Spotify vs Apple Music vs Google Play Music - the battle of the kings

I don't listen to much music anymore, but recently I have been getting into the whole, looking for music and using these services thing. Currently there are 3 dominant music streaming services available which are Spotify, Apple music, and Google play music. Currently Spotify is doing the best as it has close to 40 million paid subscribers. Apple music has near 20 million subscribers and Google Play music is a little vague but not as high as the other 2. Spotify has been doing this service for 8 years now and Apple music has been running for about 1 year and a half. Both Apple music and Google play music are relatively new but they are both doing well thanks to the Apple ecosystem and Android platform.

I'm going to try out all three services without being bias towards any of them and genuinely consider which to start paying the monthly subscriptions for. This will be interesting. So all of the services let you have a trial period. Spotify goes for 30 days, and Apple music and Google Play music go for 3 months each. So in terms of trial periods Google Play music and Apple music win. However Spotify does let anybody use their service for free, except the functionality on the mobile device is extremely limited and there are also quite a few ads.

So let's talk about the free service on Spotify. I used it for a couple of days recently. First of all, I used to use Spotify a few years ago. I used to be able to simply touch a song and play, and I used to be able to skip songs as well. Now it seems like shuffle is the only way to go. Ads are still around since then but they're only 30 seconds so it wasn't much of a problem for me. However the ability to not be able to skip songs irritated me and I stopped using the service for free, which made me realise I need to actually pay for the monthly bill to get a good experience. I have heard that the free version on the desktop version is not as restricted but I listen to music almost always on my phone, even when I'm on my laptop so ideally I would like a better experience there .

So I will be assessing a few things about these three services. First, the app it self and the look, however this will be simply my opinion and its personal preference. Second, functionality, so what kind of features it has that other services don't, music selection, recommendation quality, and any other I may find.

This review will be long term but I will keep you all updated as I go. The first service I will be using is Apple music because I want to see how it goes along with the new iPhone 7.

Let me know what your favourite music streaming services are down below but for now, thanks for reading!