When Elon Musk first proposed taking over Twitter, one the first changes he claimed he'd make would be “open-sourcing” Twitter’s algorithm. Last week, Twitter finally followed through on that promise, publishing the underlying code for the site’s "For You" recommendations on GitHub.

Quickly, Twitter sleuths began sifting through the code to see what they could dig up. It didn’t take long for one eyebrow-raising finding: that Musk’s tweets have their own category (along with Democrats, Republicans and “power users”). Twitter engineers hastily explained that this was for “stat tracking purposes,” which has since been confirmed by other analyses. And though Twitter removed that section of code from GitHub within hours of its publishing, it’s still fueled speculation that Twitter’s engineers pay special attention to their boss’ engagement and have taken steps to artificially boost his tweets.

But there have been few other major revelations about the contents of the code or how Twitter’s algorithm works since. And anyone hoping this public code would produce new insights into the inner workings of Twitter will likely be disappointed. That’s because the code Twitter released omitted important details about how “the algorithm” actually works, according to engineers who have studied it.

The code Twitter shared was a “highly redacted” version of Twitter’s algorithm, according to Sol Messing, associate professor at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics and former Twitter employee. For one, it didn't include every system that plays a role in Twitter’s recommendations.

Twitter said it was withholding code dealing with ads, as well as trust and safety systems in an effort to prevent bad actors from gaming it. The company also opted to withhold the underlying models used to train its algorithm, explaining in a blog post last week that this was to “to ensure that user safety and privacy would be protected.” That decision is even more consequential, according to Messing. “The model that drives the most important part of the algorithm has not been open-sourced,” he tells me. “So the most important part of the algorithm is still inscrutable.”

Musk’s original motivation to make the algorithm open source seemed to stem from his belief that Twitter had used the algorithm to suppress free speech. “One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people's tweets — if they're emphasized or de-emphasized —that action should be made apparent,” Musk said last April in an appearance at TED shortly after he confirmed his takeover bid. “So anyone can see that action has been taken, so there's no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.”

But none of the code Twitter released tells us much about potential bias or the kind of “behind-the-scenes manipulation” Musk said he wanted to reveal. “It has the flavor of transparency,” Messing says. “But it doesn’t really give insight into what the algorithm is doing. It doesn't really give insight into why someone's tweets may be down-ranked and why others might be up-ranked.”

Messing also points out that Twitter’s recent API changes have essentially cut off the vast majority of researchers from accessing a meaningful amount of Twitter data. Without proper API access, researchers are unable to conduct their own audits, which would be able to provide new details about how the algorithm works. “So at the same time Twitter is releasing this code, it’s made it incredibly difficult for research to audit this code,” he wrote in his own analysis.

Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) also raised the importance of audits when we talked last year, shortly after Musk first discussed plans to “open source” Twitter’s algorithm. Like Messing, she was skeptical that simply releasing code on GitHub would meaningfully increase transparency into how Twitter works.

"If you're actually interested in public oversight on something like a Twitter algorithm, then you would actually need multiple methods for oversight to happen” Hanna said.

There is one aspect of Twitter’s algorithm that the GitHub code does shed some new light on, though. Messing points to a file unearthed by data scientist Jeff Allen, which reveals a kind of “formula” for how different types of engagement are given priority by the algorithm. “If we take that at face value, a fav (twitter like) is worth half a retweet,” Messing writes. “A reply is worth 27 retweets, and a reply with a response from a tweet’s author is worth a whopping 75 retweets.”

While that’s somewhat revealing, it’s, once again, an incomplete picture of what’s actually happening. “It doesn't mean that much without the actual data,” Messing says. “And Musk just made data so insanely expensive for academics to get. If they want to actually study this now, you basically have to get a giant, massive grants — half a million dollars a year — to get a meaningful amount of data to study what's happening.”

Walmart just announced a major expansion to its electric vehicle charging network, with "thousands" of Walmart and Sam's Club locations getting new EV charging stations. According to the company, full implementation will be completed by 2030.

The news does not say precisely how many of the approximately 5,300 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club locations throughout the country will be added to the network. We've reached out to the company for comment. Walmart currently operates 1,300 EV fast-charging stations located at more than 280 retail stores and affiliated facilities.

“With a store or club located within 10 miles of approximately 90% of Americans, we are uniquely positioned to deliver a convenient charging option that will help make EV ownership possible whether people live in rural, suburban or urban areas,” wrote Vishal Kapadia, Senior Vice President of Energy Transformation at Walmart. “Easy access to on-the-go charging is a game-changer for drivers who have been hesitant to purchase an EV.”

Walmart is still looking for energy suppliers, according to a report by Reuters. In the past, it has worked with providers EVgo and VW’s Electrify America. No matter the provider, Walmart has stated that each participating store will receive four chargers and that the company will keep energy prices low, though it has not provided cost estimates. 

Walmart wants to improve its overall environmental footprint in ways both large and small. In addition to this new EV charger initiative, the company stated that all supply chain vehicles will achieve "zero emissions" by 2040 and that it has already transitioned to some electric vehicles for deliveries. 

T-Mobile and Major League Baseball (MLB) are renewing their partnership. In addition to sponsoring various pro-baseball events, the carrier announced today that its subscribers would continue receiving free MLB.TV subscriptions through 2028.

MLB and T-Mobile have offered the deal for the past eight years as part of its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion, which gives subscribers access to weekly discounts and freebies. MLB.TV lets you stream home and away broadcast feeds around the league — live or on-demand. (However, it’s subject to dreaded regional blackouts, so you shouldn’t count on it to watch teams nearby.) In addition, for the first time this season, the service lets you stream minor-league games for your favorite major-league team’s affiliates in the MLB app.

Speaking of the minor leagues, the two corporations are partnering on an automated ball-strike (ABS) system, which lets Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players and officials “review, challenge and analyze calls.” This season, T-Mobile will power the system with a “5G Private Mobile Network” during some minor-league games. You may recall that MLB has been experimenting with robot umps in the independent Atlantic League since 2019. Last year, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the league aims to introduce the system to the big leagues by 2024. From a labor perspective, it’s hard not to see this as a first step toward automating umpires’ jobs, but at least fans can direct their vitriol over (perceived) bad calls to a machine instead of a human. 

T-Mobile says its baseball partnership will also include a little-league sponsorship, part of which consists of the carrier donating millions of dollars toward equipment and grants for aspiring young sluggers. It’s also continuing to sponsor the All-Star Week Home Run Derby and batting practice broadcast. Finally, T-Mobile plans to expand its 5G coverage in baseball stadiums across North America, envisioning eventual “immersive 5G-connected experiences for fans” and better in-stadium speeds and reception for its subscribers.

A Cornell University researcher has developed sonar glasses that “hear” you without speaking. The eyeglass attachment uses tiny microphones and speakers to read the words you mouth as you silently command it to pause or skip a music track, enter a passcode without touching your phone or work on CAD models without a keyboard.

Cornell Ph.D. student Ruidong Zhang developed the system, which builds off a similar project the team created using a wireless earbud — and models before that which relied on cameras. The glasses form factor removes the need to face a camera or put something in your ear. “Most technology in silent-speech recognition is limited to a select set of predetermined commands and requires the user to face or wear a camera, which is neither practical nor feasible,” said Cheng Zhang, Cornell assistant professor of information science. “We’re moving sonar onto the body.”

The researchers say the system only requires a few minutes of training data (for example, reading a series of numbers) to learn a user’s speech patterns. Then, once it’s ready to work, it sends and receives sound waves across your face, sensing mouth movements while using a deep learning algorithm to analyze echo profiles in real time “with about 95 percent accuracy.”

Ruidong Zhang / Cornell University

The system does this while offloading data processing (wirelessly) to your smartphone, allowing the accessory to remain small and unobtrusive. The current version offers around 10 hours of battery life for acoustic sensing. Additionally, no data leaves your phone, eliminating privacy concerns. “We’re very excited about this system because it really pushes the field forward on performance and privacy,” said Cheng Zhang. “It’s small, low-power and privacy-sensitive, which are all important features for deploying new, wearable technologies in the real world.”

Privacy also comes into play when looking at potential real-world uses. For example, Ruidong Zhang suggests using it to control music playback controls (hands- and eyes-free) in a quiet library or dictating a message at a loud concert where standard options would fail. Perhaps its most exciting prospect is people with some types of speech disabilities using it to silently feed dialogue into a voice synthesizer, which would then speak the words aloud.

If things go as planned, you can get your hands on one someday. The team at Cornell’s Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab is exploring commercializing the tech using a Cornell funding program. They’re also looking into smart-glasses applications to track facial, eye and upper body movements. “We think glass will be an important personal computing platform to understand human activities in everyday settings,” said Cheng Zhang.

Some Tesla workers shared sensitive photos and videos captured by the cameras on owners' cars between each other for several years, according to Reuters. Former employees told the outlet that colleagues shared the images in group chats and one-on-one communications between 2019 and last year.

One such video showed a Tesla driving at high speed before hitting a child on a bike, Reuters reported. Other footage included things like a nude man walking toward a vehicle. "We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids," one of the former employees said.

Workers are said to have sent each other videos taken inside Tesla owners' garages, too. One clip reportedly showed a submersible white Lotus Esprit sub that appeared in the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. As it happens, Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought that vehicle a decade ago, suggesting that his employees were circulating footage that a vehicle captured inside his garage.

The image-sharing practice “was a breach of privacy, to be honest," one of the former employees said. "And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people.”

On its website, Tesla says each new vehicle it builds is equipped with eight external cameras. These support features such as Autopilot, Smart Summon and Autopark. They also enable the Sentry Mode surveillance system that captures footage of people approaching a parked Tesla and other seemingly suspicious activity.

The company states in its customer privacy notice that it designed the camera system to protect user privacy. It says that even if owners opt in to share camera recordings with Tesla for "fleet learning" purposes, "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle" unless it receives the footage due to a safety event, such as a crash or an airbag deployment. Even so, one employee said it was possible for Tesla data labelers to see the location of captured footage on Google Maps.

Tesla does not have a communications department that can be reached for comment.

The puck-shaped audio remixing tool Stem Player by Kano started its life as a collaboration with controversial musician Kanye West, but it has expanded and partnered with the estate of deceased hip-hop legend J Dilla. Users will be able to remix and rearrange J Dilla beats via an exclusive catalog of content selected by the producer’s mother, Ma Dukes.

The 20 songs added to Stem Player have never been officially released, so your arrangement could end up being the de facto standard. Unfortunately, there aren't any tracks from iconic J Dilla albums like Donuts and Champion Sound. The many legendary tracks he produced for other artists, like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, are also not available on this platform. Rights and all of that.

There are other musicians involved with this update. Stem Player has announced some Flea and Salaam Remi tracks are available for remixing, though J Dilla is the guest of honor. To that end, the collection even includes a discussion about his legacy led by his mother. The company also announced it is working on a documentary about the producer and has released a green skin for the Stem Player as a tribute.

For the uninitiated, the Stem Player is a puck-shaped device with physical controls to remix and rearrange audio tracks. In this context, “stems” refer to the basic tracks of a song, so you can use the device to change various attributes of each stem, such as volume. This gadget handles the actual raw and unmixed tracks from the artist. It does not use AI to separate each track after they are mixed. The end result? Better stems and more accurate controls.

Kano has severed ties with beleaguered rapper Kanye West, but it has added Ghostface Killah to the roster, prior to the J Dilla announcement. It has also recently released a projector used to remix visuals. The company has started crowdfunding to guarantee the release of future products, including a DIY headphone-building kit. All J Dilla tracks are available now, but you need a $200 Stem Player. The custom green skin costs $30 on top of that. 

If you've been looking to scoop up a new gaming laptop but a solitary screen doesn't quite cut the mustard, you should perhaps consider the ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16. It's our current pick for the best gaming laptop with dual displays. Best of all, it's on sale right now. One variant is available for $2,700, which is a whopping $800 off the regular price.

This configuration comes with a 16-inch, 165Hz ROG Nebula HDR QHD 16:10 display. It's powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. The 32GB of DDR5 RAM should help ensure you can play most games without too many hitches. You'll have a decent volume of storage space for your games too, as this ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 has a 1TB SSD.

The internal specs aren't what make this gaming laptop stand out, though. It's that second screen that sits between the keyboard and the main display. The 14-inch ScreenPad Plus could be handy for productivity, allowing you to keep an eye on certain apps while keeping most of your focus on more important tasks up top. 

It might help you keep tabs on the news, social media or a show you're watching while getting some work done. Or you might use it to keep Discord open while you play games or pull up a walkthrough on YouTube if you get stuck. Alternatively, you could use it to monitor your viewership stats while you stream your gameplay.

We gave the ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 a score of 86 in our review, which is certainly respectable. The device isn't all sunshine and roses, unfortunately. We felt that it's fairly bulky with high-pitched fans and an underwhelming battery life. The touchpad, which ASUS scuttled off to the right side of the keyboard, is a bit awkward too. Still, for those hunting for a good deal on a dual-screen laptop, you won't find many better options elsewhere at the minute.

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Apple's AirPods Pro are our favorite option for iPhone users in our guide to wireless earbuds — but at $250, they're not cheap. If you keep tabs on them at Amazon, however, you can sometimes snag them for $200, making them a much better buy. They've dropped down to this price a couple of times this year, once in February and again in March. The 20 percent discount is within a dollar of the lowest price we've ever seen on Apple's latest generation premium buds. Only problem is, they tend to go out of stock quickly, and sometimes pop back up to their list price, so you might want to add them to your cart while the deal's still live. 

The second-gen AirPods Pro deliver one of the best transparency modes of any earbuds on the market and the active noise cancellation is solid. The sound is clear and consistent, even at low volume, and the call performance is better than a lot of the competition. Of course, where the buds really shine is with their seamless pairing with iOS and integration with Apple's ecosystem. We got six hours and 15 minutes of battery life in our tests and gave the earbuds an overall score of 88 in our review.

It's worth noting that a few other wireless options from Apple are on sale right now too, including the third (and current) generation of the standard AirPods for $150, which matches their lowest price this year. You can save even more on the previous generation AirPods which are 38 percent off, or $99. 

If you don't carry around an iPhone, you may want to check out a few of the other best buds from our guide. Three of them are currently seeing discounts — though none are all time lows. You can snag our best overall pick, Sony's WF-1000XM4, for a 29 percent discount that brings the price down to $198. Our runner up recommendation, Sennheiser's Momentum True Wireless 3 are also $198, or 21 percent off. And finally, our favorite budget option, the Jabra Elite 3 are even more budget-friendly after a fifteen percent savings. Again, those aren't the lowest prices we've seen, but if today's the day for some fresh new in-ear speakers, you may as well save some coin. 

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It’s easy to say “yes” when an app or website asks for your location data just to get past the pop-up and back to scrolling, but it pays to be thoughtful about who you share it with and why. More often than not, it's more information than apps and websites really need to know about you.

Like other kinds of personal information, location data is presented by companies as a trade-off: consumers willingly expose where they are, usually for a more convenient user experience; the companies in turn gather crucial intel about customers and, more often than not, resell that data to third-parties for additional profit. Those third parties, according to Cooper Quintin, a security researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, can include data brokers and advertisers, as well as law enforcement, bounty hunters, journalists and just about anyone else with the money to purchase this information. It's one of the reasons we feel like our devices “listen” to us — they probably don't hear you telling a friend that you’ve been really craving fast food, but they do know that there’s a McDonald’s nearby, and will serve up an advertisement for its french fries.

Because there aren’t federal laws or regulations currently in place to fully protect consumer information, it falls on individual users to navigate how they want that information to be spread. As you install new apps, don’t blindly agree to share location data, even if you think you have nothing to hide. “It's better just not to generate it in the first place,” Quintin said.

Is there ever a good reason to share this sensitive data with a company? A good rule of thumb is to avoid giving out location information unless the app requires it to function, according to Megan Iorio, senior counsel and amicus director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. A maps app might need it to give you real-time directions; food delivery apps probably can get by with a simple address. Websites may ask for location permissions to enable convenience features, like a weather service, but will generate the same results from a zip code at a much lower risk. Even with the caveat that sharing location data is unavoidable in some instances, Iorio cautioned that providing apps or sites blanket access is never a good idea. “If you wind up needing location services, then you'll figure that out after using the app, but maybe the best strategy is to just tell everybody no until you actually realize that you need it,” Iorio said.

It's also best practice to revoke location permissions for any apps or sites you no longer use, or may have enabled thoughtlessly in the past. You can see what apps use your location data by going into the settings of your smartphone and navigating to the location sharing tab, usually in the privacy and security settings of most devices. That will list all of the apps with access to your location information, and give options to toggle it on or off. Apple, Samsung, Google and others all provide specific instructions on their websites. Popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari, also provide specific instructions on how to disable location sharing. Generally it's best not to choose "always allow" or similarly phrased options in-browser — instead wait for the pop-up requesting access and, if it's necessary, share location data on a case-by-case basis.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the best music streaming service for everyone. Most of the popular options available today hit on the essentials: a giant and diverse library of music that you can access à la carte, sort into playlists, download for offline listening and play across multiple devices. Most are available for around the same price, too. That said, there are subtle yet significant differences in features and philosophy among them that can determine which will fit into your life best. To assist those thinking about trying a new music app, we’ve spent the past few months using most popular music streaming services simultaneously, testing their limits and seeing how they adapt to our input.

Most well-rounded: Apple Music

No music streaming service is perfect, but for many, Apple Music should get the closest to covering all of the necessary bases. It has a library of more than 100 million songs, all of which are available in lossless streaming quality for no extra cost. Its user interface doesn’t make it too hard to get to your music library and strikes a balance between useful algorithmic recommendations and smartly curated content from actual people. It’s one of the few music streaming services that lets you upload your own music files and naturally it’s tightly integrated with Apple devices.

Apple Music’s ALAC files have a minimum resolution of 16-bit/44.1kHz, which is the same quality you’d hear from a CD. A smaller but still significant selection can stream at higher resolutions up to 24-bit/192kHz. A significant number of albums are also available in Dolby Atmos surround sound mixes, or “spatial audio.”

Lossless streaming isn’t a game-changer for most casual listeners. You need a decent set of wired headphones and an external DAC (or a good speaker system) to take full advantage, and the upgrade isn’t so stark that non-enthusiasts will care. That said, even if the difference is subtle, a lossless file does sound better than a more compressed one, particularly in the way it draws out higher-frequency sounds from cymbals, strings and the like.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Spatial audio, on the other hand, is more of a fun gimmick: technologically impressive, yes, and sometimes genuinely immersive, but just as likely to make a record sound less natural.

Relative to other music streaming services, Apple Music’s UI is perfectly serviceable. In general, it emphasizes human curation more than peers like Spotify or YouTube Music. It’s not as great an emphasis as it used to be, and the home “Listen Now” tab can be a smorgasbord of hit-and-miss suggestions based on your recent listening history. Still, the service is littered with clever, editor-picked playlists. The default search page holds several different genre tabs, each of which holds relevant playlists, music videos and a typically spot-on list of “essential albums.” Artist pages often spotlight a group’s most essential works alongside playlists of “deep cuts,” artists that likely inspired them, artists that were influenced by them and so on.

Streaming radio stations are one of Apple Music’s biggest differentiators. There’s a regular rotation of shows that feature artist interviews and have a sort of pre-internet feel. The main tabs often make room to highlight new buzzy releases, and you can find top charts for different countries and cities. All of this gives Apple Music an air of taste, something that can help you find music but prioritizes a personal touch.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Beyond that, getting a simple view of your saved artists, albums, songs and playlists is uncomplicated. You can reliably search for tracks by lyrics, and there’s a great lyrics view for impromptu karaoke sessions. Creating playlists and downloading albums for offline listening is straightforward, and you can start a radio station from any song. While your imported music won’t be available in lossless quality, being able to upload music at all is a great boon for those with big iTunes libraries. Just note that you’re capped at 100,000 tracks that aren’t already available in the app.

If you enjoy classical music, Apple recently launched an Apple Music Classical app that’s dedicated to the genre and comes included with most Apple Music plans. Booting those works into a separate app is somewhat cumbersome, though.

There are still some drawbacks. While Apple Music has apps for Android, Windows and web browsers, the Windows app is only available in a buggy “preview” form as of this writing and there’s no lossless streaming in a browser. It’s best used with Apple devices. There’s (bafflingly) no way to see a list of your “loved” songs in the mobile app. There’s no free tier or annual family plan, either, and the individual plan is $1 more a month than some competitors.

Free tier: No
Individual plan: $11/month or $109/year
Family plan: $17/month (up to 6 members)
Voice plan: $5/month (only usable with Siri)
Student plan: $6/month

Best for music discovery: Spotify

Spotify leans much harder on algorithmic suggestions than Apple Music, but having a giant treasure trove of user listening data for so many years has allowed the service to fine-tune its music recommendation engine. This is the main reason to consider it: No service is more accurate at reading the music you like and serving up worthwhile suggestions for other songs you might enjoy (even if its UI is arguably getting worse with every update). As the most popular music streaming app, it’s also available on a wide array of devices.

Spotify is particularly impressive at creating playlists. “Discover Weekly” is famously adept at digging up unheard tracks and artists that align with your tastes. “Release Radar” is similarly impressive at spotlighting new tracks from artists you follow and those with complementary sounds. A selection of “Daily Mix” playlists blend past likes with deeper cuts from artists in your library and similar songs from ones who aren’t, then sorts them by mood as much as genre. Based on what you’ve been playing, you may wake up to one mix that’s mostly upbeat electro, another marked by soaring indie rock, and another with spacey hip-hop. While its selections can be more hit-or-miss, a new “Niche Mixes” feature lets you search for a mood or genre and have the app generate a relevant playlist. Simply following the algorithm down its rabbit holes makes it easy to find something you can enjoy in just a few taps.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

That said, there are still a ton of human-curated playlists to peruse as well. Regularly updated lists like “Rap Caviar,” “New Music Friday” and “Viva Latino” may not be tailored specifically for you, but they’re clearly programmed by knowledgeable people in-tune with current trends. A huge range of less frequently updated playlists based on genres, eras and vibes give the same impression. There’s a human touch here; it’s just not emphasized as much as it is in Apple Music, so which you’ll prefer depends on how willing you are to let an algorithm lead the way.

Spotify’s interface isn’t bad, but some recent changes have made it harder to use. The home tab has rows of suggestions based on your recent listening history. I went through a big yacht rock phase while researching this guide, for example, so my homepage became peppered with playlists like “Soft Rock Classics,” “All Out 70s,” and “Totally Stress Free.” It wasn’t all stuff like that, but the point is that the service will sensibly morph and adapt as your listening habits change.

Sorting and searching through your own library is relatively clean, and a playlist with all your liked songs is featured prominently in the “Playlists” section. There’s a useful lyrics view for sing-alongs. Search usually works as it should, letting you look up music by title, lyric, artist or even context like “workout” or “studying.”

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Making and sharing a playlist is a breeze. Artist pages aren’t as comprehensive as Apple Music’s, but they do include a list of upcoming tour dates, with links to tickets from sites like Songkick, AXS and Ticketmaster. The search tab has dedicated pages for various genres and vibes, from “Jazz” and “R&B” to “In the car” and “League of Legends.” You can start a radio station from any track, too, though this might repeat songs over time.

Spotify has made a huge push into podcasts and audiobooks in recent years, snapping up exclusive deals with several popular shows along the way (for better or worse). Some may find this convenient, but it makes the UI feel cluttered. A row with “Your shows” is displayed right at the top of the home tab, which includes not only the shows you’ve subscribed to, but annoyingly, ones you’ve recently put on just once. Apple Music and many others completely omit podcasts, so they’ll be less aggravating if you’d prefer your music app to focus solely on music.

On the mobile app, you can filter the home screen by music, podcasts and audiobooks, but Spotify recently revamped these to look more like TikTok-style feeds with huge, autoplaying suggestion cards. This may look fresh, but scrolling through an endless feed, one or two suggestions at a time, is not an efficient way to find content. Similarly, the prominently featured AI-powered DJ tool is technically impressive but also has a tendency to make jarring jumps from genre to genre. It speaks to an app that may be putting a little too much emphasis on its algorithmic prowess.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Spotify doesn’t offer lossless streaming, instead topping out at a relatively low 320Kbps bitrate using the Ogg Vorbis format. Web browser playback uses AAC and maxes out at 256Kbps. The company announced a CD-quality “HiFi” tier more than two years ago and says that’s still on the way, but how it’ll work and what it’ll cost remains unclear.

Spotify offers a more robust free tier than most of its peers. You’ll have to deal with ads, an even lower 160 Kbps bitrate, and limits on track skips and on-demand playback, but you can still listen to several personalized playlists and enjoy much of the library. For casual background listening, it may be enough.

While it doesn’t have a practical effect on your listening experience, Spotify is particularly terrible when it comes to artist payouts. Some music workers have even launched advocacy campaigns seeking fairer compensation and greater transparency. Music streaming isn’t an ideal setup for artists, particularly independent acts, but Spotify is the poster child for everything wrong with the current system.

Free tier: Yes
Individual plan: $10/month (12-month subscription gift cards for $99)
Duo plan: $12/month (2 members)
Family plan: $16/month (up to 6 members)
Student plan: $5/month

Best for more obscure music: YouTube Music

From a UI or streaming quality perspective, there’s little reason to choose YouTube Music instead of Apple Music or Spotify. Still, Google’s music service has a few unique selling points that could make it worthwhile. Arguably the most compelling is that it comes included with a YouTube Premium subscription. For $12 a month or $120 a year, this also removes ads from YouTube, lets you download videos for offline viewing and enables background playback. Those features alone are massive benefits if you’re a frequent YouTube user, and you get a full music service on top.

Even without the perk of ad-free YouTube, YouTube Music benefits from a close integration with the video platform. YouTube is home to a mountain of content not available on other top music streaming services and integrates it with your music library. If you’re into rare live performances, deep underground hip-hop, obscure soundtracks, nightmarish Neil Cicierega mashups or Aphex Twin remixes made entirely from the sounds of Super Mario 64, this is the service for you.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

If you sign up for YouTube Music with the same account you use for YouTube, music you’ve liked on the latter will already be there and help inform the service’s recommendations. Naturally, this integration also makes YouTube Music the best choice for music videos, which you can swap to with a single tap.

Because it’s wrangling so much material, however, YouTube Music’s UI can feel scattershot and overwhelming. Scrolling down the home page reveals a hodgepodge of recent listens, liked music, curated and community-generated playlists, “similar to” suggestions, radio stations, music videos, algorithmically personalized mixes, new releases and top charts. Searching for an artist may display community playlists and covers underneath more traditional results; it also tends to blend singles with full albums, and it doesn’t display albums in chronological order. Content originally hosted on YouTube won’t integrate with your library as neatly as standard material, either.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

That said, the sheer mass of suggestions make YouTube Music good at surfacing new music you might like, and its “Discover Mix” works nearly as well as Spotify’s Discover Weekly. A few buttons at the top of the app can filter the home page’s suggestions to suit different moods: Relax, Workout, Energize, Commute or Focus. You can start a radio station from any song, though we also found this to regurgitate previously liked tracks more than we’d prefer. You can upload up to 100,000 of your own music files, too, which’ll be available even if you aren’t a paid subscriber (these won’t affect the service’s recommendations, however).

YouTube Music lacks lossless streaming and tops out at a relatively low 256 Kbps bitrate, so it’s not for audio enthusiasts. There’s no dedicated desktop app, and while there is an ad-supported tier, it stops playback whenever you exit the app on a phone and maxes at a rough 128 Kbps bitrate. All of your playlists are limited to a maximum of 5,000 songs. Podcast support is on the way, though as of this writing it’s unclear how that’ll look. Google also has a long history of killing its own products, including this service’s predecessor; we’d understand if that makes you skittish long-term, though the company seems committed to improving YouTube Music today.

Free tier: Yes
Individual plan: $10/month or $100/year; also available as part of YouTube Premium subscription for $12/month or $120/year
Family plan: $15/month (up to 6 members)
Student plan: $5/month

Another good option: Amazon Music Unlimited

Amazon Music Unlimited is a strong alternative to Apple Music and Spotify if you want podcasts and lossless streaming within the same app. Like Apple Music, it offers 100+ million songs in CD quality at no extra cost, with a smaller but ever-growing selection of FLAC files available in “Ultra HD” (24-bit/192kHz). Various tracks are mixed in Dolby Atmos or Sony’s 360 Reality Audio as well. Like Spotify, its catalog encompasses a wide selection of non-music content. Most of the major podcast networks are represented, and several shows are presented ad-free.

If you already subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can get Music Unlimited for less than its rivals, with an individual plan available for $9 a month or $89 a year. It’s not a massive discount, but $10 or $20 less each year isn’t nothing when the broad differences between music streaming services are so marginal. Naturally, Music Unlimited works the smoothest on Amazon’s fleet of Alexa devices as well.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Music Unlimited’s UI is similar to its peers but has some annoyances. Amazon is more aggressive than Spotify when it comes to pushing podcasts that don’t align with your listening history. Radio stations and algorithmic playlists don’t display what songs are in the queue. Search isn’t as precise as the options above, and you can’t directly search through the saved albums on your library page. Amazon is also less proactive about surfacing new music you might like than Apple or Spotify. Even still, Music Unlimited delivers an impressive catalog for a potentially cut-rate price.

Free tier: Yes
Individual plan: $11/month; $9/month or $89/year with Amazon Prime
Family plan: $16/month or $159/year (up to 6 members)
Single device plan: $5/month (for one Echo or Fire TV only)
Student plan: $6/month

Honorable mentions

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Tidal

Tidal offers the highest royalty rates for artists, CD-quality streaming at no extra cost, a free tier, a library of more than 100 million songs and an experience rich with human curation and feature-style content. If you’re a music nerd and determined to not give another monthly fee to a tech industry behemoth, it’s a good choice. Its apps aren’t quite as smooth as those from Apple Music, though, and its highest-resolution tier costs $20 a month. Those high-res tracks are also encoded in MQA, a partly lossy format that still sounds sharp but isn’t open-source like FLAC.

Qobuz

Qobuz is a favorite in audiophile circles, particularly when it’s paired with the Roon music player. Like Tidal, it downplays algorithmic discovery for a more considered, editorial-heavy approach. It offers up to 24-bit/192kHz FLAC streams and includes a digital music store for purchasing high-res downloads of various albums. It’s particularly attentive to classical music. But unless you want to avoid Apple or Amazon, you can get similarly high-quality streaming for a lower price. Some may also find the UI leans too hard on personal curation and requires too much effort to discover new music.

Deezer

Deezer has an attractive interface, a competitive library, CD-quality streaming and the ability to upload your own MP3 files to the service from a desktop. It’s at least worth a look if you want an independent service and don’t fancy yourself an audiophile. Though, its suggestions and playlists generally aren’t as robust as its competitors. It also lacks a high-res tier to match Apple, Amazon, Tidal or Qobuz.