Deezer vs Spotify vs YouTube Music Key vs Tidal comparison: What is the best music streaming service?

While digital music downloads are on the decline, music streaming services are soaring in popularity, enabling you to pay a small fee each month, or even get the music for free if you can put up with advertising, and get access to huge music libraries to listen to whenever and wherever you fancy.

Spotify seems to be leading the pack when it comes to music streaming in the UK, but there are several worthy alternatives, including Deezer, which is growing in popularity. Plus, Google has launched a new service that could scare rivals, and a new service for audiophiles has arrived in the form of Jay Z-owned Tidal. Here, we put Spotify, Deezer, Tidal and YouTube Music Key head-to-head to see how they compare. See also: Spotify alternatives

Worldwide, Spotify has more than 60 million users, with 15 million of those paying for the ad-free version, while Deezer has 16 million users, with six million of those coughing up cash.

YouTube Music Key launched in November last year, and is currently still in beta. In the UK, you can register your interest on the YouTube Music Key site, but you won't get access until the service becomes more widely available. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Google Music Play, which will get you access to YouTube Music Key beta. Tidal figures aren't available yet, but we suspect the numbers are significantly smaller than the other services we're comparing here.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Music library

The most important element of a music streaming service is the music, right? So we'll start by comparing the music libraries of Deezer, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music Key. Each has millions of songs available to listen to – and in the case of YouTube Music Key, watch videos for.

Spotify has more than 30 million songs in its library, which reaches 58 countries, while Deezer has 35 million songs that reach more than 180 countries. The amount of songs available to each country varies, so it's likely that the reason for the higher song-count in Deezer's library local musicnot available for the UK market. Tidal has 25 million songs in its library and 75,000 music videos, and is currently available in 35 countries.

We did find, though, that Deezer presented some extras for some of the artists we searched for, particularly offering live albums that Spotify seemed to lack. And, as it's owned by Jay Z and co-owned or associated with many of Jay Z's big-name friends, expect exclusive content to be a big part of Tidal's appeal, from artists including Beyonce, Rihanna, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Usher and more. See also: What is Tidal?

As for Google's offering, the company states that YouTube Music Key has "millions" of songs, but we've not been able to confirm exactly how many millions there are. The library will continue to grow as long as YouTubers continue to upload videos with music tracks, though, so we expect it's rather a lot. Some songs without videos are available to listen to with a static image instead, but in the case of some artists (including Taylor Swift who retracted her songs from Spotify recently) only the singles released with videos can be found.

YouTube Music Key is currently available in beta form in the UK, US, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Ireland to those who've been invited and Google Play Music subscribers.

Deezer, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube delivered perfectly satisfactory results for every musician we searched for, so we don't think you'll be disappointed any of these services.

Plus, more songs are being added to all three services every day, so if there's something missing from the library that you were hoping to listen to, chances are it'll appear at some point in the near future.

You'll be able to add the songs you find and like to your own playlists and favourites if you choose to in all four of the services.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Design and user interface

One of the big differences between the four streaming services we're comparing here is the design and user interface, and we think we prefer Deezer overall.

We like Deezer's light, clear and simple design across both the web/desktop versions of the service and the mobile/tablet versions, and think it's easier to navigate than the dark, quite complex interfaces of Spotify and Tidal.

In fact, when we began using Tidal after long-term Spotify use, we were surprised to see just how much the web player looks like Spotify, right down to the playlist icons and the layout. 

YouTube Music Key will appeal to those already fond of and familiar with YouTube, as it uses the normal YouTube app. In its beta form, it's only available as part of the Android app and website (which makes sense as Android is Google's own software), but an iOS app is coming soon.

Not every video/song is licensed under Music Key, but those that are will be ad-free (it's the blue Ad-free icon that indicates that the video/song is part of the service), and available to listen to on your phone or tablet even when the screen is switched off. You can pause, play and skip tracks from the lock screen, too. 

We found that we were able to get stuck in immediately with Deezer and YouTube Music Key, but Spotify and Tidal both took us a bit longer to figure out. Once, we had sussed it, however, the four services became equally enjoyable to use.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Music discovery

Another big appeal of music streaming services is the discovery features. Music lovers are always looking for something new to listen to, and Deezer, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music Key offer up recommendations for their users. 

Deezer has a cool feature called Hear This (shown above), a music feed that's personalised for you. It shows you new albums and tracks from artists you listen to or add to your favourites, as well as Deezer picks based on your listening habits and playlists created by users with similar music tastes to you, so you'll never run out of tracks to listen to.

We prefer Hear This to Spotify's 'Discover' feature (shown below), which we found to be a bit hit and miss. Plus, Spotify doesn't recommend playlists in the Discover section, just artists, albums and individual tracks.

Deezer offers up 'Similar Artists' for each artist you search for, too, much like Spotify does with its 'Related Artists' tabs. Both services recommended largely the same artists during our tests.

Tidal doesn't yet have a recommendation or discovery feature quite like Deezer and Spotify's. There's playlists, which have a pre-set list of tracks tailored to a particular mood or genre, and there's also the Tidal Rising feature, introducing new artists to the spotlight, but aside from that it's featured tracks that'll be the same for everyone.

Where we found Spotify to be better for music discovery, though, is in the Browse section. It has a much easier-to-use interface than the rest of the app, too. You'll be offered an overview, top lists, genres and moods, new releases and news in the 'Browse' section of Spotify. The genres and moods feature is particularly good, offering playlists that fall under categories like "Focus" for revision sessions or "Chill" when you're having a relaxing evening in.

Tidal does offer a range of playlists to suit genres and moods, but there aren't as many choices as you'll find in Spotify and there's not a 'Browse' section like Spotify – there's only 'What's New' (shown below) which we didn't find as useful.

Deezer's 'Explore' offering is similar to Spotify's Browse, but doesn't have quite as many options to help you find what you might be looking for.

YouTube Music Key suggests playlists based on trending videos, by genre and by theme, too - "Hitting the gym," for example. As it uses the normal YouTube app/website, you'll also see suggestions based on videos you've previously watched and songs you've listened to.

However, it's important to remember that YouTube Music Key subscribers also get access to Google Play Music (and vice versa), which is a streaming service more reminiscent of Spotify, Tidal and Deezer and therefore offers better discovery options. Find out more in our Spotify vs Google Play Music comparison. 

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Radio

Deezer, YouTube Music Key and Spotify offer Radio services in addition to the music streaming features.

You'll find themed radio channels, partner radio channels and artist radio channels in Deezer, and lots of different genres available to choose from. The artist channels, for example, intelligently picks songs from the artist you've selected and similar or related artists. You'll get a limited amount of skips in the Radio feature on Deezer if you're using the free version, though.

Spotify's Radio feature is very similar to Deezer's offering up Artist Radio for the artists you like in the same way. There are also lots of genre stations to choose from. Spotify doesn't set a limit on the amount of skips you're allowed on each channel, though, so if you don't like a song that's playing you'll be able to skip right ahead to the next one, or the next one, and so on.

YouTube Music Key has its own Radio feature, too, offering mixes based on an artist or genre, giving you an infinite stream of similar songs. By using Google Play Music which comes included as part of the subscription fee, you'll also be able to create your own radio stations there based on your favourite artist, album, song or genre with unlimited skips.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Offline watching

Helpfully, all four of these music streaming services have offline options. Many YouTube Music Key videos and songs are available to download for watching and listening to offline.

Spotify Premium subscribers get the ability to download music and listen offline in high-quality, limited to 3,333 tracks that'll be available to listen to offline for up to 30 days.

You can sync albums and playlists to your device in Deezer Premium+ for listening to offline, too.

And in Tidal, the Offline Mode that lets you save music on your devices to listen to offline. It's available in both subscription plans (which we'll talk more about later), as there is no free version available. There's no offline mode for Mac or PC yet, though.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Other features

Deezer, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music Key also offer some extra features that we've not yet covered, and these features differ between the four services.

We love Spotify's 'On Tour' feature (above) which means you'll know if an artist you've searched for is playing a concert in your country any time soon. There's also a merchandise feature in Spotify, meaning you can find T-Shirts, badges, mugs and more from your favourite bands and musicians.

Social integration with Facebook is present across both Spotify, and Deezer, allowing you to see what your friends are listening to. In this instance, Spotify has a one up on Deezer thanks to the bigger listener base, which makes it more likely that more of your friends will be subscribers.

Tidal also allows you to connect with Facebook, but simply to let you share what you're listening to with your friends rather than bringing what your friends are listening to into the app for you to instantly hear.

Both Spotify and Deezer have Apps available to bring extra functionality to the service. Deezer's App Studio has more than 100 apps for anything from lyrics to chord extraction, while Spotify also has apps available in its App Finder feature on the desktop app.  The apps available are very similar here, too.

YouTube Music Key's pairing with Google Play Music means you'll also be able to add up to 20,000 purchased songs to listen to through the service, even if those songs are from iTunes.

The big selling point for Tidal, and one of the only things that sets it apart from its cheaper rivals at the moment, is the ability to listen to high-fidelity, lossless tracks. This essentially means that you'll be getting CD quality sound rather than the compressed quality of an MP3.

For the audiophiles among you, Tidal's quality offerings are broken down into Normal, High and HiFi. Normal is AAC+ 96kbps, High is AAC 320 Kbps (which is what you'll get if you sign up to Spotify's Premium subscription or Deezer's Premium+), and HiFi, which means you'll get 16bit/44.1 KHz 1411 Kbps FLAC Files.

It's worth noting, though, that without good headphones, you're not going to get the most out of Tidal's HiFi offering.  Find out which headphones are the best available in our 27 best headphones 2015 article.

Deezer actually offers a lossless HiFi option, too, but only for Sonos customers. It's called Deezer Elite, and you should get an email offering the upgrade if you start using Deezer with your Sonos speaker system. Find out more here.

Compatibility with speaker systems varies across all four of these services too, so it's worth investigating how well each will work with the speakers you've got at home.

Deezer vs Spotify vs Tidal vs YouTube Music Key comparison: Price

Spotify, YouTube Music Key and Deezer each offer free, ad-supported versions in addition to paid versions, while Tidal's subscriptions are all paid.

With the free version of Spotify, you'll get access to the entire library on mobile, tablet and computer, but you'll hear ads regularly between tracks. Plus, you'll only be able to listen to audio at a quality of 96kbit/s, which is quite poor compared with the 320kbit/s available at the top end for Premium subscribers.

Upgrading to the £9.99 per month Premium Spotify subscription will let you download music to listen to offline, and you won't hear any ads between tracks for uninterrupted listening either.

Spotify is currently offers a one month free trial of the Premium version, so you can see whether you think it's worth the £9.99 before you begin coughing up cash.

Meanwhile, Deezer's free version is not quite as good as the free version of Spotify, though a recent update means you'll now get access to the service (though it is limited) on mobile or tablet, in addition to the web. It'll come complete with ads, and is low quality audio like the free version of Spotify.

Deezer then offers an option for subscribers willing to part with their money. Deezer's Premium+ option will set you back £9.99 per month. With Premium+, you'll get access on the web, mobile and tablet, offline options, unlimited streaming with no ads and better sound quality up to 320kbit/s.

Spotify and Deezer are both available on a huge range of devices including Android, iOS, Windows, Windows Phone and OS X.

There's a free, ad-supported YouTube Music Key tier that lets you search and play full albums with high-quality audio, access a music discovery homepage and get instant playlists with YouTube Mix. YouTube Music Key is currently limited to Android and web browsers, but is coming to iOS soon. It's also priced at £9.99 per month, with access to Google Play Music included in that subscription price.

Tidal is the most expensive of the four services, with no free option available. For Tidal Premium with Normal and High sound quality and HD music videos, you'll pay £9.99. For Tidal HiFi, which offers Lossless High Fidelity sound quality, it's £19.99 per month. Both offer 30 day free trials.

Overall, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal and YouTube Music Key are all excellent music streaming services, and if you've never tried a similar service before you should definitely give one a go to see whether you like this new way of listening to, sharing and discovering music.

We prefer the design and interface of Deezer, but once you're used to it, Spotify's interface is good, too, as is Tidal's. YouTube's is familiar although we're still not fond of it.

We also prefer Deezer's 'Hear This' feature to Spotify's Discover feature, and feel that YouTube's discovery feature is quite limited in comparison unless you hop over to Google Play Music. Tidal's lack of a discovery feature is disappointing, and would put us off subscribing to the service.

But Spotify's Radio feature is better than Deezer's and YouTube Music Key only has radio as part of Google Play Music. The free version of Spotify will serve you better than the free version of Deezer or YouTube Music Key, and there's no free option for Tidal.

Plus, the number of subscribers to Spotify higher than the other services listed here (we don't know how many subscribers Tidal has yet) and social integration is great, so if you're planning on sharing the experience with friends, Spotify might be the better option.

YouTube Music Key and Tidal are the only services that offer video as part of the package, so if that's something that appeals to you it's worth investigating both, though keep in mind that Google Play Music comes bundled in the same subscription as YouTube Music Key, which is a good move from Google. You can find out more about YouTube Music Key here.

For audiophiles, Tidal is the best option, but at £19.99 per month it doesn't come cheap and it needs some serious improvement to offer the range of great features boasted by Spotify and Deezer.

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