As mentioned previously, I’m a cheapskate. I don’t like paid subscriptions, especially for music since I own so much of my own. Why should I pay for a Spotify account when I own hundreds of gigabytes of music? When I buy music, I usually buy it on Amazon because often Amazon CDs come with “AutoRip”, which means they give you a free download of the album in MP3 format. The side benefit of AutoRip is that they add the MP3 content to your online Amazon music library so you can play it using the Amazon music app on your phone, in your car (with CarPlay), and anywhere else you have an internet connection (e.g. Roku enabled tvs). If you buy an MP3 album instead of a physical disc, that also goes into your Amazon music library.

Note: Amazon has at least three different music apps, one a subscription model like Spotify. The plain vanilla Amazon Music is free. There’s also a music app for Prime members.

Sometimes you want to listen to music you don’t own. Thankfully, there are a number of music streaming services that do not require a paid subscription. A couple of them are even commercial free.

Pandora

Pandora is one of the oldest music streaming platforms. I used to stream it at work through a browser window. You can listen to pre-set genre stations, other Pandora users’ stations, or create your own. Setting up a station is easy: pick an artist you like and base your station on that. As songs play, select thumbs up or thumbs down to teach the algorithm your taste. Note that you can’t choose specific songs or albums to play, the algorithm chooses. The free version of Pandora is ad-supported but the ad breaks aren’t too long and obnoxious. With the free version you can skip an unknown number of songs per hour (it used to be 6 but I think that changed). In addition to music, they also support podcasts.

Pandora is available via the web (Pandora.com), smart speaker apps (Alexa and Google), iOS and Android phone apps, and on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. There’s also a Roku app so you can listen on your TV.

LITT Live (formerly Dash Radio)

LITT Live is a digital radio broadcasting platform with 80+ stations. It launched under the name Dash Radio in 2014. Each station is curated by a DJ or musician, including Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Lil Wayne, Tech N9ne, Borgore. There are no subscription fees and it’s ad-free.

The stations on LITT cover a wide range of genres. There’s a lot of rap and hip-hop but also showtunes, movie scores, jazz (traditional, modern, smooth), classical, country, disco, R&B, classic rock, alt rock, indie rock, Christian rock, yacht rock, hair bands, grunge, electronica, Latin, Polynesian, K-pop. They have a bunch of Decades stations: 1960s, 1970s, on up through 2020. They have short term pop-up stations with Christmas music. Today I’ve been listening to Ratpack — Sinatra & Friends.

My only real complaint about LITT is that the user interface could be better. The song title and artist are hard to read (small gray text on a white background) and there’s no song history.

LITT is widely supported. You can listen in a browser window (littlive.com), on smart speakers (Amazon Alexa, Sonos), on iOS and Android devices, on Roku enabled tvs, and on a whole bunch of car apps (Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, MirrorLink, Ford Sync, AT&T Connected Car).

SomaFM

SomaFM has been around almost as long as Pandora. It has an eclectic mix of stations with an emphasis on downtempo ambient and electronica music. There are 40+ stations, including:

• Groove Salad — ambient, downtempo instrumentals
• Lush — downtempo, mellow female vocals
• Secret Agent — spy music for your dangerous lifestyle
• Illinois Street Lounge — bachelor pad & exotica, mostly vintage
• Seven Inch Soul — vintage soul from 45s
• Left Coast 70s — mellow 70s album rock, Laurel Canyon, yacht rock
• Underground 80s — UK synth pop, new wave
• Indie Pop Rocks! — indie pop tracks
• Beat Blender — deep house and downtempo chill
• The Trip — progressive house/trance
• Folk Forward — indie folk, alt folk, folk classics
• Thistle Radio — Celtic
• Boot Liquor — Americana, roots
• Digitalis — “digitally affected analog rock” (whatever that means)
• Suburbs of Goa — desi, worldbeat
• Heavyweight Reggae — reggae, ska, rocksteady; deep cuts
• Metal Detector — black, doom, prog, sludge, thrash, post, stoner, crossover, punk, industrial
• Covers — all covers all the time
• The In-Sound — 60s/70s europop “where psychedelic melodies meet groovy vibes”
• Tiki Time — tiki and vintage island music
• Bossa Beyond — bossa nova, samba and beyond

In addition to the above, they have more downtempo ambient stations, police scanner audio, NASA audio, IDM, vaporwave, dubstep, a Burning Man station. They also have seasonal channels for a limited time (e.g. Christmas, Halloween).

SomaFM is entirely user-supported and commercial free. They sell t-shirts and coffee mugs to stay afloat and gratefully accept donations. There’s a phone app (iOS and Android) that costs $8 (worth it). With the phone app you can stream Soma in cars equipped with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. You can also stream to smart speakers (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomePod) and Roku enabled tvs. And of course, you can listen in a browser window (somaFM.com). I listen mostly via the phone app streaming to speakers in my bedroom but we often park the tv on the somaFM Roku channel so the Bose soundbar doesn’t time out.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the internet radio options out there. If you know of a great free music streamer that I didn’t cover, let me know in the comments.