There are lots of free online streaming music services, but as you come to use them, you’ll find that the services do come at some sort of price. One common, and annoying restriction is loading the page only to find that you can’t access the site from your corner of the world, due to copyright restrictions. And that’s not the only kind of restriction you’ll find on these sites – there’s a limit to how many songs you can listen to, or the selection of music for free accounts is very small. We’ve put together a list of online services that offer premium quality music for absolutely no price whatsoever, without any compromises.

These sites all serve as decent and, in some cases even superior, alternatives to Spotify, the latest in a long line of sites that have restricted their services even further, along with Last.fm, Pandora and other popular music sites you might not be able to access.

FineTune

With FineTune, choose one of your favourite artists and listen to a radio station that plays their music, and similar artists, or add all of your favourite artists to your list, and listen to a radio station that caters to your personal taste in music. If you’re looking for something a little more varied you can also listen to popular radio stations on FineTune stations that play pop, rock, easy listening and more.

A great way to take advantage of FineTune’s great music selection is to use the simplified Wii version of their website. The Wii interface is actually a lot more appealing, easier to use, and you can still benefit from the main features of the site.

8Tracks

Create your own playlists on 8Tracks, and listen to those created by others. To create your own playlists, you have to upload your own mp3s and mp4s meaning you can put pretty much add any song you want to your playlists.

Mac users can benefit from the uploader, dragging songs directly from iTunes to the desktop app to upload mp3s. Each playlist must consist of at least 8 tracks, a throwback to mixed tapes.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark needs no introduction, and is possibly one of the best services currently available with unlimited playback and playlist creation capabilities. Best used when creating your own playlist, Grooveshark also provides a few playlists of their own, with the most popular music of the moment.

If you really want to take Grooveshark to the next level, be sure to check out this list of ways to enhance your Grooveshark listening experience. Grooveshark is, however, somewhat controversial as the way that they collect their music is in fact a copyright infringement in the US.

TheSixtyOne

TheSixtyOne is another unique option as far as how it presents the music to you. You have very little control over the playback, limited to listening to music according to popularity, mood or after you’ve used the site for a while, according to your own personal taste.

We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted is the ideal streaming music service for people want to stay on top of the latest trends. The constantly updated 100 song playlist consists of the most popular songs at any given time on the net.

Aupeo

Aupeo lets you stream music by genre, mood, artist, personalised stations and much more. While they do have premium accounts, the main differences are higher quality music files, and playback intermittently interrupted with short adverts. Aupeo has similar features to Last.fm, with the ability to love, ban and add songs to your favourites.

Musicuo

Musicuo’s interface may not be in English, but when it comes to listening to music, it’s easy to get past any language barrier – and if your Spanish isn’t any good, you can always use an online translator to access the site in English. The Spanish site’s interface is reminiscent of iTunes, cover flow and all. Listen to music by genre, search for specific artists, and create playlists. Create a playlist using the Add Playlist button at the bottom of the menu, and drag songs from your search results to the playlist.

If none of these appeal to you, be sure to check out the following posts, with more options on how to stream music online for free:

5 Ways to Turn YouTube into Your Personal DJ

The 14+ Hottest Music Streaming & Discovery Sites

Create Music Playlists For Every Situation Using Playlistnow.fm

What are your favorite free sites for listening to free streaming music online? Let us know in the comments.

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