Anyone who’s ditched traditional radio for their drives to work probably knows a bit about Spotify. They’re one of the lead players in online radios and streaming services for music and podcasts.
While Spotify has a bit of a spendy premium version ($9.99 per month), you can also get a free version that does many of the same essential tricks. In that case, you might be wondering “what does Spotify Premium do that makes it worth my money?”.
If you’re trying to decide if Spotify Premium is for you or if you’re better off sticking with the free version, keep reading for some key differences.
What Comes With the Free Version?
The free version of Spotify is already a powerful little app. You’re able to listen to your music on the go (so long as you have a data or wifi connection) and you have access to almost anything you could want.
Artists have to choose to put their music or podcasts on Spotify, but there’s a huge collection of content available and there are a few handy features that make the app fun and convenient.
Custom and Curated Playlists
Spotify does something really cool. It makes curated playlists for its users, even with the free versions.
These playlists are generated based on the listening habits of the user and they change day to day. Sometimes they’re separated by genre.
There are also “new release” playlists that find songs that the user would potentially be interested in, as well as seasonal playlists. If you listened to certain songs all summer, you might get a summer 2020 playlist.
You can also make plenty of your own playlists, making it easy to put your songs where you want them so you can listen to things in the order that you like.
Do you want a playlist of party music? You got it. Are you planning a long drive and you want a playlist that will last exactly the duration of the 5-hour trip? You can make it! Maybe you need a good “songs to cry to” playlist. Spotify won’t judge you.
You can share these with your friends via a Facebook connection, though, so make sure you’re only sharing what you want!
Plenty of Song Storage
As the songs aren’t actually being stored anywhere, just streamed, you can hold all of your favorite songs on your favorites list.
It’s not technically infinite. You can hold 10,000 songs on your playlists or library though this appears to be changing soon. Fret not, friends, you can listen to your heart’s delight.
6 Skips Per Hour
The annoying thing about the free version of Spotify is that you can’t really dictate song order beyond placing everything in a playlist and hoping for the best. You have to skip around.
This would be nice, but you only get 6 skips per hour.
If you’re great at making your perfect playlists, this is probably more than enough for you (especially if you’re more of a podcast person). If not, though, it may be annoying.
What Does Spotify Premium Do and Offer?
Spotify has 83 million paid subscribers, meaning that there must be something to the premium version. What is it that makes the paid version so special and appealing? Let’s talk about it.
Freedom From Annoying Ads
Spotify is only free because they sell space to advertisers, offsetting the costs of the free version. Those ads get sent to users every so often in the form of commercials that can sometimes be annoying and disruptive.
If this is a bother to you, you’re not alone. Spotify even pokes fun at it with its own advertisements for its Premium service.
Premium removes ads entirely, making your listening experience a lot smoother.
Unlimited Skips
You can take more control over your listening experience with Spotify Premium via the unlimited skipping function. Six skips per hour aren’t enough for a lot of people.
Maybe you’re the kind of person who really can’t make up their mind about their music though. Maybe you’re bad at curating playlists. Maybe you just get antsy sometimes.
Unlimited skips give you more freedom over how you listen to your music if that’s something that you need.
Offline Listening
One of the best features of a Spotify monthly subscription is the offline listening function. You can download a certain number of songs to listen to even when you’re not connected to the internet.
This is great if you’re on a limited data plan but you still love to listen to your content while you’re driving or somewhere where there may not be free wifi.
Stream From Any Device
Spotify Premium allows more streaming freedom than its free alternative. Not only can you stream from computers and laptops, but also smart TVs or their equivalents. You can bring your music with you wherever you go without bringing one device from room to room.
Awesome Audio Quality
The audio quality of Spotify Premium is actually slightly better than that of the free version. This may not be a discernable difference to most people, but if you have an ear for slight musical differences, this may be of interest to you (especially if the other features interest you as well).
So, Spotify Free vs Premium?
Which is right for you? What does Spotify Premium do that you might be interested in? If the free version hasn’t been quite enough for you in the past, you might want to consider a free trial of Spotify Premium just to give it a shot. If you’re a student, you can even get a discounted monthly rate at only $4.99 per month.
