Five Free Music Services That You'll Love

For many of us, music is a necessity in our day to day lives. However, like the price of all necessities lately, music has been getting way too expensive! Paying twenty bucks for an album you're not entirely sure you're even going to like is an absurd ask. Luckily, free music services that make finding new jams and listening to the classics exist, and are only a click a way! No, I'm not referring to dodgy websites that ask you to enter your credit card details in even though they're "free." The services listed below are easy to use, completely legal and most importantly of all, absolutely free of charge.

Pandora Radio:
Pandora radio is an excellent service for those looking to broaden their musical horizons and discover new bands, or perhaps entire new genres. The application allows you to install 'radios' based on your pre-existing favourite tracks. After that all you have to do is kick back, plug your headphones in and let Pandora take you on a musical journey. It will play you music you already like, as well as some new tunes that are picked based on your interests. The service will also suggest artists you might like, as well as particular radios you might enjoy. A long with this, Pandora provides a brief description of each track and a small biography dedicated to every band or artist. Unfortunately, Pandora does play adds every now and often which can sometimes be quite long and are a detriment to the overall experience, but besides this it is a flawless service, and is very worth while checking out!

Rdio (US and Australia only):
Rdio is a solid music service, though without paying the $4 a month for subscription you are quite limited in how you can use it. Without a basic subscription the service is add supported. Though in other applications adds can be a mere annoyance, in my personal experience the adds in Rdio can really wreck the whole experience. Despite this, the service boasts access to over 30 million tracks that are generally of a very high quality. Furthermore, the service is quite community based, which is great for interacting with other music lovers.

iTunes radio (ios only):
iTunes radio is a great service for finding new music. The user is able to start "stations," based on a particular song or artist they like. The station will play related music, as well as on occasion the song or artist it is based off. Alternatively, listeners can tune in to a station geared to a particular genre, such as the "Hard Rock station" or the "Indie station." On top of this iTunes radio features a station titled "Charting now," which pretty much just shuffles through the songs charting on iTunes. The only real detriments are the limited skips, the occasional ads and the fact you can't listen offline, but this is more than compensated by the fact that iTunes radio boasts access to over 37 million tracks, the most of any free music service to date!!

Slacker Radio (US and Canada only):
With its pandora-esque vibe and its convenient lay out, its easy for one to see why Slacker radio is in the running for the best free music service. It basically offers the same thing Pandora does, but goes above and beyond. In addition to radio stations based on specific artists and genres, it gives the listener the option to tune into local ESPN and ABC radios. Slacker is probably rhe fastest growing music service out there, with new features being added all the time. I, for one, am very excited to see where the current developers of the service take it in the oncoming years.

Spotify:
Spotify is probably the most well known of the free music services, and for a good reason. With over 20 million high quality songs available, it's incredibly hard to fault. If you use it on a phone or iPod there are limitations like a limited number of skips per hour, however if you install the service on your tablet or laptop you get complete access to all their tracks and are able to create and follow playlists. You can also listen to radios that play the hottest hits, and you can shuffle play through an artist's entire catalogue. Sign up is, of course, completely free of charge. A premium subscription can be bought for $11.99 a month, meaning adds are disabled, but honestly a single 20-30 second add every five or six songs is completely bearable.

Have a great day, and happy listening!