Free music for everyone: How you can stream music for free
Free music instead of music subscription: You can also listen to songs for free on the Internet. You have different providers at your disposal, which have different advantages and disadvantages. We’ll explain where to find free songs, what to look out for and what alternatives you have – should you decide to spend money on music.
Free Music on YouTube and Soundcloud
You can find well-known songs for free on different platforms – partly even including the official videos. Many artists upload their singles and music videos to YouTube, for example. The well-known portal offers you a large selection of titles to browse through. At a party, however, things might get a bit fiddly with YouTube, as playlists may not be created as quickly and conveniently and advertising breaks may occur. By the way, you can also look around for songs on Vimeo – here you will find just as many well-known titles.
Another tip for free music is VidZone. You can use your smartphone to control the platform via an app, access it from your computer or even start it conveniently from your PlayStation. The service offers you a large selection of music videos free of charge. You can quickly assemble entire playlists of videos using the console. However, the free version will show you commercials from time to time – that’s probably the price for “Free Music”.
A well-known provider of free music is also Soundcloud. This service is especially useful if you are organising a small party in a hurry, for example: You can find hours of remixes here, which you can run wonderfully in the background. You can also download some songs as an alternative to streaming. If you plan to use a song from the platform in a hobby movie, for example, you should take a look at the respective license. This is where the pieces differ: Some you can use for free, others not.
Use free version of Spotify
If you want to listen to songs for free and can do without music videos, you should also give the free version of Spotify a chance. If you use the streaming service for free, you still have access to all songs on the platform. However, there are a few restrictions: After some songs a few commercials are played, which interrupt the music enjoyment. In addition, you can only freely select the titles on a computer or with a tablet. All you have on your phone is the “Shuffle” mode, which allows you to start random playback of a playlist.
If you have the idea to just put a single song into a playlist and then start it in shuffle mode to get the song you want immediately: The makers of Spotify apparently already came up with the idea. In this case, the playback of tracks that match your actual desired track starts. And because you can’t skip songs on your phone indefinitely, you should save the skipping for the songs you really don’t want to hear.
Alternative: Music streaming with paid subscription
There are ways and means to get free music on the internet, but if you want something for free, you have to make compromises. If you decide to try one of the well-known music streaming services, you can listen to more comfortable songs. With Spotify, for example, a premium subscription gives you even better audio quality.
Since the big providers usually offer free months (one or more) for you and you can cancel the subscriptions monthly, you usually also have to take no or only very little money in your hand for testing. If you don’t like the platform in question and you don’t want to pay the monthly fee, you should only think about cancelling it in time. In addition to Spotify, there are major providers such as Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Deezer and Google Play Music. Jan compared the services for you in another article.
Another option is to subscribe to Amazon Prime. The Amazon Music app gives you access to nearly two million songs without any additional payment – and without any advertising. Although some brand new top hits are only available to users of Amazon Music Unlimited, the platform offers you a large selection with many well-known songs.