How is this music & audio apps ranking decided?

Mechanically. The 14 approved music & audio apps listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.

Is this list re-ordered for small businesses?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the small businesses framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.

How much does music & audio apps software cost?

Across the 14 music & audio apps tools listed here, paid plans start between $4.99 and $23.99 a month, with a median entry price of $9.99. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $35.99 a month (Deezer). 7 of 14 also publish a $0 plan.

What is the cheapest music & audio apps software?

2 of the 14 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Mixcloud has the lowest published entry price at $4.99 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.

Is there free music & audio apps software?

Yes, 7 of 14 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 2 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.

What features should music & audio apps software have?

Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are ad-free (2 of 8 tools that publish plan detail), ads (2) and up to 6 accounts (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as ad-supported or direct artist payouts, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.

How is music & audio apps software usually billed?

freemium (5), one-time (4), open-source (1), subscription (1), counted across the 14 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 1 of 14 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.

What does music & audio apps software actually cover?

The 14 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are music (8), streaming (7), podcasts (3), hifi (2), radio (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under music & audio apps may overlap on very little.

How many pricing tiers do music & audio apps tools offer?

8 of 14 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 3 of 14 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.

How many music & audio apps tools are listed on Softwr?

14 approved music & audio apps listings appear on this page, including Ableton Live, Amazon Music, Audacity, Bandcamp. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/music-audio-apps, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Music & Audio Apps · ranked shortlist

Best Music & Audio Apps software for Small Businesses in 2026

14 approved music & audio apps listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.

Tools ranked: 14
Entry price range: $4.99-$23.99
Publish a $0 plan: 7 of 14

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.

Where the ratings come from

No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.

What the pool is

Approved music & audio apps listings, capped at 20 per page; 14 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the music & audio apps category page.

The ranking

Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.

#1
A
Ableton Live
Highest rated here
Digital audio workstation built around a Session View for arranging ideas live
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
one-time
Ableton Live breakdown Compare with Amazon Music
#2
Amazon Music
Unlimited music for every moment
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $9.99 a month.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
music, streaming, amazon, alexa
Amazon Music breakdown Compare with Audacity
#3
Audacity
Free and open-source multi-track audio editor and recorder
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
open-source
Audacity breakdown Compare with Bandcamp
#4
Bandcamp
An artist-first music platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
music, independent artists, streaming
Bandcamp breakdown Compare with Deezer
#5
Deezer
All the music you love
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $23.99 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $35.99.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
music, streaming, hifi, podcasts
Deezer breakdown Compare with FL Studio
#6
F
FL Studio
Digital audio workstation sold with free updates to your edition for life
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
one-time
FL Studio breakdown Compare with iHeartRadio
#7
iHeartRadio
All your favorite music, podcasts, and radio
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $5.99 a month.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
radio, music, podcasts, streaming
iHeartRadio breakdown Compare with Logic Pro
#8
L
Logic Pro
Apple's digital audio workstation, sold outright on Mac and by subscription on iPad
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
one-time
Logic Pro breakdown Compare with Mixcloud
#9
Mixcloud
The home of audio culture
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $4.99 a month.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
music, dj mixes, podcasts
Mixcloud breakdown Compare with Pandora
#10
Pandora
Personalized music and podcasts
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
Model not published
Tags
music, radio, streaming, personalized
Pandora breakdown Compare with REAPER
#11
R
REAPER
Full digital audio workstation with a 60 day evaluation and a USD 60 personal licence
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
one-time
REAPER breakdown Compare with Suno
#12
Suno
Generative AI service creating full songs with vocals and instrumentation from text
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $12 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
3 tiers
Suno breakdown Compare with Tidal
#13
Tidal
High fidelity music streaming
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $10.99 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $19.99.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
music, hifi, lossless, streaming
Tidal breakdown Compare with YouTube Music
#14
YouTube Music
A new music streaming service from YouTube
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $5.99 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $18.99.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
music, streaming, youtube, google
YouTube Music breakdown

What music & audio apps software costs

Counted from the published pricing of the 14 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.

Cheapest paid plan: $4.99Mixcloud
Median entry price: $9.99across 7 priced
Dearest entry price: $23.99Deezer
Publish a $0 plan: 7of 14

Paid music & audio apps plans in this set start anywhere from $4.99 a month for Mixcloud to $23.99 for Deezer. The median entry price across the 7 tools that publish one is $9.99, half of them start below that figure and half above it.

Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Deezer's at $35.99 a month, 1.5× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.

7 of 14 publish a $0 plan, and 2 of those charge nothing at all. 2 tools have no free tier of any kind.

1 of 14 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.

Mixcloud pricing Deezer pricing Deezer plans

How these vendors bill

The billing model each of the 14 music & audio apps listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.

freemium: 5
one-time: 4
open-source: 1
subscription: 1

Separately, 1 of 14 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.

What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for

Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 8 music & audio apps tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.

Named most often

Ad-free , 2 of 8
Ads , 2 of 8
Up to 6 accounts , 2 of 8

Named by fewer

Nothing else is named by more than one vendor, beyond the list on the left, no two of these tools describe their tiers the same way.

Named by exactly one vendor: Ad-supported, Direct artist payouts, Listening, Multitrack editor, Offline listening, Priority generation. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.

What “Music & Audio Apps” covers in practice

The subject tags that recur across these 14 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.

music8
streaming7
podcasts3
hifi2
radio2

Carried by a single tool: alexa, amazon, dj mixes, google, independent artists, lossless, personalized, youtube. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.

How to choose between them

Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.

Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them

7 of 14 music & audio apps tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with ad-free, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.

Read the spread before you read the features

$4.99 to $23.99 is a $19 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $23.99 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.

Check which tier you actually land on

3 of 14 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, ad-free, ads, up to 6 accounts, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.

The billing model matters more than the headline number

This category splits across 4 billing models: freemium on 5 listings, one-time on 4, and 2 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.

Compare music & audio apps tools directly

Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.

Go straight to the numbers

Build your own comparison See the shortlist instead

Questions people ask about music & audio apps software

Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.

How is this music & audio apps ranking decided?: Mechanically. The 14 approved music & audio apps listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
Is this list re-ordered for small businesses?: No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the small businesses framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.
How much does music & audio apps software cost?: Across the 14 music & audio apps tools listed here, paid plans start between $4.99 and $23.99 a month, with a median entry price of $9.99. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $35.99 a month (Deezer). 7 of 14 also publish a $0 plan.
What is the cheapest music & audio apps software?: 2 of the 14 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Mixcloud has the lowest published entry price at $4.99 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
Is there free music & audio apps software?: Yes, 7 of 14 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 2 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
What features should music & audio apps software have?: Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are ad-free (2 of 8 tools that publish plan detail), ads (2) and up to 6 accounts (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as ad-supported or direct artist payouts, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
How is music & audio apps software usually billed?: freemium (5), one-time (4), open-source (1), subscription (1), counted across the 14 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 1 of 14 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
What does music & audio apps software actually cover?: The 14 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are music (8), streaming (7), podcasts (3), hifi (2), radio (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under music & audio apps may overlap on very little.
How many pricing tiers do music & audio apps tools offer?: 8 of 14 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 3 of 14 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
How many music & audio apps tools are listed on Softwr?: 14 approved music & audio apps listings appear on this page, including Ableton Live, Amazon Music, Audacity, Bandcamp. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/music-audio-apps, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Keep reading

Neighbouring categories

Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Where the ratings come from

What the pool is

The ranking

Ableton Live

Amazon Music

Audacity

Bandcamp

Deezer

FL Studio

iHeartRadio

Logic Pro

Mixcloud

Pandora

REAPER

Suno

Tidal

YouTube Music