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
- Premium also includes the ability to download and sync playlists inside the Spotify client so you can listen to them when you don't have an internet connection. Both subscriptions allow you to use your account abroad for an unlimited period of time as long as you continue to pay for the service (you only get 14 days on free).
- Spotify now allows everyone to download its app to a compatible mobile device (such as iPhone, Android, iPad, or iPod touch), but unless you’re a Premium user, you can only sync music files you already own to the app. Premium users get to search and stream music from Spotify’s catalogue on a mobile device.
When Spotify made the changes to Spotify Free, bringing it to mobile devices, they essentially condensed their subscription tiers into just Free and Premium, with the 'idea' in my head anyways of getting rid of Unlimited - which is why it had no changes in the update.
Spotify windows app not available. Spotify is the most popular music streaming service with across the globe.The on the Windows Store does have a “Get the app” button but the app itself is not yet available for download. Windows 10 S can only run apps downloaded from the Windows Store and that’s a downside.The company did at the event where Windows 10 S was announced that Spotify for Windows 10 app is going to be released on the Windows Store. It’s a lightweight iteration of Windows 10 that’s capable of providing the full desktop experience.
Price
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.
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.
- See Also: Complete Guide to Convert Spotify Songs to MP3
Adam Gorden is an experienced writer of TunesKit who is obsessed about tech, movie and software.
Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.
Spotify transformed music listening forever when it launched in 2008. Discover, manage and share over 60 million tracks, including more than 1.9 million podcast titles, for free, or upgrade to Spotify Premium to access exclusive features for music including improved sound quality and an on-demand, offline, and ad-free listening experience.
Today, Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with 320m users, including 144m subscribers, across 92 markets.
Number of subscribers (as at September 30, 2020)
144 MillionNumber of monthly active users (as at September 30, 2020)
320 MillionRevenue paid to rightsholders (since launch)
€19+ BillionNumber of tracks
It's infuriating that nothing seems to help. It's been 2 days I think when I noticed that my spotify is stuck to 'waiting to download'. I tried connecting to a different wifi, reinstalled the app or even redownloaded the songs on my phone/laptop but unfortunately none of them worked. However, while I was scrolling to my playlist, I noticed. Spotify download seems to be stuck.
60 Million +Number of playlists
What Is Spotify Premium
4 Billion +How To Get Free Spotify Premium
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