The music industry is ever-changing. While digital music distribution is still quite popular, many users have now gravitated towards music streaming. Even music labels are finally onboard with this fledgling trend and Spotify is often considered to be the biggest music streaming platform, with the best discovery and recommendation system too.
Seeing the golden opportunity, a ton of music streaming services have since cropped up, giving Spotify a run for its money. If you are an existing Spotify user who’d either like to check out other streaming services or find Spotify to be rather expensive, well, you need not worry as we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 Spotify alternatives for you:
5. Wynk Music
If you’re an Airtel user, you would have surely heard of Wynk Music, the music streaming service from the telecom giant. The platform has tons of Bollywood content, along with a hoard of western and regional content to round off its collection. You will most likely find the song you’re searching for here with ease, with a huge 3 million free song library. The platform includes high-quality streaming, curated playlists, a personalized radio station, and a lot more.
While the free tier of Wynk Music is great and gives you access to most of the features, you’ll no longer see ads and get offline download functionality with a paid subscription. Airtel users have the Pro features available to them for free, which is an added bonus.
Download Wynk Music.
4. JioSaavn
While Gaana once claimed itself to be the number one music streaming service in India, there’s a new victor in town and it’s all thanks to Reliance Jio. Saavn and Jio Music have recently been merged to create the biggest streaming service in India called JioSaavn. I mostly stick to Spotify but I switched to JioSaavn for a week and well, the UI is surely a breath of fresh air and the recommendations are decent too.
JioSaavn boasts of over 50 million songs across Bollywood, English, Hindi, independent artists, and many different regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, and more as well. You’ll get ad-laden unlimited playback, curated playlists, radio stations, exclusive podcasts, and more for free.
You also get a 90-day free trial if you’re an existing Jio user, however, if you pick the Pro subscription then JioSaavn removes the ads, offers unlimited skips, download tracks and stream music at 320kbps as well. It’s at par with Spotify in terms of features and music collection as well, which is just great.
Download JioSaavn.
3. Amazon Music
From selling music digitally to music streaming, Amazon has also dipped its toes in this fledgling segment. Amazon Music lets you listen to a massive catalog of songs via your Prime subscription but Amazon Music Unlimited opens up the entire library of 50 million songs to you. It presents you with an ad-free experience, unlimited skips, the ability to download tracks, and control playback with Alexa.
Amazon Music may have a huge library and new releases available on time, but the one thing that I dislike about the Amazon Music app is its UI. It’s dated, similar to Amazon’s official app (which is slowly but steadily improving), as well as clunky too. Users will not really be drawn to using the streaming service if it wasn’t for Prime subscription and the Alexa voice integration in the app that makes the masses curious.
Download Amazon Music.
2. Google Play Music
Google Play Music is also a solid option for streaming music, especially because it comes pre-loaded on Android phones and you don’t really need to look elsewhere. It gives users access to more than 35 million tracks, lets you upload 50,000 songs from your personal collection, and discover podcasts as well. The artist recommendation, along with great genre playlists and affordable family plans make the streaming service quite appealing.
Play Music learns your music preferences over time and gives you with curated radio stations, based on artists you’ve listened to in the past or genres, right on the home screen and I love them. It’s my favorite feature of Google’s streaming app, along with switching to YouTube videos from within the player. However, I feel that the app, even though it’s pretty simple, it can be more intuitive and there’s scope for many different content types here.
Google’s music stack is also a bit messy, just like its messaging stack, and you can use YouTube Music to stream tracks on your smartphone as well. It plays music tracks from YouTube so you can see the video alongside latest music tracks, with background playback and no ads. Hence making among the best Spotify alternatives.
Download Google Play Music.
1. Gaana
Coming to Gaana next, well, it’s the best Spotify alternatives. The streaming service offers a wide collection of more than 30 million Bollywood and English tracks. This is supplemented by millions of regional tracks in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Malayalam, and more. Gaana is also crammed with curated playlists, radio stations, including 20 Radio Mirchi stations for users who’re lacking a Radio app.
Gaana has a pretty neat and simple UI, which is inviting to the users, and one thing I really love about its discovery and recommendation system is that it sticks to your initial choices. I don’t listen to regional content, nor do latest Bollywood songs interest me, so picking the old songs artists I listen to curated the whole service accordingly. Gaana is free but an affordable Plus subscription gets you high-fidelity playback, offline downloads and the ability to sync your music library.
Download Gaana.
Quick list of Top 5 Best Spotify alternatives in India :
- Gaana
- Google Play Music
- Amazon Music
- JioSaavn
- Wynk Music
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Conclusion !
Spotify has my heart and soul, all because of its outstanding recommendation algorithms. However, I did not land on the perfect choice for me right away and also it is costly. I had to check out many different services to find the right fit. So, if you’re ready to do so too, just pick from the listed Spotify alternatives streaming services and kickstart your melodious journey.
Do let us know which music streaming service you chose to use and why in the comments down below.
