Best free music apps

It can be overwhelming searching for the best free music apps as there are so many available. If you’re a musician, student or teacher, you’ll find there are apps for almost everything, so where should you start?

Physical copies of recorded music have become less common thanks to streaming services, with many listening platforms such as Google Play, Deezer, and Amazon hosting much of the world’s music. Spotify are the world’s largest subscription music streaming platform, with 96m subscribers and 170m overall users. Users can download the free version of the Spotify app, and even use the premium version free for 3 months.

For absolute beginners to music theory, there are some fantastic resources for learning the foundations of note recognition. We love the free iOS Music Tutor app for walking brand new students through note learning in both the treble and bass clefs, and on the piano keyboard. Music Tutor measures both accuracy and response time, meaning students can independently learn to read music with the app.

Another great app that assists creators who don’t read notation is the MIDI Score app – this software converts MIDI files to sheet music. MIDI Score also shows where the notes are on a piano keyboard, which is a nice touch for bringing both elements together with clarity. 

Aspiring composers looking for free music notation software have several high quality options; MuseScore is a wonderful, user-friendly open source programme, while professional level favourites such as Dorico and Sibelius have entirely free versions available.

For performers who are a little more confident reading music notation, there are a number of apps that play sheet music such as the MuseScore player, however one of the most useful free music apps you can get is PlayScore 2. With PlayScore 2 you can play any music straight from a photo, a PDF or an image. If you don’t read music you can hear what it sounds like, or you can have PlayScore accompany you as you sing or play your instrument – and in any key.  

If you sing in a choir you can isolate your part on its own or with the others in the background. You can loop bars that need extra work, edit the instrument sounds, and play along with a ‘backing track’ of your sheet music at your own pace, following scores in real time to better understand rhythm and pitch. The PlayScore 2 app can be used for practicing sight reading, music theory, and for performance practice and learning new music. Not only that, PlayScore 2 can export your music as MIDI or MusicXML to DAWs and score editors in minutes. Whichever musical skill you’re looking to improve, PlayScore 2 can be one of the best free music apps in your toolkit.