Thinking of ditching Spotify?

The other major player in the music streaming duopoly, Apple Music’s catalog is as comprehensive as Spotify but takes a more curatorial and star-driven approach to its radio stations (like Frank Ocean’s “Blonded Radio” or Elton John’s “Rocket Hour”).

It hosts one-off events like Kanye West’s “Donda” listening party, and gets lots of first cracks at album premieres on Zane Lowe’s show.

The standard plan included lossless streaming quality and some new Dolby Atmos spatial audio options, and you can merge your previously downloaded tracks into the app.

If you’re looking to throw off the yoke of morally conflicted corporate music streaming companies, you probably won’t end up here, contributing to Jeff Bezos’ next spaceflight.

But if you’re already in the Prime ecosystem, Amazon is an affordable and comprehensive option that sometimes lands music exclusives (like Kanye West and Drake’s “Free Larry Hoover” live show).

Tidal didn’t dominate in the way that Jay Z hoped when he launched the service in 2015 surrounded by famous pals.

While initially known as the frustratingly exclusive place to first hear Beyoncé's “Lemonade” and Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo,” it’s now owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block, and has pivoted away from celebrity exclusives to higher-quality (and higher-priced) audio.

There’s a free tier as well but, to Tidal’s credit, it pays more in per-stream royalties to artists than almost any other service.

While YouTube promised to scrub anti-vax-conspiracy content from its platform, it may not be the service for Spotify refuseniks.

But YouTube Music Premium is affordable and comprehensive, and like Apple allows you to import your own previously downloaded music library into the app.

If you spend a lot of time skulking around YouTube anyway, you get ad-free videos there as well.

Few streamers can claim to be a shorthand for an entire era of 2010s hip-hop.

But the popular upload platform took years to figure out how to make its outlaw remix and mixtape culture into a stable paid service.

Now its top paid tier gets you the whole library of higher-res formal releases, along with the DJ mixes that made its reputation and an ability to slot songs directly into mixing software.

The download-centric platform became a lifeline for underground acts during the early days of the pandemic, waiving its fees on “Bandcamp Fridays” to steer income to struggling acts.

You won’t find dominant pop hitmakers like Drake and Dua Lipa here, and it doesn’t offer an all-inclusive streaming service.

But Bandcamp is the most direct way to point your streaming dollars to artists who make a pittance from Spotify.

The app saves all your tracks in one portable place, and you can buy merch and pay to subscribe to many individual artist catalogs.

For fans of more experimental and adventurous music, the curatorial suggestions are thoughtful and rewarding.

This French streaming service has been around since 2007 but recently found a niche with a huge catalog of ultra-high-quality sound (either in streaming or downloadable in a range of formats).

The baseline sound quality for its 70-million-song catalog is a step up from Apple or Spotify, and if you have decent headphones or a home stereo to warrant the hi-res tier upgrade, the difference is palpable — sometimes better than CD-quality.

Qobuz lacks Spotify’s uncanny suggestion algorithm, but staff-curated playlists highlight discoveries that warrant the close attention to detail.

This upstart co-op takes a contrarian approach to streaming economics — you pay a la carte per listen up to the price of a song’s download fee, then you own the track.

By Resonate’s math, that’s about nine plays per song.

The catalog so far is relatively limited to underground and emerging acts, but it’s a compelling model for music discovery that pays more sustainably than the big services, with lower upfront costs than a Bandcamp binge.