A streaming music service lets you pay a monthly fee to let you access and discover new music you like on the go. However, it’s not always the best option for your music needs. That’s because you cannot always be sure about your internet connection. If you are on a road trip, on the subway or traveling to a rural area, you might want to consider taking your music collection offline. Also, streaming music on your mobile data plan might eat up all the bandwidth before you even know it.
There are two ways to listen to music online:
Downloading: The first is by downloading the songs you want to listen to. This can be costly if you're doing it legally, especially if you're downloading a whole album of songs. Once you've paid for a track or album, it's yours to keep and listen to for as long as you like.
Streaming: The other way is online streaming, where you don't actually save the track to your PC or device, you just play it while you're online and every time you listen you're effectively 're-downloading' the track (It works by downloading and storing a local copy of the songs in your library with 'offline listening'). You'll only have access while logged in to your profile with the service.
Here in this post, we have listed some best apps, which let you take your music offline for enjoyment without an active internet connection. Let’s check it out.
Spotify is the best streaming music service. The combination of a large library, good user interface, wide support of devices and great features made it our first choice.
Using the free trial of Spotify is good for casual listeners who enjoy background music on their computer, but upgrading to premium strips out the ads, gives you access to the mobile apps, save a playlist and listen offline, higher quality audio streams. In short, it offers the best listening experience no matter what you are looking for.
Related: Best Ways to Stream Spotify without Ads for Spotify Free User
Google Play Music is a popular music streaming app. With this app, users can enjoy listening to music, radio from 50,000 songs collections. Google Play Music app can be used from your computer easily without any issues. With the paid subscription from this music streaming service, you can download your music and play offline, and you can stream without ads interrupting your listening experience.
Deezer is an Internet-based music-streaming service, with around 16 million monthly active users. It's a fully-fledged free-streaming service supported by ads, though you only get access to its library on-demand on the web and tablet versions.
You can easily search your favorite songs, artists, albums, radio stations and audio channels. It also allows you to listen to your favorite music on various devices online and offline.
Amazon Music Unlimited is Amazon's own fully-fledged music streaming service. released on November 2016, offering access to 100 million songs through the Amazon Music app and Amazon Music for Web. The low-cost price makes it stand out from rivals, but it is only available for listeners in the UK, US, Germany and Austria now.
Pandora, the Internet radio giant that pioneered music streaming, allows users to easily listen without having to search for tracks or create a playlist. "The Music Genome Project" behind Pandora generates music related to your search terms. The radio will tweak itself according to your thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings.
Launched on March 2017, Pandora Premium, a new music streaming service, will rival the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.
SoundCloud is a great way to discover new independent artists, listen to new tracks from popular musicians, and connect with other music fans. It is heavily structured with a social aspect. You can follow your friends and bands, add songs to your favorites, and create playlists. Your followers can also listen to a stream of music you have reposted or uploaded yourself. The key to getting the most out of SoundCloud is building up a healthy social feed.
SoundCloud is a great way to discover new independent artists, listen to new tracks from popular musicians, and connect with other music fans. It is heavily structured with a social aspect. You can follow your friends and bands, add songs to your favorites, and create playlists. Your followers can also listen to a stream of music you have reposted or uploaded yourself. The key to getting the most out of SoundCloud is building up a healthy social feed.
Groove Music (The Groove Music Pass streaming service was discontinued on January 1, 2018.) is a music streaming service from Microsoft. Groove Music has a massive music library with over 40 million ad-free songs, more than Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and Google Play Music, etc. Groove will enable you to play and manage your music, as well as add MP3's and iTunes tracks to OneDrive so you can listen to them on all your devices through the Groove app. If you opt for Groove Music Pass subscription, you'll be able to listen to artist-based radio, curated playlists and there is support for offline listening.
So, what's the best streaming music service to allow you to download for offline listening? For most people, that will probably be Spotify due to its immense popularity, but other streaming music services are thoroughly deserving of your consideration too.
Hanna Ellis | Content Writer
