members)
Free trial: A one-month free trial for new subscribers
DJ extension: £9 extra on Individual and Student plans, for mixing music with stem separation
Tidal sets itself apart 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 features more than 110 million tracks, exclusive releases, interviews and music videos. Tidal simplified its pricing structure in April 2024, combining its two former tiers (HiFi and HiFi Plus) into a single subscription.
All users pay £10.99 per month and get access to the platform's full suite of premium features, including high-fidelity FLAC audio, Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) tracks, and immersive formats like Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio, making it one of the best value music streaming services around.
Last year, Tidal launched the DJ Extension, which lets users mix songs and separate stems, giving them access to enhanced BPM metadata within apps like rekordbox, Serato and DJ Pro. It costs an additional £9 on top of a regular Tidal subscription.
Individual plan: £10.99 per month
Student plan: £5.99 per month (with the first six months free) and a free subscription to Apple TV+
Family plan: £16.99 per month (up to six members)
Free trial: A one-month free trial is available for new members, and six months free with the purchase of an eligible device
Apple Music is, unsurprisingly, Apple's ad-free music streaming service. It has more than 100 million tracks, over 30,000 curated playlists, live radio and original shows, concerts and exclusives. Its entire catalogue can be listened to in lossless hi-res audio, and spatial audio can be enabled on its tracks. You can download up to 100,000 songs to play offline, and you also get access to Apple Music Classical – the new classical-only service – as well as Apple Music Sing, which is Apple's karaoke mode.
In October 2022, Apple increased the price of its Apple Music subscription. An individual membership currently costs £1 less than a Spotify individual membership, while the family tier is £3 cheaper. It's good to note that you do get lossless hi-res audio and spatial audio with Apple Music, and students get a subscription to Apple TV+ for free.
There is, of course, the Apple One subscription, which gives you up to six Apple subscriptions for one lower monthly price, including up to 2TB of iCloud+ storage and access to Apple Music.
Individual plan: £11.99 per month (£8.99 per month if paid annually)
Student plan: £5.99 per month
Duo plan: £15.99 per month (£14.58 per month paid annually)
Family plan: £19.99 per month (£18.25 per month paid annually), up to five additional members
Free trial: A one-month free trial for new users
In an alternate reality, Deezer could have been the Spotify of today, having launched a year before the Swedish company and featuring the same rich library of music and features. Deezer is free if you're prepared to put up with the ads, but the good stuff is all in its premium tier.
It has more than 90 million tracks, and Deezer Premium gets rid of the ads, adds offline listening and high-fidelity FLAC audio, which Spotify lacks. As well as music, there are podcasts and radio stations, personalised recommendations and a Shazam-style SongCatcher feature to help identify tracks around you. Deezer also works on smartwatches, smart speakers and car audio systems.
While Deezer is as expensive as Spotify, if you pay for a full-year subscription, you'll get a 25 per cent discount, making it significantly cheaper than Spotify.
SoundCloud Go plan: £5.99 per month
SoundCloud Go+ plan: £10.99 per month
Student plan: Go+ for £5.49 per month
Free trial: 7-day trial with Go, 30-day trial with Go+
Underground music fans will be very familiar with the music distribution platform SoundCloud. Launched in 2007, SoundCloud is a music streaming service for music producers, independent up-and-coming artists, podcast producers and their listeners, hoping to discover new music. It also has a giant library of 180 million tracks, mostly uploaded directly by artists.
There are two premium SoundCloud tiers. SoundCloud Go costs £5.99 per month – it gets rid of all the ads and you get unlimited offline downloads. However, Go+ costs £10.99 per month and gets you access to SoundCloud's entire library, as well as higher-quality audio.
SoundCloud Go+ is still significantly cheaper than Spotify. While it doesn't have a family plan, there is a student plan for £5.49 per month. The Go+ plan also lets you listen on up to three devices at once.
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