The 8 best offline music apps

Can you play music offline?

You know that feeling when you’re listening to your favorite song, and the chorus is about to come up or the beat is about to drop… and the song stops playing. Listening to music online can be challenging, especially when you’re on the road with an unreliable internet connection. Music apps tend to consume a lot of your valuable mobile phone data, too. Now you can always top up mobile data very easily online, or you can find a way to use these music apps without being connected.

At Recharge, we tried to find out if there are any offline music apps out there that allow you to play their songs without an internet connection. Turns out there are some pretty good options.

The best (free) offline music apps

Many well-known music apps offer the option to download songs for later use. This way you can avoid having to stream the music while using your data, and it saves you the hassle of loading the songs at a later moment too. Here’s our selection of the best apps to play music offline:

#1 Trebel (free)

Trebel’s philosophy is that everyone should have access to music for free, and it is therefore one of the few 100% free offline music apps. You can download free music to play offline without a subscription or a credit card.

Reasons to use:

• 100% free
• No credit card required
• Great selection of music
• Offline download possible
• Easy to use.

Reasons to ditch:

• Sometimes ads are displayed before downloading songs.

#2 SoundCloud (paid)

SoundCloud is the biggest music-sharing community with over 175 million global users. The app allows users to upload, promote and share music. SoundCloud is a great app to listen to music offline. With the SoundCloud Go subscription, you’ll be able to download your saved Library, Likes or playlists offline. You can even automatically save your Library for offline listening so you never run out of downloaded songs!

Reasons to use:

• Biggest music-sharing community
• Automatically save your Library for offline use

Reasons to ditch:

• Registration is needed
• Mainly new music from upcoming artists, so you might have a hard time finding current hits
• SoundCloud Go subscription is needed which is only available in select countries.

#3 Spotify (paid)

The Swedish-owned music app Spotify has been a fan favorite for many years. Spotify allows you to download songs with its Premium subscription. On the free version, you can download podcasts only. Good to know: You can sign up for a Premium subscription with a Spotify gift card, available on Recharge.com. Once the credit on your gift card expires, you’ll automatically switch to the free plan. Stay in control of your Spotify spending by turning Premium on and off when you need it!

Reasons to use:

• User-friendly
• Great selection of songs you can stream on any device
• Possibility to create playlists.

Reasons to ditch:

• You can only download songs with a Premium subscription.

#4 YouTube Music (paid)

Often overlooked as a music service, YouTube offers a great selection of music (videos) in their popular app YouTube Music. YouTube Music Premium members can download music to listen offline and get ad-free videos.

Reasons to use:

• Wide selection of music including music videos.

Reasons to ditch:

• Requires paid membership for services such as offline downloads.

#5 Musify (free)

Many music apps require you to subscribe or sign up for a premium version in order to download songs for offline use. With Musify, however, this is completely free. With Musify you can download songs from their catalog after which you can listen to them without an internet connection, for free.

Musify is more of a music community for artists and fans to share and discover new songs. You’ll get personalized recommendations based on the songs you’ve listened to and you can connect with other music lovers. Musify is one of the few free offline music apps.

Reasons to use:

• Unlimited downloads
• Become part of a music community

Reasons to ditch:

• Might not have all the songs you want to listen to.

# 6 Deezer (paid)

Deezer is a French music platform with over 90 million tracks and other audio content like podcasts and radio shows. Deezer is one of the few music streaming services highly focusing on sound quality and is known for its easy-to-use app.

Reasons to use:

• Paid Offline Mode possible, even without Wi-Fi
• User-friendly interface

Reasons to ditch:

• You can only download songs if you’re a Paid Deezer user
• Offline mode doesn’t support the desktop version of Deezer
• You can only skip 6 songs per hour

#7 Pandora (free)

Pandora is a leading music streaming app in the industry. You can use it to connect with other music fans and create playlists of the broad selection of music on the app. And the good thing is: Pandora allows you to listen to songs and podcasts without having an internet connection.

Reasons to use:

• Straightforward interface
• An extensive collection of songs
• Unlimited offline music streaming.

Reasons to ditch:

• Pandora is only available for use inside the U.S.

# 8 Tidal (free)

Tidal is our final suggestion for music apps you can use to play music offline. Tidal is a ‘high-fidelity’ music app and streaming service with hi-def audio and video quality (like Deezer). Tidal makes it possible to download music to your phone and listen to it later when you’re not connected to the internet. Just toggle on Offline Mode and start downloading music and videos for on the go.

Reasons to use:

• User-friendly app
• Adjust the quality of your downloads.

Reasons to ditch:

• You can only use up to five devices in Offline Mode at the same time.

And that’s our list of music apps you can use to listen to music offline! So if you ever find yourself in the countryside without cell service or run out of data and still need your music fix: use these apps to keep listening to your favorite songs offline.

Need more things to do offline? Check out our tips on the best offline mobile games.