Spotify’s prices are going up 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 pricier for UK users. After raising prices across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific and several European countries in August, the company is now rolling out the same increase in the UK.

The music streaming service began emailing Premium subscribers on 25 October to announce that all of its plans, except the student tier, will increase in price across the UK. Starting in November, individual subscriptions will rise by £1 to £12.99 per month. Duo plans will be bumped up from £16.99 to £17.99 per month, while family plans will see the sharpest increase, taking a subscription from £19.99 to £21.99 per month.

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

Spotify recently added lossless streaming to its service, letting users toggle on higher-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-res tracks (up to 24-bit/192kHz), and from November, will be cheaper as well. Spotify still doesn’t support Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 spatial audio either. If you’re thinking of switching away from the music platform and want to cancel your Spotify Premium membership, we’ve rounded up the best, cheaper Spotify alternatives to subscribe to right now.

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

At the start of the year, Amazon hiked the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service, increasing the individual membership fee to £11.99, but that’s still cheaper than Spotify. But – and this is a big but – its individual subscription is £2 cheaper than Spotify’s if you’re subscribed to Amazon Prime (£10.99, Amazon.co.uk). While Spotify’s added lossless now, Amazon still has higher-res lossless, as well as spatial audio.

If you’re a Prime member and don’t subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get free access to all of Amazon Music’s catalogue already, but you can only listen in shuffle mode and usually have to pick songs from Amazon’s all-access music playlists. If you own a Fire TV stick or an Amazon Echo smart speaker, there is also a single-device subscription available for £5.99 a month.

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Strip out all the cat videos, low-res vlogs and memes but keep all the songs, albums, remixes, live performances and music videos, then throw in 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 the ads and enables offline play. For an extra £2 per month (£2 more than Spotify Premium) you can get full YouTube Premium, which removes ads from all YouTube videos, watch using picture-in-picture mode, and listen to YouTube videos with your screen switched off.

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

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Tidal sets itself apart as a streaming service with high-fidelity sound. The brainchild of Jay-Z, it bills itself as offering lossless music that sounds the way the artists intended it, and it pays artists one of the best fees per play.

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

All users pay £10.99 per month and get access to the platform’s full suite of premium features, including hi-res FLAC audio and Dolby Atmos. While Spotify has caught up with CD-quality lossless, Tidal offers higher-fidelity formats for a cheaper monthly price.

Last year, Tidal also launched the DJ Extension, which lets users mix songs and separate stems, giving them access to enhanced BPM metadata within apps like rekordbox, Serato and DJ Pro. It costs an additional £9 on top of a regular Tidal subscription.

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Apple Music is, unsurprisingly, Apple’s ad-free music streaming service. It has more than 100 million tracks, over 30,000 curated playlists, live radio and original shows, concerts and exclusives. Its entire catalogue can be listened to in lossless hi-res 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 subscription. An individual membership currently costs £2 less than a Spotify individual membership, while the family tier is £5 cheaper. Although Spotify now offers CD-quality lossless streaming, Apple has hi-res and spatial audio, and students get a subscription to Apple TV+ for free.

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

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

It has more than 90 million tracks, and Deezer Premium gets rid of the ads, adds offline listening and CD-quality FLAC audio. While Spotify has now caught up with lossless, Deezer is now £1 less than Spotify, and is still cheaper if you pay annually. The service also recently rolled out customisable recommendation settings, letting you fine-tune the algorithm to suit your taste.

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

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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 up-and-coming artists, podcast producers and their listeners, hoping to discover new music. It also has a giant 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 the ads and you get unlimited offline downloads. However, Go+ costs £10.99 per month and gets you access to SoundCloud’s entire library, as well as higher-quality audio.

SoundCloud Go+ is still significantly cheaper than Spotify. While it doesn’t have a family plan, there is a student plan for £5.49 per month. The Go+ plan also lets you listen on up to three devices at once.

For more content, check out our guide to the best TV streaming services