Spotify Free vs Premium: Is Premium Worth it?
May. 29, 2024Spotify is easily one of the most popular music streaming platforms out there thanks to its vast music library, social features, and an excellent app that’s not only extremely user-friendly but has many useful features. That said, all good things come at a price and if you want to use all Spotify features to their fullest, you might want toget Spotify Premium, but is it really worth it? Here’s our Spotify Free vs Premium comparison.
Spotify Free vs Premium: Functional Differences
Where Premium sets itself apart from the Free tier is in functionality. Ad-free playback is a huge reason to consider Premium, but that’s just the start of roadblocks. In the past few months, the platform has pulled many features that were previously available in the free tier, now locked behind Premium.
Spotify Premium offers theability to skip to parts of songsor select the song you want to start playing instantly. The inability to skip songs on the free tier is the biggest roadblock due to which you might sometimes just rage-quit the app. It’s what Spotify wants you to face, so that you think about purchasing the Premium plan, the next time you launch app.
Although, a few of the curated playlists are an exception to this rule. These include “Made for You,” “Discover Weekly,” “Daily Mix,” and playlists that are generally curated for you by Spotify’s algorithm.
The free version doesn’t even allow you to see which song is up next in the queue by sliding and peeking in the player. The desktop app is a different story. The last time we checked, it still allowed unlimited skips. Knowing Spotify and their recent tactics, don’t be surprised if that changes soon. The platform has also startedlocking lyricsbehind Premium.
There’s no such limit on how many songs you can skip or peek at on Spotify Premium, and neither is there a cap to the playlists.
We could still see people using the platform with no skipping allowed, and sometimes you have to sacrifice to save some bucks. Well, wait until the platform bombards you with some annoying ads that are purposefully meant to disturb your peace of mind. It won’t take long for a peaceful music-listening exercise to yield the opposite way and leave you distressed.
On the contrary, there arezero ads on Spotify Premium(unless you listen to podcasts). That’s what Spotify Premium has always been about, even before the platform took away the features free users used to enjoy. It didn’t take them long enough to acknowledge the unwavering resolve of people to bear the annoying ads by locking other features.
The other standout feature that Spotify has banked on is theOffline listening feature. As the name suggests, Premium allows you to download your playlists and listen to them when you have no internet.
This can come in handy when internet connectivity is scarce where you live, or if your mobile plan doesn’t offer you much data, and you have to rely on home Wi-Fi to take music offline. There’s unfortunately no way to download music offline on Spotify’s free tier.
In the time I spent experiencing the feature, it’s pretty darn good, and if you’re someone who listens to music with friends, you will love the Jam feature.
Spotify Premium gets you access to Spotify Capsule which allows you to keep track of thetime you spent listening to musicin a month, your top artist, and your top song. It also shows you the usual time of the day you listen to music on your device with a daily average. Consider it a mini Spotify Rewind of sorts.
Spotify has many selling points, and sound quality isn’t a major one. Free Spotify plays music at 128kbps on the web andup to 160kbpson apps. Both aren’t high bitrates, and the difference in quality between the same and YouTube Music’s default 256kbps bitrate on mobile are quite significant.
The bottom line is, that Premium will offer you a noticeable bump in sound quality, and if you’re someone who puts sound quality slightly above other features, Premium might be worth considering.
Discovery features are what make Spotify stand out from the rest of the streaming services. This includes thecurated playlists and song suggestions, including different categories of music based on moods and genres. Spotify’s Radio feature is great, as it uses the algorithm to create a personalized list of songs, artists, and playlists. These features are available on both Free and Premium plans as of now.
Similarly, the platform also offers social features such asSpotify Blendand collaborative playlists that are accessible to both free and premium users. Other social features like looking at what your friends are listening to or their library are also free to all Spotify users.
Spotify’s free tier doesn’t require any form of payment and is completely free, but with ads and other restrictions we mentioned above. Premium, on the other, hand, has four plans — Individual, Duo, Student, and Family. We’ve explained all the plans, features, and their prices in our dedicatedHow Much Does Spotify Premium Costpost, but here’s a quick rundown on the major plans available:
What are your thoughts on Spotify Premium? Let us know in the comments below.
