As the title says, I'm looking for frugal music streaming options. Spotify is currently the only thing that I subscribe to, and I'm looking for a way to cancel it.
I don't want to pay another subscription fee.
I do listen to a lot of music and I want to be able to find and listen to any song by any artist. Are there any free ways of doing this without ads or individual searches?
Also, any free streaming without ads in general? Or free places to get music and create your own playlists?
Frugal Music Streaming Solutions for Car and Home
byu/greatexpectations23 inFrugal
Posted by greatexpectations23
29 Comments
Keep Laughing Forever Radio has an app. No subscription. Broadcasts 80s/90s from New Zeland. Imports and mashups I’ve never heard in the US before
Where do you expect to get ad-free music for free?
r/selfhosted
Don’t you think that if that were possible that everyone would be using that service?
Musicians deserve to eat, too.
The closest thing you’ll get is checking out your library’s digital offerings. My libraries give us free access to music on Hoopla. It won’t be unlimited but that’s asking for what legally doesn’t exist.
I realized I listen to the same music all the time anyway when I quit Spotify this year. My husband and I buy digital and physical albums. I paid a one time fee for an Android app to play my downloaded files. My husband and I store backups of all our music on computers and in the cloud so we can listen to what we want on phone or laptops.
It’s not the solution for everyone and I miss finding new songs, but this has been great for me. I even take my old streaming money to sometimes buy new mp3s.
I like the FREE app Jango Radio. Like a regular broadcast, you pick the station by type or a representative artist. The pick the playlist. Unlike broadcast radio, there are no ads or DJs. When driving away from home, you don’t have station fade or disappearing.
My station choice when reading is Study Jazz, no vocals, just soft piano with the volume low. Pink noise is good for naps as it cancels my tinnitus.
Go to the library and borrow or ILL whatever you want. Put it on your phone and stream to your heart’s content.
You can put an incredible amount of music in a laptop and stream it for free, libraries are loaning CDs I use the I tunes app to copy it most sound systems have Bluetooth available it just takes a little effort.
Radio garden
It’s a free website and a free app supported by commercials.
It plays music from radio stations ALL OVER THE WORLD. Just close your eyes and spin the globe, and listen to wherever it lands. I was shocked to find out 20% of the music being played everywhere is American pop! That’s exactly what I was trying to get away from. Keep trying new countries until you find a few you like. For me it’s Russia, Finland, Venezuela, and South Korea.
https://radio.garden/
Frankly, in the car and house I listen to the *gasp* radio. I have 4 stations I go between in the car. At home I do free radio streaming on my phone.
Sure, you don’t get to pick the songs, but it’s free.
You’re asking for people to make music for free so that may need to be an attitude shift towards artists. There is no justification for stealing from artists, no matter how frugal.
That said, if your library offers access to Hoopla, they have a ton of music available, though you’d need to “borrow” albums which are available for 7 days.
I am a big music person and identify with my playlists, so I can understand how this one could be a difficult one lol
—If you’re ok with the subscription cost once in awhile, I usually wait until there’s an occasion to subscribe (like having people over). I will subscribe and immediately cancel so that it doesn’t auto-renew the following month. Then, once that month is over I’m usually too lazy to resubscribe or don’t care enough and will end up listening to free Spotify with ads. I have probably paid for 4 months of Spotify versus 12 months with this method in 2025.
My library also uses Freegal Music. You get streaming and up to 6 songs to download a week. It’s not the best, there’s not necessarily modern pop tunes that just came out. But, it does the job if you just need something to listen to. I usually use the free Spotify with ads if I want to listen to something current.
Also – I’ve been reading a lot about overstimulation and impact on the human nervous system. So I guess I want to add, silence could also be a good thing 😊 and it’s 🆓!
Honestly, paid streaming is the frugal choice compared physical media.
Plexamp.
Free, but can be augmented with paid upgrades
Call them and ask for a discounted rate. You can do this with nearly any subscription service.
On demand and ad free are premium offerings, so those you have to pay for, anything free will have ads and limited options.
Focusing on eliminating service fees, first, most public libraries offer one or more streaming services to cardholders, and a library card should be free. Secondly, look into anything else you currently subscribe to, and see if it has a music offering, namely Amazon Prime and some Apple services are ones I’ve seen.
After several trials I found that Spotify was far and away the best offering for customization, expansive catalog, and no ads. You also get some audiobooks through them now, which is added value. Good luck finding what works for you.
Rip MP3s on computer from cd and transfer to your phone. Sincerely, Gen X
I highly recommend signing up for SiriusXM – you can find 3 or 4 month free deals online by simply Googling. Set a reminder to cancel 48 hours before expiration. Login to your account and cancel – it’s quite easy. I haven’t paid for SiriusXM in over 3 years using this method.
The other solution is terrestrial radio – a lot of stations have additional “HD” channels, offering strictly music on them. Most modern cars can get these channels, otherwise you would need an updated head unit in your vehicle.
Public Libraries have cd rooms you can play,,,maybe.
Go to a used CD store and go old school. You can rip them and store them on your phone or if you’re smart there is a way to set up vlc with a nas so you can access it remotely.
i use youtube premium because it covers youtube music too. it’s so expensive i hate it. but music is like essential for my mental health so being able to listen to a specific track at random time of the day is important for me…
Brave browser and YouTube. Mix vigorously.
Go out and buy an album. Its 35.00/ea
Now pay 25/month or whatever for 100,000,000 songs, plus audio books for 5 people.
Spotify is an awesome deal.
I can’t believe how cheap people are
I guess nobody grew up when you paid 25.00 for 1 CD.
I still have 4k songs in Mp3 form. I never listen to them.
I don’t think disrespecting any real hardworking artist like this is something you should do, but at the end of the day it just comes down to your ethics.
If you really don’t want to pay for subscriptions but still want music. I would suggest buying the digital version of albums you really like to listen to. Services like apple music do that, you can also listen to snippets of all songs before you buy them. I get that it might not be the cheapest option, but i justify those purchases with the mindset like “is this song something i value enough that i would like to listen to it thoughtfully for a long time”
That significantly reduces the amount of music i buy. I still pay for tidal just so i can still discover new music because it would be incredibly hard to do that without a streaming service.
As for going cheaper, im pretty sure apple music monthly is still cheaper than Spotify. they also don’t fuck over the artists. In my opinion just that part is enough to get away from spotify but if you really want an answer and you read through the entire thing then you can just download a cracked version of Spotify if you have an android device and on windows, you can find numerous threads on how to do it. fuck spotify 👍🏻🫡
Grab a library card from one in your state that lets you use Freegal. Free ad-free music and you can normally download 3-5 songs per week to keep depending on the library.
You can get Sirius xm for like 3 bucks a month. You can use it in a single car and also the app on your phone, so you can just connect it Bluetooth to any other cars