Choose the right Premium plan for you. Tip: If you’ve never tried Premium before, you can try it for free. Premium Individual. Premium Individual is for one person. You get all the features mentioned above. Premium Student. Premium Student is for one person currently enrolled at an accredited college or university. You get: 50% off a Premium. Spotify Free vs Premium: Price. When it comes to Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium, one obvious factor comes into play – the price. Although Spotify makes most of its revenues via selling premium streaming subscriptions, it still offers free streaming services.
As the biggest platform of online streaming music service in the world, Spotify encourages people to pay for music, with subscriptions as its main revenue source. But it also provides customers with an option of free service. So there are three ways to enjoy music provided by Spotify: Free, Premium and Family. Each has its relative strengths and limits. Here the article will make a detailed introduction and comparison of these three ways to help people choose the best fit from Spotify Free, Premium, and Family.
Spotify Cons: While Spotify seems to have more playlists overall, some of the playlists don’t feel as well curated as Google Play Music’s do. That might just be my own bias Depending on where you live, Spotify might have a smaller library vs. Spotify free seems to have more ads/more frequent ad breaks than Google Play free does.
Spotify Free model is the most restrictive one among three ways. It is well-known that Spotify makes its revenues by selling premium streaming subscriptions to users and advertising placements to third parties. So in the Free model, users don’t need to pay any money for streaming Spotify music. But they must tolerate the disturbance of advertisements while listening to Spotify songs.
There are many types of Spotify advertisements: Audio Ads, Display Ads, Billboard Ads, Lightboxes, and so on. Audio Ads run for a maximum of 30 seconds as a commercial in between streamed tracks. Display Ads, Billboard Ads, and Lightboxes appear during active and inactive use. In addition, the Free users only can choose shuffle play to stream music, and are not allowed to unlimited skip during the listening, can’t listen offline and play any track as they want, and so on. If you want to save your money and don’t mind advertisements and these limits, you can try the Free model.
2. Spotify Premium
Spotify Premium is a quite convenient model. Spotify Premium subscribers may not have as many limits to enjoy tracks as Free users, because the subscription removes advertisements and some limits. Premium users allow unlimited mobile usage, unlimited mobile usage, as well as offline and online access to playlists. Spotify offers users free trials of Premium features for 30 days. And it increases the bitrate for some songs. So just pay $9.99 per month, the Premium users will enjoy high-quality audio without advertisement.
3. Spotify Family
In order to attract customers and make sure its users not going to move their entire family over to Apple Music for pricing reasons, Spotify launches family plans. Like Apple Music and Google Play Music, families can now subscribe to Spotify Premium for $14.99 per month and get six different Spotify accounts and profiles. If you share your Spotify account with the entire family but want to keep playlists separate from your kids’ playlists as well as save money, consider Spotify family. Spotify Family is essentially a reduced Premium plan for a family, it provides access to listening offline, ad-free music on any device including mobile, tablet, and desktop. And everyone can play at the same time.
Extra tips: How to Enjoy Spotify Music without Restriction
Spotify is proprietary and encodes its music with protecion. Even the Premium and Family users can’t stream Spotify music on all of their devices as they want, such as MP3 player, car player. Spotify plans cost. Then, is there any way to record Spotify music? Luckily, there is a great Spotify Music Converter that will help users perfectly record Spotify music. That is NoteBurner Spotify Music Converter, a smart Spotify music downloading and converting tool. This program can convert all your Spotify music and playlists to plain MP3, AAC, FLAC or WAV with keeping 100% original quality of Spotify music. Thus, you can enjoy Spotify music freely.
We recommend products and services based on unbiased research from our editorial team. We make money via affiliate links, which means if you click a link on our site, we may earn a commission. Any commissions we receive do not affect our recommendations; if you want to know more about how that works, read more.
Compare Spotify Free Vs Premium Version
Spotify vs. Pandora
https://ohydor.weebly.com/blog/spotify-wont-open-on-mac-mojave. Launched in 2008, Spotify has grown into one of the most popular music streaming companies in the entire world. Its sleek interface and remarkable music discovery features have given it the success it enjoys today. Pandora started with the idea of creating a personalized radio station for each of its subscribers and powered its platform with what’s known as the Music Genome Project. Pandora’s subscribers enjoy creating multiple radio stations and finding new music through its Music Genome Project. Pandora is only available in the U.S. and in 2019 Sirius Radio acquired the service.
Spotify Premium vs. Pandora Premium Overview
Spotify and Pandora offer free service tiers ideal for the casual listener seeking a radio-like experience. The difference between these two choices lies mostly in features like discovery and social sharing.
Interface and usability
Pandora has a user-friendly interface designed for simple access that’s easily traversable. Spotify will not download from app store. Its mobile app is similar to the desktop design’s sleek appearance. Simply access your library, profile, and music discovery features sprawled across the bottom of your screen. Pandora takes into account your song and playlist choices by identifying your patterns of use and presenting future tracks based on your clicks. It’s also compatible with numerous devices, including your smartphone, TV, wearables, and more. And when it comes to offline mode, simply download your favorite stations to listen whenever you’re away from WiFi or in an out-of-service area.
Compare Spotify Free Vs Premium Sound Quality
In Spotify’s mobile app, the settings tab is located at the top right corner of your screen. From there you’re able to view your profile, alter your music quality, crossfade between songs, among many more features. Its menu is positioned across the bottom of the screen where you can access your library, search songs, or navigate to your home screen. It pairs with several devices including your smartphone, PlayStation 4, smart speakers, and so much more. You can also download up to 10,000 songs for offline mode.
Music discovery
Spotify’s world-renown discovery playlists, including “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix,” help listeners find new songs and artists. Spotify’s algorithm introduces tracks based on your previous likes, skips, and dislikes and exposes you to songs and artists you’ve never experienced before. While Spotify’s playlists are essential for many subscribers, it’s Pandora’s Music Genome Project that shines in this category. Using more than 450 attributes to describe songs, along with a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them, the Music Genome Project stimulates Pandora’s discovery with surgical precision. Choose a few songs, and Pandora will effortlessly fill the rest of your station with music you’re sure to like.
Social sharing
Due to the accessibility of Spotify’s free version, you can freely recommend artists, or share your favorite songs and playlists with your friends. With Pandora, you can share your favorite stations on Facebook and Twitter, but not to the same effect. Since its stations are locked behind its subscription service, you must be a member to enjoy — not the most conducive method for social sharing. With Spotify, you can share individual songs across Facebook, Reddit, Skype, Twitter, and other social platforms. And sharing is simple, just click on the three dots located to the right and choose your sharing options.
The best value
Spotify’s free tier is an incredible value that provides access to its vast music library, discovery features, and social sharing tools. When using Spotify’s desktop application as a free user, you also enjoy access to any of your favorite songs without shuffling like the mobile app. By comparison, Pandora offers two ad-free, subscription tiers — Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium — with Plus costing just $5 per month. So, if you don’t want to shell out $9.99 per month, you can choose either Pandora’s or Spotify’s cheaper alternative and still avoid ads altogether.
The Bottom Line
Pandora and its Music Genome Project provide an impressive approach to music discovery. With its complex algorithm, Pandora may enhance your scope of songs and artists based on your current selection of tracks making its service a good option for music discovery. If you want the best free music option, listen to music on a wide range of devices, or appreciate connectivity with friends, you can’t go wrong with Spotify.