The Best Free Online Streaming Music Services for 2020

Music consumption has changed a lot since the year 2000. Back then, people purchased CDs, traditional radio still held weight, MTV was hot, and file sharing had become commonplace for those with PCs and fast internet connections. Over time, the music industry morphed to take advantage of the new digital landscape and to find new ways to capture dollars previously lost to Napster and BearShare. Digital downloads and online streaming music services eventually became the norm, thanks to the likes of iTunes and Pandora, respectively. Those trailblazing services, among others, helped internet music listening go legit and created a new music industry revenue stream.

Easy Listening

If you think you’ll miss out on good content by going the free route, think again—these streaming services offer a surprising amount of content. LiveXLive (formerly Slacker Radio), for example, differentiates itself with Stories, a hosted program that features interesting tales, ranging from love to horror. iHeartRadio blends live, terrestrial radio with playlists.

You may ask, “What about big names like Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, SiriusXM Internet Radio, or Tidal?” Those excellent streaming music are definitely worth your time, but they are premium-only affairs with premium-only features. Those for-pay service levels are aimed at customers who really want to explore the depths of what a streaming music service offers. Not everyone needs those features, of course, so free music tiers are extremely valuable.

Music With Borders

Free music listening has its inconveniences, however. You may need to listen to audio ads. You may be limited to just six song skips per hour. You may not be able to listen to songs on demand, or fire up particular playlists. You may not enjoy the sweet sounds that Hi-Res Audio delivers. In many ways, then, free streaming music resembles classic, terrestrial radio. That’s not too bad, considering you save roughly $9.99 per month you’d otherwise be paying for an individual music streaming plan.

Musical Chairs

Unfortunately, there are overall problems in the streaming music space that impact free and paid accounts. Thanks to—you guessed it—money, some platforms gain and lose content over time. The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Prince, and other artists have seen their catalogs vanish from streaming platforms (and later reappear) due to low royalties. It’s not just big names that get stiffed by the record industry; the little guys catch a bad one, too.

The overall situation isn’t quite as annoying as trying to decipher which comic book properties that Disney can use in its Marvel Cinematic Universe, but fans shouldn’t need to learn why billionaires are squabbling to enjoy their music. The situation’s enough to drive someone to vinyl, though that isn’t a free listening experience. 

Thankfully, though content restrictions and missing artists and tracks are still a problem in the space, the situation has improved markedly in recent years. Still, there’s been a paring down. LiveXLive absorbed the excellent Slacker Radio, and Google is sending yet another service to its graveyard when it replaces Google Play Music with YouTube Music later this year. Fortunately, other streaming music services have stepped up to bring you no-cost tunes.

Party On

In the chart below, you’ll find the streaming music services that serve up song lyrics, live programming (be it live radio or streaming video), or non-music content—think podcasts, weather updates, and so on. If you’re ready to take a dip into the free music streaming pool, we’ve got several quality services to recommend. Each of the reviewed services offer Android apps and iOS apps, so you needn’t be tied to your PC to enjoy tunes. So, grab a pair of headphones, or turn up your speakers, and prepare for an entertaining time.

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