Tuning in: A guide to the top, budget-friendly music streaming services

On Jan. 10, music streaming service Apple Music announced that it had reached 10 million paying subscribers. While this statistic may seem staggering, the service still lags behind competitor Spotify, which has over 20 million paying subscribers.

Streaming music is bigger than ever. And there are seemingly endless possibilities to stream music beyond these two magnates, making it sometimes difficult to choose the best service. While Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora and Google Play are among the most well-known streaming services, they also all offer free streaming options (albeit temporarily in the case of Apple Music), which makes them particularly appealing to the college crowd.

And since each offers a unique service, there’s an option suitable for every student.

Spotify

Cost: Free with ads or $9.99 per month for Premium

Number of songs: Over 30 million

Industry giant Spotify has over 95 million active users, according to its website. The streaming service offers two plans — a free service with advertisements or a Premium plan, which includes personalized playlists, ad-free listening and on-demand streaming.

Emie Price, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, uses the Spotify free plan. The large music catalog was a deciding factor in choosing the streaming service for Price.

“I love the diversity that Spotify provides, whether I want to make a playlist for hardcore workouts, intense study sessions or calm afternoons,” she says. “I have several artist that I enjoy listening to, but a go-to is always One Direction, Jim Brickman, [or] John Mayer.”

Although the free option is satisfactory for some, the service has made an effort to further appeal to Millennials by offering students a discount for its Premium plan, reducing the price to $4.99 per month. Spotify Premium users also have the unique opportunity to access video and radio shows on the app, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show and the HowStuffWorks podcast.

Pandora

Cost: Free with ads or $4.99 per month for Pandora One

Number of songs: Approximately 1 million

With about 80 million users on its free plan, Pandora is one of the more popular streaming options.

It differs from its competitor Spotify in that music is separated into radio stations as opposed to playlists. So, instead of having a playlist of Beyoncé songs, Pandora users can listen to “Beyoncé Radio,” which includes songs by Queen Bey as well as those similar in style.

The radio stations are crafted using the Music Genome Project, a service that tailors music to the listener's tastes.

“It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice,” according to the Pandora website.

Skidmore College freshman Jenny Lupoff loves that she can refine her music through the service.

“I used Pandora because it was free and I found a lot of great stations on it that consistently played my favorite songs and also introduced me to new ones because of the ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ options,” Lupoff says.

Users can select the ‘thumbs up’ icon when they enjoy a song on a station and would like to hear it again, or they may click the ‘thumbs down’ icon if they dislike a song on a station. This helps Pandora further customize the user’s listening experience.

Pandora’s free-listening version has advertisements and an allotted number of skipped songs per station. But it also has an ad-free streaming plan, called Pandora One, that is budget-friendly. It costs just $4.99 per month. Pandora One subscribers can skip more songs per radio station, have access to customized radio stations and enjoy ad-free listening.

Google Play

Cost: Free plan with ads or subscription plan for $9.99 per month

Number of songs: Over 35 million

Like Pandora, Google Play Music uses a radio format. The free plan, which is not ad-free, offers stations based on activities or trends, such as Cleaning the House or Today’s Biggest Hits. Users can also customize their stations.

The subscription plan sets itself apart by offering on-demand music to subscribers both on and offline. Additionally, subscribers have ad-free radio and no limit on the number songs they can skip while listening to a given station. Users on both plans can upload music from iTunes or Windows to Google Play Music.

Although users can use Google Play’s free plan indefinitely, there’s a free, 30-day trial period for those interested in testing out the $9.99 per month plan.

“During your trial period, you can stream your favorite albums and songs, create custom playlists, and listen to commercial-free radio stations on the web and through the Google Play Music app,” according to the Google Play website.

Apple Music

Cost: Free trial for 90 days, then paid membership for $9.99 per month

Number of songs: 30 million

Although it launched in June 2015, Apple Music already has 10 million subscribers. It does not offer a standard free plan, but users can try out the service for three months at no cost.

Users must have an Apple ID to access the free trial. Once it’s activated, users have access to customizable radio stations. Those with a paid subscription can download music on demand.

The 90-day trial proved appealing to Syracuse University freshman Jackie Abrams, who says it gives her “more options.”

“Spotify has ads every song and you are only given a certain number of skips per hour. So, unless I buy Premium, I can only listen to a certain number of songs in my playlist per hour,” she says. “And as a college girl on a budget, I don't always want to pay for [Spotify] Premium to listen to music.”

Greta Bjornson is a University of Vermont student and a USA TODAY College correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.