There’s been a trend in recent years with music apps. It seems like every app developed has some form of a subscription, whether it relates to access to music, freedom to skip, or getting rid of ads. The trend has evolved, in a way, to make not having a subscription the most annoying thing ever. If you don’t have a premium membership or subscription, you have to sit through almost a full movie of ads, watch your playlists skip around to unrelated songs, and sometimes you can’t even access your music because of bad wifi.

Spotify’s ad revenue in 2023 was up to $1.7 billion. For context, after its 2011 release in the United States, after its six-month free trial period, ad revenue was $430 million. That’s a 295 percent increase. When Spotify was first released, ads were every four to seven songs.

Now, Spotify has ads every three songs, and instead of having a variety of ads in short bursts, every ad is a minimum of 30 seconds, and it’s the same three ads every time. For every three songs, you listen to about three minutes worth of ads. You basically spend a quarter of your time on Spotify listening to ads about Spotify.

Unfortunately, with the way the world works, there’s rarely a music program that doesn’t have a free and premium version. You’d be hard-pressed to find a streaming platform willing to suffer billions in losses to host popular artists without recompensation. Luckily, there are platforms with slightly less annoying forms of free versus premium subscription.

Amazon Music is a streaming platform by Amazon, like Prime Video but without the video. Premium subscriptions get you access to a certain percentage of blocked songs, unlimited skips, and the ability to listen to your playlists— and only your playlists. The app works pretty well even without Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon’s premium version, allowing you to listen to music without any ads and around six skips an hour. The app does skip around to songs that don’t necessarily fit with whatever you chose to listen to, instead diverting to popular songs that might be similar, but don’t actually fit the vibe of your playlist or favorite artist.

Apple Music is mostly available on Apple products, hence the name, and requires users to either buy a subscription or buy and download all of their favorite songs. It’s also technically available on Androids, Samsungs, etcetera, but users have to jump through extra hoops that usually just aren’t worth it. Apple Music has no commercials, unlimited skips and a fairly large library of songs. While there’s no truly free version, there’s also no tiers of subscription. If users pay for it, users get it all. Without an Apple Music subscription, users may buy all of the songs they want, which generally costs more than just buying the subscription. No matter which version, songs can be listened to with or without wifi.

YouTube is a well-known, well-loved video platform that allows users from around the world to post basically anything, including music that is otherwise unreleased. YouTube Premium gets you access to music and videos without ads, and most importantly, allows you to listen without having the app open and pulled up. Besides the mildly annoying and battery-draining factor of keeping YouTube open at all times, not having the premium version doesn’t really affect the experience. YouTube has probably the least amount of ads in any streaming service. You have unlimited access to all songs, and there’s no skip limit regardless of premium status. If you can lock your screen on open, all you have to do is pick your favorite playlist and you’re set for hours of music and videos, for free.

Despite trashing Spotify for all it’s worth on the daily, it is a rather useful app for listening to your favorite tunes. The premium membership allows users to listen to nonstop music with no ads, download songs for listening off of wifi, and skip songs with no limit. Users can also pick the order in which they listen to songs, instead of relying on random shuffle, which can get annoying when you just want to listen to that one song. Unlike YouTube Music, you don’t have to have the app open at all times, and unlike Amazon Music, you can listen to what you want without it skipping around to random playlists. However, without premium, you are forced to sit through the aforementioned 30 ads an hour, you only get six skips an hour, and the app tends to be finicky in spotty wifi.