In Depth: Spotify, Tidal, Pandora and more: which is the best music streaming service?

Diamond-level services

Music streaming services are like sports teams: everyone has the squad they root for above all others. Whether you're a Pandora person, an iTunes devotee, a Spotify specialist or a Tidal lover, we all have one service that's close to our hearts.

But music streaming services, like all things, change over time. What do you do when that one feature you loved six months ago has been replaced to make room for a new, completely unwieldy user interface, causing all the friends you knew who used the service to pack and leave for greener pastures?

Well, one suggestion is throwing darts at a dartboard. But if you love tech, diving headfirst into the unknown - and possibly low-resolution - world of music software probably isn't your bag.

To help you decide, we've compiled the list of the best music streaming services on the planet in 2015. We've divided streaming services up into categories, from best (Diamond) to worst (Gold).

Diamond level streaming services

In the music industry, your record goes diamond when it reaches 10 million units sold. It may not sound like a lot in our day and age, when YouTube videos of cats get five million hits every single day, but a diamond record is pretty much the highest aspiration any musician can want out of their new tracks.

To meet TechRadar's diamond standard , streaming services must offer extremely high-quality music (320Kbps), give users the ability to choose their songs and provide a robust free version that gives users a good idea of what they're getting into before they start shelling out a subscription fee.

After extensive research on the subject, we only found two streaming services that fit the bill - Spotify and Rdio.

Spotify

Despite how you feel about the company's ethics, Spotify continues to be one of the best ways to stream whatever music you want, whenever you want thanks to its massive 25 million song catalog and irresistibly low $0 price tag. Social integration with Facebook means you'll never miss what your friends are listening to while private listening mode makes it so they'll never find out about your late-night guilty pleasures.

Admittedly, Spotify's biggest problem is that if you don't know what you want to listen to, the service probably won't be much help. It has some really good curated playlists, but the radio stations leave a lot to be desired.

If you like what you hear on the free version, you can upgrade to Spotify Premium, which offers the same great music sans advertisements. You'll need to fork over $10/month (£10, AU$12) but it may be well worth it not to have your tunes interrupted by annoying commercials.

Pros: 25 million song catalog, universally available, free with ads, great social integration with Facebook, curated content, can upload any songs Spotify is missing, available on PS4 with PlayStation Music, offline listening

Cons: Artists aren't paid much, radio recommendations are sub-par

Bitrate: 96Kbps for low bandwidth connections, 160Kbps for desktop and "high quality" mobile streaming, and 320Kbps for the the high bitrate setting (desktop, iOS and Android)

Cost: Free with ads / $10 (£10, AU$12) a month for Spotify Premium

Rdio

It's hard to say anything bad about Rdio. Like Spotify, it's free to sign up and you'll never need to shell out a dollar if you don't mind listening to ads. It has roughly the same amount of songs (around 20 million), awesome social network integration via Facebook and Twitter, a plethora of curated content from friends and tastemakers, and a radio function that's actually worth using. Rdio also wins the award for best looking music streaming service as well as one of the easiest to navigate.

Pros: 20 million available songs, available on nine out 10 devices, smart-looking interface, great social integration with Facebook and Twitter, discovering new music is easy, offline listening

Cons: Not as big of a community as Spotify, smaller catalog overall

Bitrate: 192Kbps by default, but premium users can select 320Kbps

Cost: Free with ads / $10 (£10, AU$12) a month for all access pass

Platinum-level services

Platinum-level streaming services

Songs and albums go platinum when they sell five million units. They're well on their way to the top, but clearly there's something stopping them from going all the way.

In our platinum-level music streaming choices, we found that each offered a great selection of music with one or two premium features that neither Spotify or Rdio offered. However, neither of them are free and while they sound wonderful, they both have a major caveat that makes it impossible to give them a full recommendation.

Google Play Music All Access

Google Play Music All Access is the ideal companion for anyone who uses the Google Play Store on a daily basis. It has about as many songs at its disposal as its competitors (around 18 million at last count), but it allows listeners to use the service as a digital locker to upload and download songs to and from different devices.

Pros: Hooks into Google+, 18 million songs, digital locker, great for Android users

Cons: No iOS app, no free trial

Bitrate: Sound quality peaks at 320Kbps (downloads are the same), although you can tell the difference between Google's MP3s and Sony's AACs

Cost: $10 (£10, AU$10) a month

Tidal

Tidal is somewhat of the city on the hill in the world of music streaming. By pushing for fair and equal pay for musicians and high-quality 320Kbps FLAC files for every song in its library, Tidal and its new owner Jay Z are aiming to rewrite the music streaming script by having artists as owners. Beyond its expertly curated playlists, Tidal offers music videos and short articles that entertain and inform listeners about genres, artists, producers and studios. All that good stuff comes at a price, however. Tidal doesn't offer any tier of its service for free. Standard audio subscriptions start at $10 (£10, AU$15) a month, while the high-res collection opens up at $20 (£20, AU$24) a month.

Pros: Best curated content, no advertisements, 25 million songs, 75,000 music videos, high-fidelity music

Cons: Limited social network integration, most expensive music streaming service, new interface is crowded

Bitrate: 320Kbps lossless media

Cost: Tidal starts at $10 (£10, AU$15) a month for Tidal Premium, but high-fidelity music is only unlocked for Tidal HiFi subscribers which costs $20 (£20, AU$24) a month.

Gold-level services

Gold-level streaming services

Last but least are albums and singles that go gold by selling over a million units. Just like gold records, the remaining two services are tried and true, even if they're not the most popular options out there. Some consider them one-hit wonders. Some considered them revolutionary ... 10 years ago. Whatever you think about them, they do one thing well, and, even if they haven't managed to keep up with the times, they're still staples of the burgeoning streaming industry.

Pandora

When it was released in 2000, Pandora was probably the best thing since sliced bread. Offering users an unexplored valley of new music based on their past listening history, the internet radio sensation took off and within a few years was at the top of the food chain. In the time since, however, Pandora has found itself clawing for a spot in the charts.

For starters, it doesn't allow you to replay songs and, due to licensing restrictions, it's rare you'll hear two songs from the same album in a row. It lacks decent social integration and with a pool of only about a million songs, there isn't a lot of variety. All that said, if you're looking for something to throw on at a party, Pandora is still the best bet thanks to its ability to keep the beat going with only minimal intervention.

Pandora does offer a subscription service called Pandora One, that eliminates the all-too-frequent commercial breaks and ups the sound quality to 192Kbps.

Pros: Music recommendations based on the Music Genome Project, free with ads or cheap premium edition, available on most devices

Cons: Only has about one million songs, can't pick songs on-demand, limited amount of skips, poor social integration

Bitrate: 128Kbps for non-subscribers and peaks at 192Kbps for Pandora One users

Cost: Free with ads, though the premium edition - Pandora One - is very affordable at $3.99 (AU$5) per month / $36 a year. Not available in the UK.

iTunes

We're the first to admit it: iTunes isn't great. Unfortunately its surplus of content and the urge to sell for $1.29 a pop (song) is the exact reason it continues to be one of the least recommended places for people to go and listen to music hassle free. And whereas other services are willing to let you "own" content by creating playlists and download songs for offline listening, iTunes merely suggests songs that you should buy.

Sure, the radio feature - a free service that looks at your music tastes and finds similar artists from the data of its millions of users - is a cool idea in theory, but it isn't better than, say, Pandora or even Spotify when push comes to shove.

So what's iTunes' redeeming factor? There's simply no other way to manage content you already own on your iOS devices while simultaneously seeing a personalised list of new music that you might also like.

Pros: Decently good at managing content on your iDevices, smart radio

Cons: Music discovery is tied to a price tag, it's there to sell you on music you don't own

Bitrate: Music is sold is 256Kbps AAC

Cost: iTunes Radio is free, but songs vary in price from 69 cents (59p,AU 99 cents), to $1.29 (99p AU$1.69).

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