How to Listen to Music With Friends Far Away

Listening to music together is one of the best social activities. Topics for discussion might center on lyrics, instrumentation, or artist back-catalogs. But what happens when your music-loving pals live far away?

Thanks to the apps listed below, it’s easy to listen to music with friends at the same time, even if you aren’t together. Most of these apps require you to have access to a music streaming service, such as Spotify Premium or Apple Music.

But other than that, all of them are totally free to use. Allowing you to listen to music with friends far away!

1. Vertigo

In addition to letting you listen to music with friends, Vertigo lets you start your own public channel—like a radio station—for strangers all over the world to listen to. If you aren’t sure what to listen to, visit the homescreen to listen in to trending live sessions from other people. These are great ways to potentially find new music or gain acclaim as a DJ.

Using Vertigo requires a music streaming subscription. After downloading the app and syncing with Spotify Premium or Apple Music, start a listening party to stream your beloved tracks to friends using the app at the same time.

Concerned about whether the artists involved still get royalties when you listen? Since Apple Music and Spotify Premium provide the content, musicians profit as normal through those services with each listener counting as a separate stream.

Download: Vertigo for iOS | Android (Free)

2. EarBuds

Solely for iOS users, EarBuds is geared towards listening in on celebrities and sports stars. That might mean tuning in to your favorite quarterback’s pre-game playlist or checking out what they listen to during off-season training.

But EarBuds isn’t only for athletes. Create your own channel to stream your music live with friends as well. Connect EarBuds to your Apple Music or Spotify Premium account then create a playlist to share with the world.

Title each playlist to tell people what you’re doing while you listen to it. That way you can show off the music you enjoy for different activities. Share a link to your live stream with friends and keep the conversation flowing on the Chat page.

Download: EarBuds for iOS (Free)

3. JQBX

If you and your friends use a lot of different devices—iPhone, Android, Mac, or PC—JQBX is the best way to listen to music together across all of them. Pronounced Jukebox, this multi-platform service is available for iOS, macOS, Android and even as a web app.

The only limitation is that everyone needs to have a Spotify Premium subscription.

After signing in to JQBX, make a private listening room and invite friends to enjoy the music together. Otherwise, join JQBX community members for a global song-sharing session.

Cheer the songs you love and boo the ones you don’t. You can then take a look at the trending songs to listen to what’s most popular with JQBX users across the globe.

Download: JQBX for iOS | macOS | Android (Free)

4. we:fm

Yet another app that’s only for iOS users, we:fm lets you listen to music at the same time as other friends using the app. Like JQBX, it only works with Spotify Premium for the time being.

Once you connect your music streaming account, you can then connect to Facebook and find other friends using we:fm. Now you can broadcast music for friends to tune in and chat about the songs you’re listening to together.

If you don’t want to listen live, start a new chat within we:fm to share songs with friends for them to listen to later. Or turn on private mode so you can keep listening to those showtunes without worrying about others judging you.

Download: we:fm for iOS (Free)

5. OutLoud

Advertised as a social jukebox, OutLoud is only a good option if you want to listen to music with friends who live close to you since it only works up to 100 feet. Ideally, it’s best for creating a party soundtrack, since OutLoud only plays music from a single device. But you could use it to share music with a neighbor.

Take a few seconds to set up a playlist. Then ask friends to add tracks from their own device using Spotify, Apple Music, or SoundCloud. Put your speakers up to the window and there you go: you’ve got a block party going.

In OutLoud, everyone gets a say over the playlist as you can vote for the tracks you to move them higher up the playlist. The highest voted songs play next, so you can enjoy the best music first.

Download: OutLoud for iOS | Android (Free)

6. Quorus

Quorus lets you enjoy music as a collaborative process with your friends. Unleash your inner DJ and launch a live session to stream the music you’re listening to, then invite friends to join in and listen with you.

Choose how many people are allowed to contribute to add songs to your session, letting your friends add their own flavor to the playlist. You can even password-protect your stream or make it private to get more control over who can join in.

It’s easy to join other people’s ongoing live sessions, too. You might even make some brand new friends by using this app to listen to music together.

You can use Quorus with a free Spotify account, but it works best with a Spotify Premium subscription. That way, the songs play through each person’s Spotify account so the artists still get their fair share.

Download: Quorus for iOS | Android (Free)

7. Odesli

Odesli is a little different from the other apps on this list. Rather than being an app designed to let you listen to music at the same time as your friends, Odesli is a web service that makes it easier to share songs across multiple platforms.

Geared towards musicians wanting to share tracks with fans, Odesli creates a page for each song with links to that song on every music platform. This includes Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Soundcloud, and more.

Find a shareable track by typing terms into the search box, then send the link to your friends. Now they can easily listen to the same music as you even if you both listen to music on different platforms.

How to Listen to Music Online for Free Instead

As you can see, there are lots of different apps and services you can use to listen to music together with friends, even when you’re far away from each other. But you may have noticed that all these options depend on using a music streaming service.

Streaming music is a great way to get access to an enormous library without using up your storage. And if you would rather not play for a streaming service, check out these ways to listen to music online for free instead.

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