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It wasn’t all that long ago that people were wondering whether music streaming services like Spotify would really take off. Nowadays they have transformed the way most of us listen to music. This has led to more music streaming services popping up such as Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Apple Music and Tidal.

Today we are going to look at which of these 5 UK music streaming services offers the best deal for family music subscriptions. While family streaming subscriptions are more expensive than standard plans, they can still save you a lot of money when compared to buying separate plans for each of your kids. So let’s see what each company has to offer.

Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan

First up is the Family Plan from Amazon Music Unlimited*.

Amazon Music Unlimited has a huge library of over 75 million songs in HD quality and over 7 million in Ultra HD!

Their family plan comes at a cost of £14.99 per month and offers up to 6 accounts for family members. They do specify on their website that family members need to be over 13 years of age. 

There’s another way to save money here if you have a small family and only plan on listening via your Amazon Echo devices* at home. Amazon offer their Music Unlimited service to be played on a single Echo device for just £3.99 a month. This means if you are a family of 3 persons or less, you could save money by linking each of your Echo devices to separate Amazon accounts. For example, you could have 2 Echo devices able to play different music at the same time for just £7.98 per month.

As you would expect when paying for a premium plan the music is served ad-free and you are able to download music to listen offline.

While Amazon Music is available on lots of different devices – Echo devices being the most obvious and attractive – Google Home and Google Home Mini owners may be disappointed to learn that you cannot voice control Amazon Music through these devices. While there may be ways to work around this, this is still not ideal. As we’ll see later, though, the same problem exists for Amazon Echo users with Google Play.  

Spotify Premium Family Plan

Next up is Spotify.

Spotify’s Premium Family Plan costs £16.99 in the UK. For this you get up to 6 seperate accounts for family members living under the same roof. This means up to 6 family members can listen to different music on different devices all at the same time, ad-free. It’s also possible to download music so that you can listen to it offline. 

Spotify has a library of over 70 million songs available to all users including on their Premium Family Plan.

The great thing about Spotify is that you can listen to it on most devices. This includes Amazon Echo devices, Google Home, Smart TVs, Games Consoles, Mobile Phones and more. This is great if your children have various devices in the home and you don’t want to have to buy new ones to be able to stream your music. 

Spotify also have a parental controls feature to allow you a level of control over what your kids can and can’t listen to. Great if you want to filter out explicit music. In fact, they now even have a separate app -Spotify Kids – made just for kids.

Apple Music Family Plan

The next UK music streaming service on our list are Apple Music.

Apple Music’s Family Plan also costs £14.99 and allows up to 6 family members to use the service with separate accounts. 

Apple music has a library of 90 million songs available to listen to online or offline. As you would expect, you’ll be able to access your Apple Music service across your Apple Devices. The good thing with Apple Music – as with Spotify – is that you can listen via your Amazon Echo devices. There is no support for Apple Music via Google Home, though, at least not yet. 

YouTube Music Family Plan

The YouTube Music Family Plan – as with the others we’ve mentioned so far – comes at a cost of £14.99 per month and allows up to 5 family members (aged 13+) to use the plan.

The most recent figure I could find suggested that YouTube Music has a library of 70 million songs. 

We mentioned earlier that it is not possible to play Amazon Music via a Google Home device. The same works in reverse here, in that is is not possible to play YouTube Music through Echo devices. There is a workaround in that you can hook up to an Echo device via bluetooth and play it that way, but it’s not really ideal.

Tidal Family Plan

Tidal is the streaming service owned by US rapper Jay-Z. Tidal comes with a library of over 60 million songs which includes a lot of exclusive content from artists like Beyonce and Kanye West.

The service is slightly different to other streaming services in that it has a two tier subscription model. The cheaper version offers standard quality audio and comes at a cost of £9.99 for an individual plan. The more expensive plan offers Hi-fi quality lossless audio and costs £19.99 per month for an individual plan.

Tidal now has a family plan option which (in the UK) allows you to add up to 6 users to your account at a cost of £14.99 for a standard audio plan or £29.99 for HiFi quality.

It’s good to see that you can now link Alexa devices to Tidal, so you can play Tidal through your Amazon Echo.

The Verdict

It’s clear to see that most of the big music streaming services have matched one another in the cost of their Family Plan options and the amount of users they allow on each plan, each charging £14.99 per month and allowing roughly 6 users. Spotify charge £16.99 for a family plan.

You could work things out in your favour if you only plan on listening via your Echo devices at home, as Amazon offer Amazon Music Unlimited* on a single Echo device for just £3.99 per month.