You don’t have to buy individual songs or albums.
While all these apps are free, some require a paid subscription for additional features.
Spotify
User-friendly interface.
Spotify Singles, podcasts, and other exclusives.
Enormous library with curated streams playlists.
Can’t skip tracks in the free version.
Limited to basic audio quality.
The free account is ad-supported.
You will have to listen to ads with this version, though.
To unlock all the features of Spotify, the Premium subscription is required.
Pandora
Personalized based on song, artist, or genre.
Easy to find new music and podcasts.
Music library contains over 30 million songs.
The free version is ad-supported.
Need subscription to remove ads and use offline.
The free version of Pandora lets you create stations and offers limited skips.
The highest tier provides no restrictions on these perks and adds the ability to make and share playlists.
iHeartRadio
Live radio channels at any time or place.
Stations include music, news, talk, and comedy.
Full access to a podcast library.
Requires subscription to skip or listen to songs on demand.
The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018. iHeartRadio delivers live streams of radio stations from across the country.
If you love the traditional radio experience, you’ll probably love this app.
But that’s not all it does.
That’s all in the free app, but some upgrades deliver more features.
And the All Access plan lets you listen offline and create unlimited playlists.
TuneIn
Live radio from around the world.
Thousands of radio stations by location and genre.
A subscription is required to remove ads.
Can’t create on-demand stations.
The audio quality of live broadcasts varies.
With a name like TuneIn Radio, you might think this app is focused on free radio.
There’s a lot of radio available in TuneIn, but there’s much more.
The app delivers streams of over 100,000 radio stations that offer music, news, talk, and sports.
Included on those streams are some NFL and NBA games, as well as the MLB playoffs.
Also available for free in the app is a giant podcast library.
Sign up for the TuneIn Premium service, and you’ll get a lot more.
Included in Premium are more live sports and over 600 commercial-free music stations and over 100,000 audiobooks.
And it removes ads (though not necessarily from the radio streams).
SoundCloud
Great way to discover independent artists.
Upload and promote your audio files.
Scrub to move back and forth in songs.
Library holds more new music than current hits.
Non-skippable ads in the free version.
Interface doesn’t compare favorably with desktop version.
Get the well-known and widely used SoundCloud experience on your iPhone with this app.
The other apps on this list simply provide you music.
The app doesn’t allow for uploadsthe SoundCloud Pulse app covers that.
The free version of SoundCloud lets you access over 300 million tracks and create playlists.
The SoundCloud Go tier adds offline listening and removes ads.
Upgrade to SoundCloud Go+ to unlock access to over 20 million additional songs.
Uforia
Available in English and Spanish.
Stations are categorized by mood.
Great selection of Latin music and radio stations.
Some stabilization problems; may lose internet connection.
All the apps on this list include all sorts of genres of music, including Latin music.
If that’s your primary interest, and you want to dig deep into it, download Uforia Musica.
There are also streaming-only stations that are exclusive to Uforia.
Unlike many other apps on this list, all features are available for free; there are no upgrades.
8tracks Radio
2 million+ playlists by artist, genre, or mood.
Social element based on a shared love of music.
Unlimited ad-supported free listening.
No unlimited skips, even with paid plan.
However, it has ads.
However, you won’t get unlimited skips or offline listening ability with Plus because of licensing restrictions.
LiveOne Music
High-quality, curated music programming.
Fun, DJ-driven shows.
The ad-supported free plan is limited to six skips per hour.
No lyrics or videos.
The free tier gets you over 400,000 hours of podcast content and some news and sports programming too.
In the free version, you oughta listen to ads and are limited to skipping six songs per hour.
