If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably have a hard time commuting to and from anywhere without a pair of headphones or earphones on, blasting tunes to drown out the hustle and bustle of the city around you. Thanks to technology, long gone are the days where we’d have to carry a separate device for all your music; from music player to camera, to computer and social media, smartphones can do pretty much everything.
Of course, even technology has its limitations. For all of the wonders that music streaming apps have brought to millions of people all over the world, they fail whenever Wi-Fi isn’t available, like when you go through a tunnel or a dead spot in your city. At best, it’s a minor inconvenience that lasts just a few seconds; at worst, it’s a constant problem, especially if you live in a place without Wi-Fi.
Luckily, music app companies predicted this and built their apps to support Wi-Fi free playback. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best music apps that don’t need Wi-Fi. Here are our favorites:
Spotify Music
Probably one of the most popular music players out there, Spotify comes in either Free or Premium versions. Don’t worry, the Premium version doesn’t cost much at all (around $10 a month), and while you can still make do without it (the Free version is still exceptional), a music player without Wi-Fi is essential for people who live in low Wi-Fi or no Wi-Fi areas. Spotify does this by downloading the songs into your phone’s hard drive, so make sure you have enough room.
Compared to its competitors, Spotify premium offers a lot more features: unlimited song skips, playlist creation and management, no ads, and the best feature, downloading music for offline play. You can also control the audio quality when downloading and streaming songs so you can save on data charges.
Apple Music
Unlike Spotify, Apple Music is strictly subscription-only, although it only costs $9.99 a month (or $14.99 a month for a Family account that can support six people). None the less, it’s still one of the better music apps out there, especially if you want to play music without internet.
Apple Music allows you to play music without Wi-Fi by requiring you to create a playlist in advance. It then saves these songs in your smartphone’s cache, which means you’ll have to make space beforehand. Unlike Spotify, you can’t share your playlist with your friends. While that might not bother some people, I personally enjoy seeing what my friends listen to whenever I want to take a break from my usual routine.
But that’s ok; Apple Music has a fairly decent radio feature that lets you listen to songs that are similar to the songs you regularly listen to. Spotify does have this feature, but Apple Music’s matching algorithm does a better job, in my opinion.
SoundCloud
Less of a music streaming app and more of a social media platform for music distribution, SoundCloud is more about sharing independent artists, little-known singers, and people trying to make it big in the music scene. Beyond that, it also has a decent collection of podcasts and news casts, most of which come from independent casters. The app also allows you to listen to music without internet; just download the song of your choice and you’ll be able to listen to it using SoundCloud’s offline mode.
SoundCloud also lets you upload your own songs or podcasts and is a great way to get traction for your burgeoning singing career. But if all you want is to listen to indie music, SoundCloud is the best app to use: it lets you search songs by specific genres, subscribe to friends to see what they upload or listen to, and find currently trending songs. SoundCloud is completely free and lets you access all its features as soon as you finish downloading.
Google Play Music
Google’s proprietary music app, Google Play Music is more than just a music player; it’s an entire music organization system. Leveraging Google’s search engine feature, Play Music allows you to search for tracks across all possible channels, purchase songs from different artists from different genres, and even share your favorite song with friends and family. It’s a music player, social media app, and search engine, all rolled into one neat package.
Speaking of neat package, Google Play Music probably has the most aesthetically pleasing and intuitive user interface out there. It uses a pleasing color scheme that’s easy on the eyes, retractable side menus, and large navigation icons to help you get around the app easier.
As with our other entries, offline play is available with Google Play Music; just simply download the songs and save them on your smartphone’s HDD or SD card. Once it’s downloaded, Google Play Music then organizes your songs by artist, genre, albums, or however you wish to organize it using the app’s built-in system. Google Play Music also has a radio streaming feature that recommends songs and artist to users based on your current music library. It’s a little better than Spotify radio, but it’s a couple of steps down from Apple Music.
Google Play Music’s radio also features curated stations that stream various things like top charting songs, new releases, and podcasts, among others. Stations can be saved, and if they have an offline playlist, you can also listen to their music without internet.
Amazon Music
One of the newest music apps out there, Amazon Music comes with a song and artist catalog of more than a million tracks, complete with unlimited streaming and zero ads forever. However, the service is only available to Amazon Prime members, with membership fees at $119 per year (don’t worry though, that only translates to about $13 a month). There is, however, a 30-day free trial period that lets you experience all the features of Prime for a month.
Once you’re a Prime subscriber, you’ll gain unlimited access to both Prime video and Amazon Music. The Amazon database is very impressive, with a wide breadth of artists, genres, and songs in their library. All songs you download will immediately be saved on your phone, where the Amazon Music app arranges it by your choice of system. What separates this from other apps is its ability to let users choose the size of the cache it saves to. Amazon Music also saves your library on its cloud, which means you can restore deleted songs whenever you want.
You can play music without internet once you have the songs in your cache. Because it works for both Android and Apple, you can choose a folder in your SD card for larger storage space.
TIDAL
The application allows you to listen to music in High Fidelity quality as well as to watch high-definition video clips.
You will get access to more than 40 million tracks that play with high sound quality and 130 000 music videos with high definition and crystal clear pictures. You can read music articles and various interviews. You can download albums, tracks to be able to listen to your favorite music anywhere, anytime. Create your music collection, share it with your friends on social networks, browse your favorite artist’s biography, customize the playback queue, etc.
The world’s first high-fidelity music and video streaming app, TIDAL features lossless audio and high-definition music videos in its library, as well as TIDAL-exclusive content such as special features on particular songs and artists, a free digital magazine written and curated by professional music journalists, and of course, offline play.
Out of all the music players in this list, TIDAL is probably the most comprehensive in terms of customization: TIDAL users can customize playback queues, recommendations, music journal entries, library organization, and more.
Downloaded songs are saved directly onto your device and can be accessed at any time. It’s also saved on the TIDAL cloud, so you have the option to listen to your music without internet or with internet.