Streaming music is a fiercely competitive category, with many services vying for your listening time by offering high-quality audio, robust musical catalogs, and excellent features to keep you engaged and subscribed. Freemium service iHeartRadio has been in the business since 2008 and combines live radio, curated artist channels, and podcasts to create a music site and app with a little something for everyone. It lacks a few features offered by competing services, such as hi-res audio (found in Editors’ Choice winners Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, and Tidal) or the ability to rewind live radio (found in Editors’ Choice winner SiriusXM Internet Radio), but iHeartRadio is a solid listening option in a packed field.
(Credit: iHeartRadio/PCMag)
How to Listen to iHeartRadio for FreeiHeartRadio offers free live radio streams. Its homepage displays a grid that highlights a selection of top stations, but you can click View More to enjoy radio from across the country, with your local stations listed first. You can narrow your listening options by genre, including Comedy, Jazz, News & Talk, College Radio, Classic Rock, and other categories. Selecting Hip Hop brings up related stations like Hot 97, Power 105.1, and 107.5 WBLS. If a genre is too niche for your locality, iHeartRadio plugs in some of its productions. There aren’t any live, dedicated comedy stations here in New York City, so iHeartRadio added the 24/7 Comedy channel to the search results to fill in the gap.
The clean, easy-to-use interface utilizes a panel-based grid similar to what many other streaming music services employ. The bright, white background stands out compared with the generally darker-themed presentations offered by Spotify and Tidal. However, iHeartRadio offers a slick-looking Dark Mode for its Android and iOS apps if you want to swap themes. Unfortunately, Dark Mode isn’t a browser feature.You can view a song’s lyrics or artist’s bio page as the track plays. However, you must create an account or sign in with your Facebook or Google credentials to like tracks, ban tracks, or view your Listen History.
Unlike SiriusXM Internet Radio, iHeartRadio lacks the impressive, one-hour buffer that lets you scrub back to any point in the past 60 minutes. On a similar note, iHeartRadio doesn’t have a feature that resembles SiriusXM Internet Radio’s incredibly cool TuneStart functionality (a tool that starts you at the beginning of a live song, no matter where you jump into it).
(Credit: iHeartRadio/PCMag)
How Much Does iHeartRadio Cost?If you want more than the free live radio streams, iHeartRadio offers two premium plans: iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access.The $4.99-per-month iHeartRadio Plus tier offers live radio, unlimited skips, full access to the company’s podcast library, the ability to replay the last three songs, and on-demand song and album playback. However, iHeartRadio Plus is limited to the service’s Android or iOS apps—no web version exists. The iHeartRadio All Access package, accessible via mobile apps or a web browser, builds upon the Plus plan by adding artist station caching and offline playback and the ability to create unlimited playlists. Unfortunately, the pricing per month varies based on your preferred store. For Google Play sign-ups, subscriptions cost $9.99 per month. For App Store subscribers, subscriptions cost $12.99 per month. iHeartRadio also offers a $14.99-per-month All Access Family Plan that covers five people.Both iHeartRadio premium tiers feature tech that recognizes tracks from live radio and lets you save their artist station equivalents. You cannot record podcasts or live radio, so you can’t preserve classic moments from The Breakfast Club. Still, it’s neat that we could add Roxette’s “Listen To Your Heart” to our music library as soon as we recognized the track’s opening notes.Like competing services, iHeartRadio has dozens of artist stations. In addition, there are more than 20 genre stations, more than 400,000 artists, and 30 million songs in the iHeartRadio catalog. We easily found popular (The White Stripes) and obscure artists (The Dirtbombs).iHeartRadio’s Playlists and PodcastsiHeartRadio has numerous playlists, each with a sizable selection of subcategories. Clicking on Cooking, for example, reveals a wealth of listening that includes Cooking with Jazz, BBQ Jams, and Country Tailgate. Selecting BBQ Jams served up tracks by Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Dua Lipa, and Luther Vandross, among others. Your mileage may vary, but the list gave us the smooth jams that we wanted to hear while tearing up in the kitchen. Like Pandora and Spotify, iHeartRadio has a solid podcast well. You’ll find popular shows such as The Breakfast Club, Crime Junkie, and Stuff You Should Know.iHeartRadio Sound QualityWe enjoyed hiccup-free tunes over home and office wireless signals, though the 128Kbps Artist Radio stations sounded a bit better than the live radio stations. Regardless, neither set of streams was as crisp as Amazon Music Unlimited or Tidal’s tasty hi-res audio tracks, but that’s to be expected. That said, iHeartRadio’s artist stations are on par with the audio content you’d enjoy from non-HRA sources. The service also lacks video, something that you can enjoy with SiriusXM Internet Radio, Spotify, and Tidal.iHeartRadio also has news articles and event listings. The informative News section fills you in on music-related happenings (like the aftermath of the Drake and Kendrick Lamar drama), while the Events section showcases lineups and highlights of iHeartRadio-sponsored live shows from across the country (such as the upcoming iHeartRadio Music Festival at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas). Tidal’s original, feature-length articles give more insight into artists, but it’s still nice that iHeartRadio keeps abreast of general entertainment news.
(Credit: iHeartRadio/PCMag)
Verdict: Free and Satisfying Live RadioIf you miss vibing to the radio, you’ll love iHeartRadio’s custom radio stations and podcasts. The service manages to capture radio’s spontaneity (complete with audio ads and annoying DJs) while giving you the option to create personalized experiences. Still, it doesn’t top SiriusXM Internet Radio, which continues its reign as our Editors’ Choice winner for live radio thanks to its massive catalog, useful TuneStart feature, video shows, and ability to rewind live tracks.
Cons
iHeartRadio Plus plan lacks a web version
Limited listening options for free users
Unable to rewind live radio
Lacks video and hi-res audio
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The Bottom Line
iHeartRadio combines live radio, customizable stations, and podcasts into a fine streaming package, though the service lacks hi-res audio and other cool features that rivals offer.
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