Music streaming service Spotify recently made changes to its free and paid plans, bringing lossless audio to Premium subscribers and giving users of the ad-supported free plan the ability to play any song they want. Given these additions, the answer has shifted somewhat to the age-old question: Should you pay to listen?
I’d argue the newfound ability to play any song you want with Spotify Free is a bigger deal than getting lossless audio with Premium. This helps close the gap between the two tiers in terms of the control you have over your music. Before, the free version of Spotify felt more like Pandora where you could listen to only a song based on an artist or song instead of the song itself. Now, you can listen to any song you want, which also brings with it the ability listen to entire albums from start to finish and playlists in non-shuffled order. And the six-skips-per-hour limitation has been lifted.
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Meanwhile, I doubt many Premium listeners will be able to tell the difference between the 320 Kbps streaming — the previous highest audio quality setting — and lossless audio. Lossless is slowly rolling out now, but I’ve yet to receive it so I can’t comment on the difference. Like most people, I listen to music on a Bluetooth speaker or Apple AirPods and not a high-end set of wired speakers, so I don’t think the arrival of lossless audio is going to shock and awe my ears.
While Spotify Free has made bigger strides with these latest updates, I’m not in any hurry to cancel my Premium subscription. Here’s why.
Spotify Premium pricing
Before we begin, here are the costs of Spotify’s four paid Premium plans:
- Individual plan: $11.99 per month for one user
- Duo plan: $16.99 per month for two users
- Family plan: $19.99 per month for up to six users
- Student plan: $5.99 per month for one user at “an accredited higher education institution”
And, now, let me explain why I’m sticking with my Premium account.
1. Uninterrupted, ad-free listening
This is reason enough to pay for Spotify. Nothing ruins the vibe more than hearing the start of an ad instead of the next song. And you are forced to sit through 15-second and 30-second ad breaks every handful of songs with Spotify Free.
2. Better audio quality
Spotify Free lets you listen to music at normal (96 kilobits per second) or high quality (160 Kbps), and you can’t adjust the bitrate beyond that. Spotify Premium now offers up to 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC lossless audio, which can make for better, more detailed audio output if you use high-end headphones or speakers. You can adjust these settings if you’re listening on desktop, mobile or tablet by going to Settings > Audio Quality.
Note: You might not see a lossless option yet. According to Spotify, this feature is “rolling out gradually to more than 50 markets through October. Premium subscribers in Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the US and the UK have already started to get access.”
While I await for lossless audio to arrive for me, I can listen at the very high quality setting, which at 320 Kbps is double the bitrate of the best you get with Spotify Free.
3. Listen offline
Want to rock out on the morning commute when you’re squished into a subway car in a tunnel where there’s no cell service? Or sitting in the middle seat on a cross-country flight? Spotify Premium lets you download up to 10,000 songs so you can listen when you’re away from the internet or just want to cut your data usage. And you can do this on up to five devices.
Planning a long internet-free trip? To download an album, playlist or podcast on a phone or tablet, just tap the Download icon, which is a downward arrow. You’ll see a little green downward arrow next to each song after it finishes downloading.
Note that you can’t download an individual song without first adding it to a playlist, which you can then download.
4. Listen to audiobooks
Spotify Premium includes 15 hours of audiobook listening. There are some audiobooks available in the free version, but you’ll get a vastly greater selection with Premium. Spotify says there are more than 400,000 titles in its audiobook catalog.
Two things to keep in mind with audiobooks on Spotify:
1. If you hit the 15-hour limit, it gets pricey. You can buy what Spotify calls a “Top-up” that adds 10 hours of audiobook listening time for $12.99. Depending on how good your current audiobook is and how close to the end of the month it is, it might make more sense to wait until the start of the next month. Also, if you don’t hit 15 hours of audiobook listening, those unused hours don’t carry over to the next month.
2. In Premium Duo and Family plans, only the plan manager gets the 15 hours of audiobooks each month, which I enjoy but makes my wife jealous.
5. Jam out with friends and family
I have a Premium Family plan, and one of the features my family of four enjoys is the collaborative playlists with Spotify Jam. It’s fun to mix the musical tastes of two Gen X parents with those of a college-age daughter and teenage son.
With Spotify Free, there’s no collaborative jamming.
Spotify Premium perk honorable mentions
There are a two more features exclusive to Spotify Premium that I could take or leave but want to mention.
There’s a AI-powered DJ called DJ X that will play a mix of songs based on your listening habits or what you tell it you want to hear, complete with a disembodied voice that introduces songs and describes the intended vibe. With my six Daily Mixes, the Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists, and radio stations based on artists, I have enough curated content without DJ X that I can turn to when I’m not in the mood to listen to an entire album or live concert. And I suffer from AI fatigue and don’t enjoy DJ X’s schtick.
I have no immediate plans to travel internationally, but it’s nice to know I’ll have access to Spotify for as long as I want whenever I book that big trip. The free version of Spotify allows you to stream music for up to 14 days if you’re traveling abroad. With Spotify Premium, there’s no limit on how long you can listen when you’re visiting another country.
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