Tune in to the Best iOS Radio Apps

For people who don't want to spend a lot on their music

With Pandora, you create your playlist by starting off with an artist or song that you love. Using its proprietary algorithm, the streaming music service then picks additional artists and songs that are similar to what you began with. You can refine the station even further by giving songs thumbs up or thumbs down. The free Pandora account offers a limited number of skips per hour, and is ad-supported. For $36 per year, you can subscribe to Pandora One, which gives you an ad-free experience, more skips, and a desktop app. Pandora One is hardly competitive, in terms of features, with other services, but it's a very inexpensive option for music lovers.

Why we love it

Pandora is a great way to discover new music, since it brings in artists and songs that are similar to your favorites but might be a bit off the beaten path. The ads are short and often tailored to your geographic location, which is a nice touch. The library is quite good for a free option, and the paid Pandora One account allows you to enjoy your music stations on the desktop as well as your iPhone or iPad.

The major draw of the Pro version, along with no display advertisements, is the ability to record what you’re listening to for later playback – even while offline.

Why we love it

While streaming services are all the rage, sometimes listening to a old-fashioned radio station is just what the doctor ordered. And with the add-on premuium service, which costs an additional $7.99 per month, you can listen to a number of professional sports including the NFL, MLB, NBA, Barclays Premier League, and Bundesliga matches.

For people who love music and hate listening to ads

Fire up Jango Radio Mobile, tell it your favorite artist, and let 'er rip. Or, if you'd rather explore some different tunes, you can do that, too, with a wide variety of premixed stations to choose from. When you've created your own station, familiar thumbs up and thumbs down controls let you customize your playlist even further. Unfortunately, there's no history page, so you can't go back and thumbs down a song (or give it a thumbs up) if you get sidetracked and don't do it while the track is playing. They key differentiator between Jango and Pandora, though, is that the ads within the app are all pop-ups, without any audio interruptions.

Why we love it

Jango has a great selection of music, even if its catalog might not be as vast as Spotify's or Apple Music's. It's totally free, though, and as long as you don't mind viewing the occasional ad when you unlock your phone, there are no commercial interruptions at all. That's right, folks, Jango has managed to do all of their ads visually, without any audio commercials.