Music is an integral part of life since the dawn of the modern era and transcends through cultures, borders, and so much more. Some listen to it to lift their mood, while many tunes in for a morning dose of sunshine to begin their day.

Listening to the curated playlist while going on and about with your work, assignments, homework has been a habit for many of us. While some resort to low-fi hip hop channels on YouTube, some of the others stay hooked to discovery on Spotify and Apple music.

Music aficionados often curate playlist on their favorite music streaming website to stream the songs, symphonies they fancy and would tune into them whenever they would feel like. A Lot of these playlists are visible to the publicly available playlist.

8tracks was exclusively about this before the mighty Spotify made their mobile listening free in 2013, followed later by YouTube Music, Apple Music, etc.

What is 8tracks?

8tracks was a social-media website for curating, sharing, and streaming music playlist on the platform(Only for US and Canada since 2016) and through third-party music stream sites.

Users could create a playlist of their favorite songs based on genre, mood, activity, or artist itself. Other users could play the songs of the playlist and follow them by adding them to the collection.

Listeners from the US and Canada could directly stream from the site, 2016 onwards while others could use third-party music streaming sites like Spotify, YouTube for listening to the songs from a playlist. 

Why is 8tracks shutting down?

To quote the founder, they ran out of funds to carry on the operations forward. It started going down-hill just after they rejected Google’s acquisition offer, which the Big G aimed at expanding their social quotient in Google Music.

In 2013, Spotify made their mobile access free for all users which started eating 8track’s visitors away, and their investors (Round A) backed out, leaving them high and dry when they needed the financial cushion the most. 

Later in 2016, firing off half the staff and collaboration with Soundcloud did help 8tracks stay afloat until the revenues and listeners count kept falling short. It started happening month after month and eventually reaching this point in time. 

Backup Your Playlist Now – Here is How

The 8tracks app for Android and iOS has stopped working for users. Apps are not available to be downloaded from the app stores of Apple and Google Play. 

8tracks platform is still live for a brief period to allow its users to create a backup of their favorite playlist. Spotify users can directly save the playlist to their library by clicking on the Save Playlist to Spotify button on the playlist page.

You can backup your favorite playlists also via the website by heading over to the playlist. Scroll down to the notes section, click on the button which says Download Tracklist. It will download the names of the songs in the playlist.

Best 8tracks Alternatives

1. Spotify Playlists

Spotify has become synonymous with music on the Internet. With over 250 million users from 80 plus countries, it has over 3 billion user-curated playlists, containing selected songs from the 50 plus million song collection on the platform.

Also Read- Best Spotify Alternatives

Users can create, edit, and share playlists with friends on any social media platform by sharing links of the playlist. The playlists can be added to your collection by liking the list which will add it to your library

What I liked 

  • Biggest collection of music playlist curated by users in different genres.
  • A versatile and user-experience centric smartphone app, offering the most elegant music streaming app experience in the market.
  • Around 40,000 songs are added to Spotify every day, and therefore you might never run out of songs to add in your playlist.
  • New Music’s suggestion is unarguably the best and sets them apart from the competition. This is the very reason I stick with Spotify. Their recommendations for discovering new music is almost always right. The second best would be Apple Music, while YouTube music is trying to catch up.

What I did not like

  • Some songs are not available in a few countries because of license conflicts. For instance, over 1 million songs are not available in India due to license rights logjam between Spotify and Warner brothers.

Visit Spotify

2. YouTube Public playlist

YouTube is the largest video sharing platform in the world. Almost 300 hours of videos are uploaded every minute to the platform by the creators. While the platform is meant for watching videos created by content creators and uploaders, music listeners tune in for music. The majority of users on YouTube use the platform for legally streaming music.

Music listeners can create a list on the mobile app and desktop site by tapping on the save button and then tapping again to add the video of the song to the desire list. A new playlist can be created from there itself.

What I liked 

  • Free to stream with minimal ads.
  • Any kind of music video can be added to the playlist.
  • New songs to the playlist can be added by another person through collaboration. Playlist creator can add collaborators for a playlist by sharing a link to the person. Collaborators can also be invited from the playlist settings.
  • Music streaming is legal and does not warrant any legal ramifications.

What I did not liked

  • Music cannot be streamed with the screen turned off on a smartphone because of the advertisements rolls on YouTube videos.

Visit YouTube

3. Openwhyd

Openwhyd is a music, video bookmarking site which music listeners use to create, share a playlist of their favorite songs. It is an ambitious non-profit project by the developer, Adrien Joly.

The platform relies on user donations. The website’s development timeline is on Github and opens for developers to contribute their part in improving the experience. Currently, you can search and music from YouTube, Vimeo on the website.

The Chrome bookmark extension allows adding any video, song from any website on the Internet. All you need to do is click on the bookmark and option to add the video, podcast, or song to your Openwhyd playlist appears on the screen. Currently, it is available only for Chrome desktop users.

App for iOS phones is available on the Apple app store, which can be downloaded from there. It is still under-development so that it might encounter minor bugs from time-to-time.

What I liked 

  • The service is free, and the developer vows to keep it that way, not-for-profit kind of development. The founders plan on keeping it that way forever.
  • Any song, video, podcasts, etc. can be added from the Desktop version of Google Chrome.
  • There are no advertisements on the platform.
  • You can edit the cover, the title of the song, video, etc. while adding it to your playlist
  • Standalone portable software for Windows 10, which does need to be installed on the computer to run. There is no need to open a web browser to manage your playlist. 
  • Connect your Last.fm and Deezer accounts for better music recommendations and synchronization across platforms.

What I did not like

  • No Android app for Android smartphone users.
  • The desktop app has issues with Login with Facebook option.

Visit Openwhyd

4. Playmoss

Playmoss is a freemium playlist, music curation site that allows searching music, videos from YouTube, Vimeo at the moment, and compatible with any music service’s tool except Spotify. 

The user-curated playlist can be found in the collection section of the site and iOS app. There is a premium version of the service which offers features like 300 songs in a playlist, universal chat, unlimited private playlist, etc. There is a Chrome extension available that can add music directly into the playlist by clicking on the button and then single-click on the song.

What I liked 

  • There is an iOS app for the service.
  • The mobile website is versatile and offers virtually all the features that one would want in a playlist.
  • The playlist can also be collaborated with other users(premium users).
  • Embed playlist into your website, blog.

What I did not like 

  • The chrome extension is buggy and does pick not pick up songs at times.
  • There is no app for Android smartphones.

Visit Playmoss

5. Great.dj

Great.dj is another promising playlist curation website that offers video, music search from sites like YouTube and Soundcloud. You can log in via your Spotify account. Although there are no apps for smartphones, the mobile version of the site does not let users feel the need for one. 

The playlist can be created by searching the songs from the search bar. Then click on the Add to queue, then click on the Save button on given on the top bar. You have to select the playlist and then search songs from the search bar to add them to the playlist. Do note that at least two songs need to be queued for creating a playlist.

What I liked 

  • Party mode for sharing access to the playlist with others in a social gathering or collaborative effort. Invited users can chat, add music to the playlist. The original playlist will not be affected unless the creator saves the new playlist. 
  • Log into the website using your Spotify account.
  • Search and add multiple songs at once.
  • Chrome web browser extension for quick-access to playlist, which allows users to access their playlist on the click of a button.

What I did not like

  • No mobile app for any smartphone.

Visit Great.dj

6. YouTube Music Playlists

YouTube Music is Google’s answer to users streaming music on YouTube, and Google Music, which has been moderately successful at best. 

YT Music has both free and paid versions, just like Spotify and offers pretty much all the features of Spotify. They also include the ability to play YouTube videos in audio-only mode. YouTube’s playlist can be played on YouTube Music without any hiccup.

Listeners can add any song on YouTube music by tapping/clicking on the three vertical dots menu. The playlist can be broadcasted as radio as well.

 What I liked 

  • The playlist can be played without logging in or creating an account on the site, free of cost. 
  • The user-created playlist can be shared on platforms like Tumblr, Linked, Facebook, etc., along through email.
  • Rich smartphone app experience, along with a web player.

What I did not like

  • Videos of a lot of songs instead of audio-based music.

Visit YouTube Music

7. Apple Music Playlist 

Apple Music is the second-largest music streaming website, with over 10 million subscribers. It was exclusively available for Apple device users initially but later release an Android version for the service.

Users can create playlists, just like YouTube Music. The playlist appears in the library section, which can be shared with others via the share option.

What I liked 

  • Search playlist by the lyrics of the songs.
  • Songs recommendation based on the playlists created by the user.
  • Playlists can be sorted by different artists.

What I did not like

  • No free version apart from the trial.

Visit Apple Music

8. Gaana Music playlist

Gaana is one of Asia’s biggest music streaming services, with over 150 million users(paid+free), offering almost 45 million songs in different genres, especially songs in the Indian languages. 

Music listeners can add a song to their playlist by tapping on the save button, which has the plus symbol. 

What I liked 

  • Non-registered users can play music from the playlist, just like Spotify, YouTube Music, and YouTube, etc.
  • The playlist can be played on music players of the smartphone. For instance, if you have MX player installed on your phone, then the playlist can be played via the player. It eliminates the need to open up your phone web-browser.
  • The app can be used without the need to log in to an account. For the purpose of creating a playlist, the user must be logged in.

What I did not like

  • Less collection of English music as compared to other competitors.

Visit Gaana Music

Also Read- Best Free Music Downloading Apps For Android

Over to You

8track was effortless, and it will be a difficult task to replace the handiness, utility, and community that is built over the last decade. The users often look-out for an effortless experience for curating their playlists, which can be played at the tap of a button.

Let us know via the comment section if there is any playlist curation site that we left out.