2 Poor 4 Premium: Rating free music streaming platforms
Yeah, yeah, we know. Spotify is good when you can afford to pay for it. For the poor fuckers just trying to scrape by, however, food is usually a priority in terms of spending. No matter your wealth, one thing unites the entire population of the planet: our incessant hate for fucking ads. So, how can you get your filthy gremlin mitts on some music for free? Well, Massive is here to find out.Of all the free legal music streaming services, ads are usually a given, but not always.
jango.com
Jango has a free and quite comprehensive collection of music that collects and collates playlists and “radio stations” for your listening pleasure. It helps to give emerging artists a platform and, if you connect your Facebook account, you only get 1 ad per day. That’s a pretty good ratio for a free service. Jango encourages its users to reach out and suggest songs to add to its database and seems like an all-round pretty good service. The only thing is, you can’t download songs, so you better have a pretty comprehensive data plan to listen to it all day.
8/10 - Yeah nah, not bad all round
iHeartRadio
Yes it’s radio, yes there are ads on radio, we get it. But still, don’t you kinda miss just finding a station that fits your vibe and letting them pick the music? If video killed the radio star, then music streaming services fucking brutalised him. Bring back the classics and let radio survive just a little longer, if you can be bothered finding a station you like.
7/10 - If you enjoy radio
Spotify
Admittedly with a massive selection of songs to choose from Spotify free is still useable. But between constant ads, no downloads, and a limited number of skips, it takes a big knock from the worthy platform that is Spotify premium. Plus, the “Your next 30 minutes will be ad free” ads are always goddamn liars.
5/10 - When you’re desperate it does work
YouTube
Yeah, nah. Double, unskippable ads, no downloads, can’t play music with your phone screen off. YouTube has gone down the drain lately and we all know it. Avoid unless you’re desperate.
2/10 - Fuck off YouTube
So, what about the not-so-legal options? Well...
Ymusic
It’s only android-friendly and you have to download it on the website but that’s about the only downside. With a well-designed storing and listening interface, Ymusic lets you download video or audio files straight from YouTube to collate into playlists, saved to your phone. Pretty solid, unless you have an iPhone…
8/10 - A couple of drawbacks but a damn good option
Browser and Documents Manager
Subtle, we know… This not-so-legal YouTube downloader lets you save music videos to your phone. You can play them back either just audio if the app or your phone screen is closed, or the music video itself if you fancy a show. There are, however, ads. They’re six seconds long then skippable, but… still ads.
6/10 - Comprehensive and has music vids, but we went illegal to avoid ads thank you very much.
At the end of the day, if you want no ads, downloadable music and a well-made app design, paying for your apps is the way to go. But for the poor students who just want some tunes without spending, these might just be the best bang for your buck, or lack thereof.