While Apple Music has been a long time in the making, now that its out Apple’s streaming contenders have been upping their game. At the top of the heap is Spotify. Originally available in Europe for years before its US release, Spotify has a huge collection of tracks available to stream on your iPhone, iPad, and computer.

All these tracks are available to stream randomly for free with advertisements interspersed. But one of the coolest features of Spotify is the ability to search for and stream any album at will. You won’t be able to pick individual songs from the album but instead Spotify will randomly play all the songs – a pretty awesome free feature if you ask me! Now, if you don’t want advertisements, would like to pick songs to play, and even download them to your iOS device for offline listening, Spotify does offer a $9.99/month service.

Spotify is just one of our favorite music apps for iPhone and iPad. We’ve collected all of our favorites here. And if you’d like to see more of our top app selections in different categories, just head on over to our Best Apps Series.

Spotify - Music and PodcastsSpotifyMusicFreeDownload

Here are a couple of our other picks of the best music apps for iPhone and iPad:

Discovr Music – Explore a visual network of music on your iPhone and iPad

Do you have an artist that you love, but feel you've exhausted every avenue of their discography? Wouldn't it be nice to easily be able to find similar artists to the ones you love? That's exactly what Discovr Music will help you do. Just type in an artist, and Discovr ...

Music Launcher – The fastest way to start listening to your music

The release of the Apple Music service has gotten us using this Music Launcher widget a lot. It provides a quick way to start playing music without even opening an app. Music Launcher is made by the same fine folks that brought us the Launcher widget. Music Launcher takes the ...