Spotify

Spotify is the largest music streaming service, and its lasting advantage is recommendation: algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly built the habit of letting the service choose what you hear next.

Its free tier with advertising is unusually generous, which is how it reached scale in markets where paid subscription was not the norm. Paid plans remove ads and enable offline listening.

It has also become the default podcast platform for many listeners, and for creators its analytics and distribution reach are the reason most podcasts publish there regardless of where else they appear.