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8 of Our Favorite Free Music Apps for iPhone

Catch up on the latest releases or listen to podcasts and familar favorites with these non-paying options

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You don't have to buy individual songs or albums. Instead, sign up for a free subscription to one of these services and stream music straight from your iPhone.

While all these apps are free, some require a paid subscription for additional features.

User-friendly interface.

Spotify Singles, podcasts, and other exclusives.

Enormous library with curated streams playlists.

Can't skip tracks in the free version.

Limited to basic audio quality.

The free account is ad-supported.

Spotify is one of the biggest names in music streaming and has a huge music catalog, cool sharing and social features, and Pandora-style radio stations. It also added podcasts to its collection—including many that are exclusive to Spotify—making it a go-to destination for all kinds of media, not only music.

While iPhone owners used to pay to use Spotify on iOS devices, there's a free tier that lets you shuffle music and playlists without a subscription (you'll still need an account). You will have to listen to ads with this version, though.

To unlock all the features of Spotify, the Premium subscription is required. With that, you can avoid the ads, save music for offline listening, and enjoy music in a higher-quality audio format than with the free tier.

Personalized based on song, artist, or genre.

Easy to find new music and podcasts.

Music library contains over 30 million songs.

The free version is ad-supported.

Need subscription to remove ads and use offline.

No live content.

Pandora is one of the most downloaded free music apps on the App Store because it's simple and works well. With a gigantic database of music tastes and relationships powering it, Pandora is a terrific tool for discovering new music.

It uses a radio-style approach, where you enter a song or artist, and it creates a station of music you'll like based on that choice. Refine the stations by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to each song, or add new artists or songs to a station.

The free version of Pandora lets you create stations and offers limited skips. But the two higher paid memberships will remove ads, offer higher-quality audio quality, and give you offline listening access. The highest tier provides no restrictions on these perks and adds the ability to make and share playlists.

iHeartRadio

Live radio channels at any time or place.

Stations include music, news, talk, and comedy.

Full access to a podcast library.

Limited music library.

Requires subscription to skip or listen to songs on demand.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018.

The name iHeartRadio gives a major hint as to what you'll find in this app: a lot of radio. iHeartRadio delivers live streams of radio stations from across the country. If you love the traditional radio experience, you'll probably love this app.

But that's not all it does. In addition to music stations, you can also tune into news, talk, sports, and comedy stations. There are also podcasts available in the app from iHeartRadio-affiliated sources, and you can create custom stations, Pandora-style, by searching for a song or artist.

That's all in the free app, but some upgrades deliver more features. The iHeartRadio Plus subscription lets you search for and listen to virtually any song without ads and provides unlimited song skips without ads. And the All Access plan lets you listen offline and create unlimited playlists.

Live radio from around the world.

Thousands of radio stations by location and genre.

Includes podcasts.

A subscription is required to remove ads.

Can't create on-demand stations.

The audio quality of live broadcasts varies.

With a name like TuneIn Radio, you might think this app is focused on free radio. There's a lot of radio available in TuneIn, but there's much more.

The app delivers streams of over 100,000 radio stations that offer music, news, talk, and sports. Included on those streams are some NFL and NBA games, as well as the MLB playoffs. Also available for free in the app is a giant podcast library.

Sign up for the TuneIn Premium service, and you'll get a lot more. Included in Premium are more live sports and over 600 commercial-free music stations and over 100,000 audiobooks. And it removes ads (though not necessarily from the radio streams).

Great way to discover independent artists.

Upload and promote your audio files.

Scrub to move back and forth in songs.

Library holds more new music than current hits.

Non-skippable ads in the free version.

Interface doesn't compare favorably with desktop version.

Get the well-known and widely used SoundCloud experience on your iPhone with this app. The other apps on this list simply provide you music. SoundCloud does that, but it's also a platform for musicians, DJs, and other creative people to upload and share their creations with the world.

The app doesn't allow for uploads—the SoundCloud Pulse app covers that. However, it offers access to all that music and the site's other features, including the discovery of new artists and social networking.

The free version of SoundCloud lets you access over 300 million tracks and create playlists. The SoundCloud Go tier adds offline listening and removes ads. Upgrade to SoundCloud Go+ to unlock access to over 20 million additional songs.

Available in English and Spanish.

Stations are categorized by mood.

Great selection of Latin music and radio stations.

Music is interrupted by advertisements.

Some stabilization problems; may lose internet connection.

All the apps on this list include all sorts of genres of music, including Latin music. If that's your primary interest, and you want to dig deep into it, download Uforia Musica.

The app, which can display text in English and Spanish, offers access to over 200 Latin radio stations as they broadcast live. There are also streaming-only stations that are exclusive to Uforia. Discover these channels by city, genre, and language, and locate playlists to match your moods and activities.

Cool features include saving your favorite station for easy access later, keeping up with podcasts, and downloading content for offline enjoyment. Unlike many other apps on this list, all features are available for free; there are no upgrades.

8tracks Radio

2 million+ playlists by artist, genre, or mood.

Social element based on a shared love of music.

Unlimited ad-supported free listening.

No trending section.

No unlimited skips, even with paid plan.

8tracks Radio delivers millions of user-created playlists and handcrafted playlists by experts and sponsors for every taste, activity, and mood. Provide the app with basic info about the kind of music you want to listen to or what you're doing, and it serves up a set of matching playlists.

The free version of the app delivers all the core features, including creating and sharing playlists and listening to those made by others. However, it has ads.

8tracks Plus, the paid version, removes ads, delivers unlimited listening, cuts out interruptions between playlists, and lets you illustrate your playlists with GIFs. However, you won't get unlimited skips or offline listening ability with Plus because of licensing restrictions.

LiveOne Music

High-quality, curated music programming.

Personalized recommendations.

Fun, DJ-driven shows.

The ad-supported free plan is limited to six skips per hour.

No lyrics or videos.

No family plan.

LiveOne Music, formerly Slacker Radio, is a free music app that provides access to hundreds of radio stations from nearly every genre.

The free tier gets you over 400,000 hours of podcast content and some news and sports programming too. You can also create personalized stations based on specific artists or songs and fine-tune those stations to match your tastes. 

In the free version, you need to listen to ads and are limited to skipping six songs per hour. The paid tiers remove ads and skip limits and offer more features, including offline listening and the highest audio quality, plus the ability to create and share playlists and listen on demand.

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