8 music streaming services to kill your Spotify FOMO

Online music is the future and all your friends in Spotify-enabled countries keep shouting about how they can’t survive without it. Suffice to say, you’ve gone and developed a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out). Well, put that FOMO aside because we understand your pain and we have gone and found you Spotify alternatives. Some of these are more like internet radio stations, but provide great listening — and more importantly — most of them are available irrespective of location.

You can also stream music on YouTube because let’s face it, that is the world’s biggest music library but these services are pretty cool.

Note that the list offers on-demand music streaming services that are free, paid or a mixture of both. So, you can enjoy streaming your favourite tracks all day long!

Simfy Africa

Just launched in Africa, the German-based company boasts over 18-million songs in its library, including content from all four of the major record labels (Sony Music, Universal, EMI, and Warner). Users can download the Simfy app to a computer — also available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry — or use it on the web. Currently users can enjoy a free trial account but a paid version is also available.

Grooveshark

Most people already know this service but what the heck… Grooveshark is an internet service for music. It has a search engine, streaming service, and recommendation application. Users can stream and upload music that can be played immediately or added to a playlist. It’s both free and subscription based and is kinda available for Android (non-market) and iOS (jail broken), but BlackBerry users can download it from App World. The service allows users to stream or upload music that can be played immediately or added to a playlist.

iRoking

iRoking is a free Nigerian music streaming service that offers selected music from a range of African labels and artists. It claims to be Nigeria’s number one music streaming service. It is currently free and available on iOS, Android, Windows and Symbian. According to iRoking, its winning formula is through deals with artists rather than record labels. Its database is relatively small compared to some others, with just 40 000 songs from 1963 to date. The company has just signed “a few legacy labels recently and are working on digitising a whole bunch of content that has been out of circulation for years” according to the company’s CEO, Michael Ugwu.

Deezer

Deezer is a French web-based music streaming service. Here is the cool part, it allows users to listen to music online or offline. It claims to currently have 18-million licensed tracks with over 30 000 radio channels, 22-million users and 1.5 million subscribers. Deezer’s music player is flash based and it’s available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.

Rara.com

Rara.com is a subscription based music service that is available to users everywhere. The service claims to provide its users with unlimited on-demand access to more than 10 million songs via the web and Android device. The service allows you to search and play all “your favourite music and the latest releases instantly”. The site has a host of playlists and channels curated by in house DJs.

8tracks

This one is more an internet radio and social networking website than a full on music streaming service but it works with the concept of streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks — hence the name. Users can signup for a free account and listen to music with advertising or pay a U$25 subscription fee and enjoy an ad-free music experience. It’s available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone (sorry BlackBerry users, but it’s not like Symbian users are winning here either).

Jango

Available for Android and iOS, Jango is also an advertising-supported internet radio and social networking service. The site claims to be “all about making online music easy, fun and social”. The interface is pretty easy to navigate and everything is quite straightforward. The service allows users to create and share their own custom radio stations, easy peasy. A really cool feature is “Jango Airplay” which is a promotion service that gives up and coming artists “guaranteed airplay on Jango’s stations”.

Musicovery

This one is only available for iOS users, but it does earn a place on this list because it’s pretty rad. Musicovery is also a customisable internet radio. User can rate songs which will then result in a personalised programme. What’s quite cool about this service is that depending on the country the user connects from, or the country they choose, the service adapts with regards to the music catalogue (local artists on top of international artists).