Tone Deaf’s Guide To Streaming Services

You’ve probably noticed in the past couple of months that your Facebook feed has been gradually taken over by a constant stream of friends listening to music on a weirdly-named new program called Spotify.

The era of music streaming is upon us, and particularly in Australia, where we’ve seen an influx of a number of similar services all popping up in the last year in what was swiftly become a highly sought after market.

You might be baffled by the plentiful choices on offer, but don’t worry, we at Tone Deaf understand – which is why we’ve sat down and analysed five of the biggest streaming services for your pleasure and peace of mind.

We put the likes of Spotify, Rdio, JB HiFi NOW, MOG and Deezer through their paces so you don’t have to.  So if you’re currently undecided on what service best suits you, or if you’re just plain curious. Just give our comprehensive guide of pros and cons a run-down and you’ll soon know your Spotifys from your Deezers.

The way it works

We’ve run each service through the same criteria to analyse what stands out (and what doesn’t) for each one.  We’ve inspected their music libraries, critiqued their design, detailed their pricing options, fiddled with their functionalities and given them a rounded mark out of 5.

We also take a look at finding their respective ‘edge’ on the competition or shaking our fingers at their limitations.

We also developed our own little music library test to analyse the various services and their collection of songs, running somewhere between the 9 million – 16million mark, we found ways to see if they’re up to scratch.

Is your favourite genre unrepresented? Is there local as well as international support? Are you going to get your Indian raga fix? We selected an extensive body of genre staples, Top 40 artists, obscure bands, music collections and key artists to test the limits and comprehensiveness of each service’s library.

So click on as we engage in the battle of the streaming services!