College students are more willing to pay for music streaming services than non-students, according to a Monmouth University analysis of Music \Watch Inc.’s Annual Music Study, which surveyed 5000 Americans 13 and over, including over 700 college students (Crupnick, R., 2015). The study revealed that 3 out of 4 college students (77 percent) found some feature that would motivate them to pay for a premium music streaming service compared to 46 percent of overall streaming users (Crupnick, R., 2015). Although there are numerous streaming options to choose from; only a choice few have what it takes to join the list of the best. Below is an overview from the literature of the top streaming services preferred by college age students and a description of what they offer to the student user.  

Spotify

Before music streaming you might have been guilty of using file sharing sites like Napster, Limewire. By doing that it cost the music industry millions of dollars, because you not paying for the songs. Daniel Ek is the CEO of Spotify. Spotify started off as a small company. The platform was developed in 2006 due to the growing problem of piracy in the music industry. this led to the launch of Spotify in 2007 (BBC News 2018). Spotify is known for its free music streaming, for some Spotify is hands down the most fav music streaming app. With Discover weekly and Spotify connect, it seems as if this service Is coming of age and elevating with its users. Though there are many other music streaming services that come to mind, there is only one that consistently delivers, Spotify (BBC News 2018). Spotify is popular despite being in competition from Apple Music, Tidal, and other music streaming services. One reason that Spotify has remained so popular is that it remains true to its roots, by providing many choices to choose from, while still adding new features. As of June 2018, Spotify has grown from 38 million to 57 million in just a year. Spotify gives you 30 days free trial before having you pay for the service (BBC News 2018).

Apple Music

Apple Music did not reach the public until June 8 2015, but did not launch until June 30 of 2015. New subscribers get three months free before the service become paid only. Apple music has been shared with over 100 countries worldwide. Apple Music was just music, but in the 2016 they began to go into video, offering user to watch the videos of the favorite artist. Although Apple was created by Steve Jobs, in 2014 apple bought Beats Music which made the Beats CEO Ian Rogers accountable for iTunes (CNET 2018). Apple Music also has a modified version of iTunes Radio, which helps user create an A La Carte selections of what they would like to hear in their everyday experiences. As of Feb 4,2018, apple music has over 30 million subscribers, coming in a distant second to Spotify having 70 million. Apple music is similar to Spotify by making their services $10 a month or $5 a month if you are a student. Apple also has a family plan where you can add up to six family members, and share music amongst each other. (CNET 2018). Apple music’s main focus is to serve its listeners, in the app it has a tab called “for you” where you can go and create musical playlist for you just by answering  a couple of questions about yourself, like what is your favorite genre of music, and what artist do you listen to. Based off that info apple creates you own personal playlist based off what you entered.

Pandora

When Pandora first began in the year 2000, it was called Savage Beast Technologies. Pandora was founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren (Startup Grind 2018).  Pandora’s main focus is to create special station for each user. The magical thing about Pandora is that it knows what every song in the world sounds like, and if user loves a song it would generate a radio with songs that sound similar (Startup Grind 2018). Pandora has over 50 million active listeners as of today. Pandora is different from the other music streaming services like Apple music, and Spotify, because they let you choose the songs you want to listen to on demand as in Pandora it doesn’t allow you to choose the song you want to listen to whenever you want to. (Startup Grind 2018). Although Pandora is free you still get interrupted by many ads, unless you pay for a subscription. In 2015 Pandora had a big loss of $170 million, over the course of the next year that number doubled. By 2017 Westergren thought he could turn Pandora to a more profitable company, but he failed. In that same year Sirius XM offered to buy Pandora for $3.5 million, but Pandora CEO’s thought it was worth more than that. Sirius XM backed out of the deal calling Pandora “overvalued” (Startup Grind2018).

Amazon Music

Amazon music is an online music store operated by Amazon. Amazon launched in 1995, as a website that only sold books. Founder John Bezos knew that eventually Amazon would be an everything store. By the year of 1998 Amazon started selling CD’s and DVDs, with the music section launching over 100,000 titles. By the year of 2016 Amazon music was released in the United States. You can access millions of songs through amazon music. If you’re already an amazon prime member  it is only $7.99 a month for amazon music per month, but if you’re a student it is only $4.99 a month With amazon music you can create your own playlist fit just for you , and if you don’t have the time the time to make your own ,amazon has experts who can build you playlists for any mood you’re in, or an special occasion. Amazon focus is to make sure their users get the most out of their membership (Ong,T. 2017).

Tidal

Tidal launched on March 30, 2015. It is a global music streaming platform that has over 60 million songs in its catalog and over 240,000 high quality videos, offering passionate music fans both a premium and high-fidelity sound quality, along with videos, and curated editorial content. TIDAL is currently owned by Shawn Carter most might know him as Jay-Z, and many other artists like Nicki Minaj, Joule, Alicia Keys the list goes on. TIDAL is uniquely positioned to create more value for fans, and a stronger artist-fan connection. Jay-Z said that TIDAL was made for the future of the music industry, if you are a young artist, TIDAL offers a way where you can post your projects and share them with other subscribers. TIDAL way to stay relevant with a younger demographic by giving students a 50% discounted subscription. If a student subscribes to Tidal using their Edu emails address, they will only pay $4.99 per month. TIDAL has over 3 million paid subscribers. Compared to the other music streaming service listed TIDAL is the only one that does not have radio station (Fleischer, A. 2015).