Spotify prices are rising in the UK, here are 6 cheaper music streaming services

Spotify is one of the most expensive music streaming services in the world, and it’s about to get even more expensive for UK users. After raising prices in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, and several European countries in August, the company is now making the same increase in the UK.

The music streaming service began emailing premium customers on October 25 to announce that the price of all its plans except the student tier would be increasing across the UK. Starting in November, individual subscriptions will increase by £1 to £12.99 per month. Duo plans will increase from £16.99 to £17.99 per month, while Family plans will see the steepest increase, taking subscriptions from £19.99 to £21.99 per month.

This is the second year in a row that Spotify prices have increased in the UK. Last year, the music streaming service increased the price of an individual subscription from £10.99 to £11.99 per month.

Spotify Recently Added lossless streaming In its service, users get to toggle on high-quality 24-bit FLAC audio. But while Spotify has finally caught up with CD-quality audio, rivals like Apple Music and Amazon Music include even higher-resolution tracks (up to 24-bit/192kHz), and from November, will be cheaper too. Spotify still doesn’t support Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 spatial audio. If you are thinking about moving away from a music platform and want to Cancel your Spotify Premium subscriptionWe’ve rounded up the best, cheapest Spotify alternatives to subscribe to right now.

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Amazon Music Unlimited is the retail giant’s premium music streaming service category. With a subscription, you can listen to over 100 million songs ad-free, offline and with unlimited skips. You also get access to HD (CD-quality, 16-bit/44.1kHz) tracks from Amazon Music, as well as Ultra HD high-res audio that goes up to 24-bit/192kHz, plus spatial audio.

At the beginning of the year, Amazon raised the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service, increasing the individual subscription fee to £11.99, but it’s still cheaper than Spotify. But – and this is a big but – if you’re subscribed to Amazon Prime (£10.99,) its individual subscription is £2 cheaper than Spotify. Amazon.co.ukWhile Spotify has now added lossless, Amazon still has high-resolution lossless, as well as spatial audio.

If you’re a Prime member and don’t subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you already get free access to the entire Amazon Music catalog, but you can only listen in shuffle mode and usually have to choose songs from Amazon’s all-access music playlists. if you have a fire tv stick or one amazon echo smart speakerSingle-device subscriptions are also available for £5.99 per month.

Delete all the cat videos, low-resolution vlogs and memes, but keep all the songs, albums, remixes, live performances and music videos, then add some recommended playlists. That’s YouTube Music Premium in a nutshell.

If you subscribe to the service, you’ll be able to play music in the background whenever your phone’s screen is locked or you’re using a different app. It also removes ads and enables offline play. For an additional £2 per month (£2 more than Spotify Premium) you can get the full YouTube Premium, which removes ads from all YouTube videos, watches using picture-in-picture mode, and listens to YouTube videos when your screen is off.

A YouTube Music Premium subscription is cheaper than all of Spotify’s plans, with the individual plan costing £2 less, and the family plan costing £5 less.

Tidal differentiates itself as a streaming service with high-fidelity sound. brainchild of jay zIt presents itself as offering flawless music that sounds exactly as the artists intended, and it Pays artists the best fees per play,

The streaming service features over 110 million tracks, special releases, interviews and music videos. Tidal simplified its pricing structure in April 2024, merging its two former tiers (HiFi and HiFi Plus) into a single subscription.

All users pay £10.99 per month and gain access to the platform’s full suite of premium features, including high-resolution FLAC audio and Dolby Atmos. While Spotify has nailed down lossless CD-quality, Tidal offers the high-fidelity format at an affordable monthly price.

Last year, Tidal also launched the DJ extension, which lets users mix songs and individual stems, giving them access to advanced BPM metadata within apps like Rekordbox, Serato, and DJ Pro. This costs an extra £9 on top of the regular Tidal subscription.

It’s no surprise that Apple Music is Apple’s ad-free music streaming service. It features over 100 million tracks, over 30,000 curated playlists, live radio and original shows, concerts and special events. Its entire catalog can be heard in lossless high-resolution audio, and spatial audio can be enabled on its tracks. You can download up to 100,000 songs to play offline, and you also get access to Apple Music Classical – the new classical-only service – as well as Apple Music Sing, which is Apple’s karaoke mode.

In October 2022, Apple increased the price of its Apple Music subscriptions. An individual subscription currently costs £2 less than a Spotify Personal subscription, while the Family tier costs £5 cheaper. Although Spotify now offers CD-quality lossless streaming, Apple has high-resolution and spatial audio, and students get a free subscription to Apple TV+.

There’s also the Apple One bundle, which gives you six Apple subscriptions for one low monthly price, including up to 2TB of iCloud+ storage.

In an alternate reality, Deezer could have been today’s Spotify, which launched a year before the Swedish company and had a similarly rich library of music and features. Deezer is free if you’re willing to put up with ads, but the good stuff is in its premium tier.

It has over 90 million tracks, and Deezer Premium gets rid of ads, adds offline listening and CD-quality FLAC audio. While Spotify has now become unprofitable, Deezer is now £1 less than Spotify, and it’s still cheaper if you pay annually. The service also recently introduced customizable recommendation settings, letting you fine-tune the algorithm to suit your tastes.

It is one of the first platforms to tag AI-generated music, exclude it from editorial playlists, and take a cut of the royalties for AI-based streams. While Deezer is as expensive as Spotify, if you pay for a full year’s subscription, you’ll get a 25 percent discount, making it significantly cheaper than Spotify.

Underground music fans will be very familiar with the music distribution platform SoundCloud. Launched in 2007, SoundCloud is a music streaming service for music producers, independent emerging artists, podcast creators and their listeners hoping to discover new music. It also has a massive library of 180 million tracks, mostly uploaded directly by artists.

There are two premium SoundCloud tiers. SoundCloud Go costs £5.99 per month – it gets rid of all ads and gets you unlimited offline downloads. However, Go+ costs £10.99 per month and gives you access to SoundCloud’s entire library as well as high-quality audio.

SoundCloud Go+ is still significantly cheaper than Spotify. Although there is no family plan, there is a student plan for £5.49 per month. The Go+ plan also lets you listen on three devices simultaneously.

For more content, check out our guide Best TV Streaming Services