It goes without saying that Spotify has become the reigning champ of streaming platforms in terms of number of users. However, the more people you must cater to, the less you can specialize your services.
For avid music lovers and creators, some features are more important than others – features that Spotify may not have developed as much as other platforms. This is why many, especially those who love making playlists, choose to switch platforms or use more than one. Current technology allows us to transfer music from one platform to another or keep them synced with ease, eliminating the tediousness that rebuilding a music library from scratch would usually come with.
Here are some alternatives to Spotify (not including the other streaming giant, Apple Music) that artists, producers, and DJs may prefer over the more general platform, along with how to transfer and sync your music libraries.
YouTube Music
YouTube Music is gaining in popularity because of its vast library – most artists, big or small, post their music on YouTube. It leans into this well by having a very strong recommendation algorithm and makes playlisting easy.
There are five available plans:
The Free Plan allows you to select the music you’re listening to, but contains ads. Just like the video side of the app, the music stops if you lock or phone or switch apps.
The Individual Premium plan costs $10.99/month or $109.99/year and eliminates ads, makes music available to download for offline listening, and your music will continue if you leave the app.
The Family Plan costs $16.99/month and allows up to 5 family members (13 years and up) to have an account with all the same benefits as an individual premium plan.
The Student Plan costs $5.49/month and is the equivalent of an individual plan, though verification with the academic institution is required annually.
All of the above plans have a free 30-day trial available.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a favorite for DJs and big fans of music discovery. It remains one of the best ways to find new talent, remixes, and full DJ sets.
The platform has two streaming plans:
The SoundCloud Go plan costs $4.99/month and includes ad-free listening and the ability to save unlimited tracks for offline listening, but does not give full access to the catalog or have high quality audio.
The SoundCloud Go+ costs $10.99/month and includes ad-free listening, unlimited offline listening, full catalog access, high quality audio, and the ability to mix tracks within select DJ apps.
The Go plan has a 7-day free trial and the Go+ plan has a 30-day free trial available for new users (unless you’re in Quebec, Canada).
Deezer
Deezer is arguably the most popular alternative to Spotify and Apple Music in Europe. It specializes in sound quality which is comparable to that of CD quality (which even Spotify hasn’t matched).
It has five subscription plans to choose from:
The Free plan gives full access to the catalog but with shuffle-based playback on playlists and 6 skips per hour on mobile, along with the occasional ad. On desktop there are unlimited skips and the occasional ad, but never if you’re listening to an album all the way through.
The Premium plan is $12/month (or $9 if paid annually) and has ad-free music, unlimited skips, offline downloads, HiFi sound quality, and multi-device access.
The Duo plan at $16/month (or $14.58/month if annual) allows two people to have individual premium accounts under the same plan, and they can create a Collaborative Duo Mix playlist together.
The Family plan is $20/month (or $18.25 if annual) and allows 5 family members to have their own premium accounts on 13 different devices, also including parental control on kid’s profiles.
The Student plan costs $6/month and offers a premium account for a 50% discount to eligible students.
There is a 30-day free trial for all paid plans.
Amazon Music
Amazon Music is another very popular choice. It especially caters to podcast and audiobook listeners, given its parent company.
It currently has five paid plans:
The Free version gives you access to Amazon Music’s playlists, radio stations, and podcasts, but you cannot select individual songs and will get ads. Its sound quality is also limited to SD.
The Prime version is free for members of Amazon Prime and eliminates ads. It also allows you to select songs, but sound quality remains at SD.
The Unlimited plan costs $9.99/month for individuals and $16.99/month for families (6 accounts). It gives you access to ad-free music in SD, HD, Ultra HD, and spatial audio.
The Single Device plan, designed for compatibility with the Amazon Echo or Fire devices, costs $5.99/month and is the equivalent of a Prime plan.
The Student plan is also $5.99/month and includes HD audio along with many of the Unlimited plan’s features.
There is a 30-day free trial available for all of the above plans.
Beatport
In a nod to all the DJs out there, we had to include BeatPort on our list. The platform specializes in music discovery and is home to a vast catalog of playlists and remixes available to purchase and download for use in a set. It also has integration with DJ platforms so that you can stream and sync your music with ease.
Beatport has three subscription plans:
The Essential plan costs $10.99/month and is designed for music discovery, allowing for unlimited re-downloads of purchased tracks and full-length playlist on the website, mobile app, and DJ web app.
The Advanced plan is $15.99/month and is designed for use with DJ platforms. It excludes all Essential plan features along with DJ platform integrations (CDJ-3000, DEX3, and many more) and access to Pete Tong DJ Academy Lite, an online DJ course.
The Professional plan costs $29.99/month and specializes in high quality audio by adding Lossless audio to its list of features, as well as an offline library of 1000 tracks.
Each paid plan has a 30-day free trial available.
How to Transfer and Sync Your Music
If you’re thinking of moving your music from one place to another or having more than one account for different purposes, making the leap isn’t as technically tedious as it may seem.
There are online platforms that can perform huge transfers in a matter of minutes, keeping playlists intact along the way. The most popular of these is TuneMyMusic, which allows playlist transfer from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, Beatport, and many more.
Tune My Music
Tune My Music makes sure to keep transferring, syncing, sharing, uploading, and backups as easy as possible. For DJs, keeping a music library up to date on different streaming services can be a nightmare, but the platform makes it possible to keep two playlists from two music services synchronized at all times.
Given how extensive its features are, Tune My Music has a free trial as well as a paid plan:
The free trial allows you to transfer up to 500 songs for free and cross-share music to and from all platforms, but does not give access to syncs or backups and leaves a watermark on shared music.
The Premium plan, which is $5.50/month (or only $2/month if paid annually), includes unlimited music transfer, cross-sharing, 20 auto daily syncs across all platforms, cloud backups, and no watermark.
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