Spotify brings different services to its users according to the subscription plan. As a freemium service, basic features are free with advertisements or automatic music videos. Additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. There are two different choices for Spotify users, including Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. But Spotify Premium is divided into three different types. It contains Spotify Premium for Student at $4.99 per month, Spotify Premium for Individual at $9.99 per month as well as Spotify Premium for Family at a discounted price of $14.99 a month for.
- Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Music
- What Is Spotify Free
- Spotify Free Vs Paid
- Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Account
- Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Internet
Spotify is arguably the most popular streaming service in the world. It has a massive library of music as well as a sizable library of podcasts. In this Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium breakdown, we’re going to see if the paid version is worth the monthly fee, or if you’re better off bearing through the ads to save money. You may even discover some features of Spotify along the way.
Editor’s note: This Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium article was updated on October 1, 2020, to include links to relevant information and to address an FAQ about Spotify promotions.
Related: Best music streaming services
The listening experience with Free Spotify is unpleasant
Spotify Free and Premium Spotify may look similar at first, but extended functionality varies greatly.
Spotify free trial 60 days 2019. If you wish to cancel your Premium Service subscription after the end of your Free Trial Period, you may do so by logging into your Spotify account and following the cancellation instructions. Price changes will take effect at the start of the next subscription period following the date of the price change. If Spotify increases the monthly fee in the future, we will provide you notice. There are no refunds or credits for partial monthly subscriptions.
There are some key functional differences between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium, particularly with the mobile interface. With the free mobile version, you can only skip six tracks per hour, whereas with Premium, you can skip as many as you’d like. Skip limits can put a damper on things when you repeatedly aren’t in the mood for certain randomized songs, but sure it’s a forgivable inconvenience.
Spotify Premium let’s you skip tracks endlessly, the free version does not
Another drawback to Free Spotify on mobile: you can’t select specific songs for playback. Rather, you can select an album or a playlist and shuffle the songs in it. This can get annoying when you have an earworm and just need to listen to that particular song. With Premium, you can listen to that song over and over to your little heart’s content.
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There is a caveat with Free Spotify, however; you can select songs for playback with unlimited skips, so long as you are listening to them from one of Spotify’s 15 curated playlists under “Made for You” on the “Home” page. These include popular editorial playlists, such as “RapCaviar” and “Alternative R&B,” and playlists algorithmically tailored to your listening preferences such as “Discover Weekly,” “Daily Mix,” and “Release Radar.” The songs on these playlists change frequently. If there’s a blue shuffle icon next to the playlist title, you may only shuffle songs.
Get ready for annoying ads with Free Spotify
The absolute worst thing about Free Spotify is how frequently ads interrupt playback. The advertisements are incredibly annoying, are surely designed to be that way. Many of them feature the most irritating noises you could imagine, such as traffic horns overlaid with a voice saying things like, “Is this annoying? If you buy Premium, you won’t have to listen to this anymore.” I’ll give them credit, because this tactic of being obnoxious works pretty well: paying for Spotify Premium is almost worth it for the sole purpose of removing these ads.
Listen offline with Spotify Premium
Depending on how much you pay for data, it might be a good idea to save your favorite tunes for offline listening.
With Spotify Premium, you can download an unlimited number of tracks for offline listening. This is great for long flights or if you want to turn off your data while away from home. With Free Spotify, you aren’t able to download any music, so you may be spending money in the form of data usage rather than a Premium subscription.
On the desktop Spotify app, there are fewer discrepancies between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium. For example, on the desktop app you can select any specific song you want with unlimited skips regardless of if you have Spotify Premium or not. However, you are still subjected to ads on Free Spotify with the desktop app, and you cannot download music for offline listening on your computer unless you have Spotify Premium.
A glitch to Spotify Free affords Premium features
In August 2020, there was a glitch with Free Spotify that allowed for unlimited skips, specific song selection, and ad-free listening on both the mobile and desktop versions of the streaming service. This glitch made it almost identical to Spotify Premium, minus the ability to download music for offline listening. I reached out to a Spotify customer service rep, who told me, “To my knowledge we have ads and limited skips on the Free version.” This glitch surely will not last forever, though, so I’m going to have to crown the winner of best listening experience to Spotify Premium.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Discovery features are identical
Spotify Discover and Release Radar update every Monday to introduce new songs to its users.
One of the best things about Spotify is the way it promotes discovery of new music. This is apparent in its algorithmically produced playlists, designed to suggest styles of music that align with your listening history. The “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix” playlists are updated frequently with new suggestions. Perhaps you really dislike a recommended song or artist, you can press a button telling it to avoid a certain type of music or to blacklist that artist from your profile. The “Release Radar” playlist churns out new releases from artists you follow and updates weekly.
One of Spotify’s best features is available to Free and Premium users.
Spotify has a large variety of genres, moods, and other categories under the Browse tab, and here you can listen to its editorial playlists to discover new music. It will also recommend editorial playlists based on your listening activity, and it will algorithmically create “Radio” playlists for every song, artist, album, and playlist.
When you create a new playlist, the Spotify algorithm suggests songs for you based on the title of your playlist as well as the songs you’ve already put into it. Regardless of if you’ve paid for Spotify Premium, these discovery features are available and very helpful.
Winner: Draw
Free or paid, enjoy the same social features
Spotify for desktop looks the same no matter what version you subscribe to.
Music has always been a social art form, but things have changed quite a bit since the days my dad would buy the latest Neil Young record on vinyl and sit around the turntable with his friends. Of course, people still get together to listen to music nowadays—though, perhaps not so much in 2020. There’s something exciting about sharing the social benefits of music with others, even when you’re trapped at home. Spotify uses several different tools on its platform to encourage music sharing, and you don’t need to buy Premium to access any of them.
Enjoy collaborative playlists on Spotify
To create collaborative playlists, press the three-dot symbol at the top-right of your screen (mobile), or next to the playlist title (desktop), and select “Collaborative Playlist.” Then, by share the playlist link with your friends. This will let them add and remove songs to and from it. Anybody with the link may do so, and it’s private unless someone holds the link. Collaborative playlists are great for when you and your roommates are throwing a party, or you’re planning a road trip with friends. Heck, they’re even good for when you just want to share some songs with someone regularly.
In a similar vein, if you have a Premium Family subscription or a Premium Duo subscription, Spotify will algorithmically create either a “Family Mix” or “Duo Mix” of songs based on the listening history of all the subscribed members. This isn’t technically a social feature because these playlists are created by Spotify and not the users themselves, so I’m not going to count its absence against Free Spotify.
Peek at what your friends are rocking out to
https://nkyaky.weebly.com/spotify-download-plugin.html. If you use Facebook, you can link your Spotify account to your Facebook account, making it easy for your Facebook friends to find your profile on Spotify by name or through the Find Friends button on the desktop app. You can search for your friends’ Spotify usernames; browse and add their playlists to your library; view their recent listening history; and, on the desktop Spotify app, view their active listening history.
https://nkyaky.weebly.com/turn-off-spotify-auto-open-mac.html. 2015-02-08 03:28 PM. Go to login items in the Mac settings and see if Spotify is there. If so remove it. System Preferences Users & Groups. Once there, click your username, and then click on the Login Items tab. This will likely happen by default, but you can stop Spotify from opening on startup by turning off the option in your Mac computer's System Preferences, or in Spotify's settings.
This is a great way to discover new music and gain an idea of what types of music your friends are listening to. If it creeps you out that people can look through your playlists or see what you’re actively listening to, you can make your playlists private and disable the active listening feed. All of these features are available whether or not you pay for Premium.
Winner: Draw
Some music may be unavailable if you don’t pay for Premium
Free Spotify pays artists less per steam than Spotify Premium does. In response to this discrepancy, Spotify allows artists to set up a paywall for the first two weeks after a release. If an artist chooses this option, their release will only be available to Premium users until the two weeks have gone by. If it’s important to you to have access to all the latest releases, this may be a feature that sways you to pay for Spotify Premium. Additionally, if you value the amount of money your favorite artists are getting paid, Premium is superior in that department. The following chart depicts the average amount Spotify pays artists per stream.
Digital Service Provider | $ Per Stream |
---|---|
Qobuz | $0.04390 |
Peloton | $0.04036 |
iHeartRadio | $0.01426 |
Amazon Unlimited | $0.01175 |
Napster/Rhapsody | $0.01110 |
24/7 Entertainment GmbH | $0.01050 |
YouTube Red | $0.00948 |
Tidal | $0.00927 |
Deezer | $0.00567 |
Google Play | $0.00543 |
Apple | $0.00495 |
KKBox | $0.00435 |
Amazon Digital Services Inc. | $0.00395 |
Spotify | $0.00331 |
Loen | $0.00205 |
Pandora | $0.00155 |
Vevo | $0.00109 |
Yandex LLC | $0.00051 |
YouTube Content ID | $0.00028 |
UMA | $0.00013 |
Winner: Premium
Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Sound quality is higher with Premium
While there is no high-resolution option for Spotify users, and Spotify only supports AAC and Ogg Vorbis, lossy file formats, there are still key differences in sound quality between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium. With Free Spotify, the maximum bitrate you can stream at is 128kbps on the desktop app and 160kbps on the mobile app, whereas Spotify Premium affords you 320kbps streaming on both desktop and mobile. In essence, this means that Spotify Premium’s music contains more data points and therefore more detail to its sound.
Streaming Service | Max streaming quality | Supported Formats |
---|---|---|
Qobuz | 24bit / 192kHz | AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, WAV, WMA Lossless |
Amazon Music HD | 24bit /192kHz | FLAC |
Tidal HiFi | 24bit / 96kHz | AAC, ALAC, FLAC |
Deezer HiFi | 16bit / 44.1kHz | FLAC |
Google Play Music | 320kbps | AAC, ALAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA |
Deezer Premium | 320kbps | MP3 |
Spotify Premium | 320kbps | AAC, Ogg Vorbis |
Apple Music | 256kbps | AAC |
YouTube Music Premium | 256kbps | AAC |
SoundCloud Go+ | 256kbps | AAC |
Slacker Radio | 320kbps | MP3 |
Pandora | 192kbps | AAC |
Spotify Free | 160kbps | AAC |
Deezer Free | 128kbps | MP3 |
Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Music
Spotify Premium has higher quality than Free Spotify, but it doesn’t have a HiFi setting. If you’re looking for a high fidelity streaming service, try Tidal HiFi.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Related: Tidal vs Spotify
There are different priced memberships for Premium, but Free is free
What Is Spotify Free
Spotify offers four different types of Premium subscriptions, and some of them are really great deals. First, there is the Spotify Premium Individual subscription, which is $9.99/month. This allows access to all the Premium features such as no ad interruptions, on-demand playback, and downloading tracks for offline listening. If you’re a full-time student at a university or college, you should be eligible for the Premium Student subscription, which is $4.99/month. Not only does this afford you all the same abilities of Spotify Premium, but, if you are a student in the United States, it also includes a subscription to SHOWTIME and the ad-supported version of Hulu.
If you want to share a Premium account with your live-in partner, you can get Premium Duo. It costs $12.99/month and both you and your partner will have your own separate accounts. Along with all the regular Premium features, you have the option to join “Duo Mix.” You and your partner can both go to the “Duo Mix” on your “Made for You” page on the mobile app, click the three dots, and select “Join Duo Mix.” Spotify will algorithmically design a playlist to be appealing to both you and your partner. You can change the mix to be chill or upbeat, depending on the mood, and you can choose to remove any explicit songs from the mix. Each song has the profile picture of either you or your partner next to it, so you can see whose listening activity the song was generated from.
Spotify offers a family plan, a plan for couples, and a student rate.
Spotify Premium Family is very similar to Premium Duo, as all members must live at the same address. Premium Family, though, can support up to six separate accounts, and costs $14.99/month. Parents can choose to block explicit music for specific members, and children can use their Premium Family account on the Spotify Kids app. In addition to these features and all the regular Premium features, your family can listen to a generated “Family Mix” which works just like the “Duo Mix.”
3 Download Music from Spotify to Windows PC. Click the 'Convert' button and the Spotify song or playlist you selected in Step 1 will soon be converted and downloaded to your local computer. When the conversion is done, click “Converted” button on the left side and you can check all the songs. Download Spotify song or playlist with Siri Shortcuts. If you are using an iOS device, you probably. https://nkyaky.weebly.com/can-you-download-songs-on-open-spotify.html. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Skip to content. Spotify Click the install file to finish up. If your download didn't start, try again. Visit the Microsoft Store to download. Bring your music. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for. Download a Song or Album from Spotify. Spotify gives you the ability to curate a personal playlist made up of your favorite songs. If you wish to download individual songs, you must first put them onto this playlist and then download.
All of these subscription options are very cool, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, free is free. If the absence of needing to fork over a portion of your paycheck every month is enough motivation to deal with the ads, lack of features, and inconvenience of Free Spotify, then Free Spotify is going to be the option for you.
Winner: Spotify Free
What are some lesser known Spotify features?
Spotify constantly and consistently comes out with new features. For example, in 2017, it created a “Time Capsule” playlist for all of its 16-years-old-and-up users, Premium or not. These playlists were personalized based on their extensive listening history. It was created to be the kind of playlist users would have listened to in their teenage years. Pretty cool, huh? Another recent creation of Spotify’s was the “Pet Playlist,” which users could personalize by inputting the species of their pet as well as ranking their pet’s behaviors across a few different spectra. This data was then mixed with the genres and styles of music the user enjoys to create a playlist for users and their furry best friends.
Express yourself on Tinder and Instagram
Spotify has partnerships with many other apps, including Instagram and Tinder. You can share the name, artist, and album artwork of a song to your Instagram story with the click of a button on Spotify. If you link your Spotify account to Tinder, you can publish your frequently played songs on your Tinder profile, you know, to make sure you attract people with as impeccable music taste as yourself. And, of course, you can connect your account with Facebook to find friends more easily.
Spotify plays nicely with Android Auto and has its own Carplay mode
Carplay simplifies the interface, so distractions are lessened.
When you connect your smartphone to your car by Bluetooth, Spotify will automatically go into Carplay mode or Android Auto mode, depending on your OS and if your car is compatible with these features. These features reduce the amount of information displayed on the screen, making it safer to navigate the app while in the car. (We don’t recommend using the app while actively driving, though. Have your passenger do it.) They also make for easy integration with the navigation apps Google Maps and Waze. Similarly, many music-listening devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus, offer Spotify integration for easy access.
That’s a wrap: End-of-year statistics
My personal favorite Spotify feature is “Spotify Wrapped.” In December of every year, Spotify creates an animation of statistics for each user, including but not limited to the song they listened to most over the past year, how many total minutes they spent listening to music over the past year, the podcast the user listened to most often, and the countries all the artists they listened to are based out of. In addition to this, Wrapped shows users the statistics generalized by region and in the world as a whole.
Therefore, you and your friends or family can enjoy multiple accounts for a really low price. Spotify desktop app advantages. Therefore you’re still able to listen to your favorites jazz musicians, pop singers or whatever is your jam.As you can see, there is no winner in this category, because Apple Music’s monthly subscription offer is the same as Spotify. Your access to the full version of Apple Music or Spotify will be restricted at the end of your current billing cycle.One of the main differences between platforms is that a canceled Spotify premium subscription brings your account back to the free, ad-supported version. However, if you want to listen to music for free, with some limitations like ads or shuffle playing Spotify wins.Let’s move to the next part of our comparison between Apple Music vs Spotify. That’s great value for money!As you can see, those two competitors have a pretty similar offerBoth, Apple Music and Spotify subscriptions, automatically renew each month.You can cancel the service at any time.
In December of 2019, Spotify even had “Wrapped” stats for the whole decade. “Wrapped” is available for both Free and Premium users, but Premium users get additional personalized data including the number of artists they discovered that year as well as their top new artist from that year. Because of this one small detail, Spotify Premium wins this section, but, all Spotify users get a lot of really cool features.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Which one is better?
And the winner is Spotify Premium! It’s pretty clear that Premium has more features than Free Spotify, but whether or not you’re willing to pay for a subscription depends on you, of course. If you can get a student, family, or duo membership, Spotify Premium isn’t too pricey, but if you’re still on the fence, Spotify has free month-long trials of Premium. Until next time, happy listening.
Next: Apple Music review
Can I get a free Google Nest Mini with Spotify Premium?
Not anymore! In September, Spotify teamed up with Google to give away free Google Nest Minis to all Spotify Premium subscribers, new and old. This promotion has since ended, but keep an eye on Spotify's website because it does promotions like this fairly frequently.
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Being one of the most popular and best music streaming services, Spotify has long provided all users with easy access to a huge library of streaming music, say 40 million songs, according to Spotify, no matter if you are subscribing the Free or Premium plan. However, in order to encourage people to pay for music, Spotify has applied some limits to the free membership. If you are new to Spotify and have no idea whether you should subscribe to Spotify Premium or listen free, you can refer to the following review where we are explaining the major differences between Spotify Free and Premium from price, features and audio quality, etc. so that you can decide which Spotify plan is right for you.
- See Also: Everything about Spotify Premium for Family Plan
Price
Spotify Free Vs Paid
The biggest difference between Spotify Free and Premium is the price. As the name suggests, Spotify Free is free for everyone with no cost at all. To subscribe Premium, you should pay £9.99 per month. The great thing for Premium is that Spotify offers you a one month free trial to test its features before you finally decide to sign up the account.
Accessibility & Limitation
Both Spotify Free and Premium have their own capabilities and limits. As for the Free plan, the annoyance is that it supports ads.That's to say, every few tracks you play, a short advert or two will be played, which will somehow harm your listening experience. On desktop, you won't feel too limited by Spotify Free as it lets you choose any artist, album, playlist, or song that you'd like to listen to and rock out to it as much as you like. But on mobile, things get a bit more restrictive. Using an iPhone or Android device, you'll still have access to the Spotify catalog, but you'll be forced to listen to everything in Shuffle mode or pre-made playlists. What's more, when you're using Spotify Free, you'll need to be online to listen to music instead of downloading any track to play offline.
If you upgrade to Spotify Premium, it will remove all adverts on every platform so you can listen the music without any interruption. Aside from removing ads, Premium plan also unlocks full access on your mobile devices, meaning you can listen to any song at any time on your phone as exactly the same when you listen on your desktop or laptop. Another huge benefit of Premium, of course, is the ability to download Spotify music for offline listening, which allows you to save up to 3,333 tracks on up to three devices.
Audio Quality & Experience
The audio quality you'll get from Free and Premium is also different. Generally speaking, Spotify uses three different quality settings for streaming in the Ogg Vorbis format. Spotify Free provides 96 kbps as the standard bitrate for mobile, then jumps to 160 kbps for desktop and web player 'standard quality' and 'high quality' on mobile. As for Spotify Premium, you'll get 320kbps which is 'high quality' on desktop and 'extreme quality' on mobile. Therefore, if you've got nice headphones or concern much about the music quality, you are suggested to go Spotify Premium for its high quality audio option.
Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Account
Other Features
Premium prevails in other aspects as it owns some extra features that Free doesn't include, such as Spotify Connect, which controls Spotify music across multiple devices, making seamless transitions between listening on your phone and computer, the Year in Music and the amazing Discover Weekly playlists that help you find new music from Spotify.
Conclusion: Should You Sign Up Premium or Stay Free
Our verdict is, if you don't care much about the music quality and listening experience, the Free plan might just be enough for you. But if you are the kind of enthusiastic music lovers who want to hear the latest and high-quality songs, save music offline, hate ads, then Spotify Premium is absolutely the best investment you should make.
Extra Tips: How to Download Spotify Music Offline for Free
As the Spotify music is protected by DRM, only Premium users can download Spotify songs for offline listening. However, if you are a Free plan subscriber, you can also save the Spotify songs to your devices for playing offline. In this case, all you'll need is a smart Spotify DRM removal tool, like TunesKit Music Converter for Spotify, with which you can easily download any Spotify music file, such as tracks, albums, playlists and artists and convert the songs to common MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, M4A, M4B formats to play on any popular mobile devices and MP3 players. For more details on how to convert Spotify songs to MP3, you can visit the following guide.
![Difference between free spotify and paid Difference between free spotify and paid](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134123651/715264036.jpg)
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Difference Between Free Spotify And Paid Internet
Adam Gorden is an experienced writer of TunesKit who is obsessed about tech, movie and software.