13 Best Free Music Apps for iPhone (2023)

Once you have the app(s) you want, connect your iPhone to a bluetooth speaker and enjoy. Just close the windows if you go with a speaker in the shower.

Spotify

The biggest name in music streaming, Spotify has more users around the world than any other service. It has a huge music catalog, cool sharing and social features, and Pandora-style radio stations. It recently 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 $10 per month to use Spotify on iOS devices, there's now 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 $10 Premium subscriptionis required.With that, you can avoid the ads, save music for offline listening, and enjoy music in a higher-quality audio format than withthe free tier.

Pandora

Pandora is one of the most downloaded free music apps on the App Store because it's simple and works well. 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.

With a gigantic database of music tastes and relationships powering it, Pandora is a terrific tool for discovering new music.

The free version of Pandora lets you create stations. However, you have to listen to ads, and it limits the number of times you can skip a song in an hour. The $4.99 per month Pandora Plus removes ads, lets you listen to four stations offline, removes all limits on skips and replays, and offers higher-quality audio. For $9.99 a month, Pandora Premium offers all of those features, plus the ability to search for and listen to any song, make playlists, and listen offline.

iHeartRadio

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 youcan 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 $4.99 per month iHeartRadio Plus subscription lets you search for and listen to virtually any song, provides unlimited song skips, and lets you immediately replay a song you heard on a radio station.

If that's not enough, iHeartRadio All Access ($9.99 per month)adds full offline listening, gives you the ability to listen to any song in the Napster music library, and lets you create unlimited playlists.

Apple Music

The Music app comes pre-loaded on every iPhone. You can unlock its power by using the Apple Music streaming music service.

Apple Music delivers virtually the entire iTunes Store to your computer and iPhone for $10 a month (or $15 for families of up to six). If you don't mind missing out on features like lossless audio, on-screen lyrics, and music videos, you can also sign up for the Voice Plan, which only costs $5 a month. A 30-day free trial lets you try it out before you sign up.Save songs for offline listening, create and share playlists, follow artists, and more.

The service includesa Radio service, featuring the Beats 1 station. Beats 1 is analways-on, worldwide streaming radio station programmed by top DJs, musicians, and tastemakers.Besides Beats 1, Radio includes aPandora-style music service that builds playlists based on the songs or artists you like.

Apple Music offers all the features you could want in a streaming app, and it's right on your phone.

YouTube Music

While most people think of it as a video site, YouTube is one of the most popular places for listening to music online.Think of all the music videos and full albums you find on the site. Playing some of those songs and videos is counted towards the Billboard sales charts.

YouTube Music lets you start with a song or video you choose and creates stations and playlists based on that song. Like other apps on this list, stations learn your taste over time to serve up more music you'll like.

Upgrade by subscribing to YouTube Premium for $12.99 per month toremove ads from the app, download songs and videos for offline playback, and play music when your phone's screen is locked.

TuneIn

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.

Signup for the TuneIn Premium service—$9.99 per month as an in-app purchase or $7.99 per month directly from TuneIn—and you'll get a lot more. Included in Premium are more live sports, over 600 commercial-free music stations, over 60,000 audiobooks, and 16 language-learning programs. And it removes ads (though not necessarily from the radio streams).

Amazon Music

Lots of people use Amazon Prime, but the Amazon Music service is probably less well known. If you subscribe to Prime, there's a lot in the Amazon Music app to check out.

Amazon Prime Music lets youstream a catalog of over 2 million songs, playlists, and radio stations. The service is ad-free and included in your Prime subscription. Plus, you can sign up for a family plan with six users.

The music you bought from Amazon—both as MP3 downloads and, in some cases, as physical media—is available for streaming and download.

Upgrade to a full-fledged streaming service by subscribing to Amazon Music Unlimited. The $9.99 a month service ($7.99 a month for Prime members) gives you access to tens of millions of songs, playlists, and radio stations. It also lets you download songs for offline listening.

All users of the Amazon Music app get a cool, free bonus: Alexa. The Amazon voice-driven digital assistant, which powers its line of Echo devices, is integrated into the app and delivers all of the Alexa features and abilities to your phone.

SoundCloud

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 andsocial networking.

The free version of SoundCloud lets you access 120 million tracks and create playlists. The $5.99 per month SoundCloud Go tier adds offline listening and removes ads. Upgrade to SoundCloud Go+, which costs $12.99 a month, to unlock access to over 30 million additional songs.

Uforia

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 65 Latin radio stationsas 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 and a car mode that presents the key features of the app in a larger format for easy access while driving. Unlike many other apps on this list, all features are available for free; there are no upgrades.

Spinrilla

Streaming the official major-label releases from record companies on services like Apple Music or Spotify is great. Still, it's not the only place where new music debuts. If you're into hip-hop, you know that there are tons of great mixtapes that come out before official albums are released.

Spinrilla is your way to access those mixtapes without searching your local record shops and street corners.This free app delivers new releases and trending songs, lets you comment on music, share it, and download songs for offline playback.

The free version of the app includes ads.Upgrading to a Pro membership to remove those ads from the experience is a bargain at $0.99 per month.

8tracks Radio

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 hasads.

8tracks Plus, the paid version, removes ads, delivers unlimited listening, cuts out interruptions between playlists, and lets you illustrate your playlists with GIFs. Plus is free for the first 14 days, then it costs$4.99 per month or $39.99 per year for a subscription.

LiveXLive

LiveXLive, formerly Slacker Radio, is a free music app that provides access to hundreds of radio stations from nearly every genre. 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 of the service offer more features. The $3.99 per month Plus version removes ads and skip limits, lets you listen to stations offline, customize ESPN Radio, and enjoy high-quality 320 Kbps streaming.

At $9.99 per month, the Premium subscription delivers the already-mentioned features, plus the ability to stream songs and albums on demand like Apple Music or Spotify, offline listening of that music, and the ability to create playlists.

Was this page helpful?

Thanks for letting us know!

Tell us why!