Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium. Should you upgrade to play?
Are you fond of listening to beautiful music tracks and love to use the Spotify application for live streaming your favorite tracks? Then you can use the free version as well as the premium version of the Spotify application. The free version will offer you services free of cost with certain limitations, but with the premium subscription, you can access all the premier services by paying a certain amount to get paid subscription plan. In this writing breakdown, I will be comparing Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium features for you.
Spotify is considered to be the most widely used music streaming application that gives you access to its vast gallery with a collection of millions of songs and podcasts. You can listen to your amazing songs and can create a playlist of your most loving soundtracks. After going through this masterclass, you will have a clearer comparison picture between Spotify Free Vs Spotify Premium, and you can opt for the best plan for listening to music.
Spotify free vs Spotify Premium
Spotify is one of the largest music streaming applications that has been widely used by millions of users around the world. It offers freemium as well as premium plans to offer its services to the users to get their favorite music collection. Both premium and freemium versions have certain qualities and limitations, but you can opt for your favorite subscription plan according to your usage needs. A brief comparison of features offered by premium and freemium plans are,
| Spotify Free | Spotify Premium | |
| Shuffle play | Yes | Yes |
| Ad Free | No | Yes |
| Unlimited Skips | No | Yes |
| Listen Offline | No | Yes |
| Play any Track | No | Yes |
| High Quality Audio | No | Yes |
Free Ads
One of the significant differences between the freemium and premium plan is the popping of free Ads, which is the most annoying and distracting while you are enjoying your favorite music tracks. In Spotify Free plan, these free Ads pop up from time to time and distract the user’s attention. These ads are unskippable, and you have to watch them. On the other hand, in the Premium version, these free ads are removed for the users to keep their minds focused on listening to their amazing songs.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Also See: Is Spotify Premium worth it?
Sound Quality
Regardless of the way you are going to listen to the music, the sound quality of the tracks is very important. In Spotify, the Free version of the music is live streamed at a rate of 160Kbps, which even reduces to 128Kbps on a Desktop, which is not of very high quality. On the other hand, Spotify Premium streams music at 320Kbps, which is of extremely high quality. The low-quality sound of music tracks may make them unpleasant to listen.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Social Features
Freemium and the premium plan of Spotify provide you with an amazing feature of creating a playlist containing your most lovely music tracks. By this, you can create a list of your favorite tracks. Moreover, with Spotify, you can link your account with your friends through other social media platforms to share your favorite tracks with your friends. This is an amazing way of discovering new music as well as an idea of the likings of your friends. These premier features are available in Spotify’s free and Premium versions.
Winner: Draw
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Playback Controls
The free version Of Spotify gives you access to limited shuffles to choose your favorite tracks. You cannot skip and go to your favorite content all the time, and you have to rely on random selection order. Free versions offer only Six skips in an hour. You will be stuck listening to the tracks played by Spotify if you exhaust your skips too quickly. Spotify Premium application offers unlimited skips and shuffles to choose your best song. Moreover, it also allows you to enable or disable any playlist or album.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Support Devices
Previously, only Premium users could use Spotify Connect and other platforms to attach support devices, but now all features can be accessible by all the users. You can use Spotify on any device like your PC, Smart TV, Smartphones, or even your play stations for live streaming music and podcasts. Similarly, you can use it in any car equipped with Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, or Spotify own car device. It doesn’t matter if you are a freemium user or a premium user; you can connect to all those devices.
Winner: Draw
Music Library
Spotify Freemium and Premium users can access a massive collection of soundtracks and podcasts available in its music gallery. One advantage a premium user gets is that they can get instant access to the latest and new hits, while the freemium users have to wait for almost two weeks to listen to the latest soundtracks. If you can’t wait to access the latest tracks, you can opt for the premium plan, but if you can wait, there is no problem in opting for the freemium version.
Winner: Draw
Curated Content
All your playlists that are part of your music collection work the same for both freemium and premium plans every time you log in to your Spotify account. You can access all the playlists, which may include your favorite songs or unlisten music that you may like, or the Weekly mix that focuses you on adapting to new tracks and artists.
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Winner: Draw
Offline Listening
The Freemium version of Spotify does not allow you to download music tracks and offline streaming or listen to the music. You need to stay connected to the internet to have live streaming music using Spotify’s free version. On the other side, Spotify Premium allows you to download as many as 10,000 soundtracks that can be part of your music collection, and you can hear them offline without using your data bundles. A thing you must keep in mind is that you must connect to Spotify online to keep your downloaded tracks in the music gallery.
Winner: Spotify Premium
Should You Upgrade to Spotify Premium?
In a comparison of Spotify Free Vs Spotify Premium application, the features provided by Premium Plan are much greater than the Freemium plan. If you are a true music lover and want to have a collection of your most favorite soundtracks as well as to get instant access to the latest music tracks when they are released, annoyed by free Ads and want to have unlimited skips to choose your favorite tracks, then you must opt for the premium plan. But if you want to access music streaming with limitations, you can opt for Spotify Free Plan. A most important thing for you,
| Spotify Free | Spotify Premium | |
| Monthly Price | Free | $9.99 ($4.99 Student plan, $12.99 for Duo plan, and $15.99 for a 6-account Family plan) |
| Annual Price | Free | $99 |
| Library | Over 70 million songs, plus 2.2 million podcasts | Over 70 million songs, plus 2.2 million podcasts |
| Availability | PCs, smartphones, connected devices, Smart TVs, PS3 & PS4, Android Auto, Spotify Car Thing, Apple Car play | PCs, smartphones, connected devices, Smart TVs, PS3 & PS4, Android Auto, Spotify Car Thing, Apple Car play |
| Special Features | Mobile streaming | Ad-free listening; Offline listening; Unlimited Skips; Mobile Streaming |
All Plans of Premium versions offer a thirty-day trial period, so why not go for a premium plan? Use for a month and sees whether the Premium plan works for you or not. If it is according to your mood, you can go for it; if it doesn’t, you can cancel any time, and Spotify Free is always there to enjoy free services.
FAQs
Final Verdicts
A breakdown of Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium has been presented; Still, there is no way of judging that one plan seems to be better than the other because we don’t have the same taste in music and how we tend to spend our time on this leisure activity.
| Spotify Free | Spotify Premium | |
| Free Ads | ✔ | |
| Sound Quality | ✔ | |
| Social Features | ✔ | ✔ |
| Playback Controls | ✔ | |
| Supported Devices | ✔ | ✔ |
| Music Library | ✔ | ✔ |
| Curated Content | ✔ | ✔ |
| Offline Listening | ✔ |
Through this writing masterclass, I have highlighted for you to upgrade from Spotify free to Spotify Premium Plan. After going through this Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium article, if you are still not sure, then you can opt for a free trial. If it is according to your wishes, you can opt for it; otherwise, you can cancel it, and Spotify Free services are always there.
