Spotify is arguably the most popular streaming service in the world. It has a massive library of music as well as a sizable library of podcasts. In this Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium breakdown, we’re going to see if the paid version is worth the monthly fee, or if you’re better off bearing through the ads to save money. You may even discover some features of Spotify along the way.

Spotify also offers our favorite free. New music using Siri on Apple HomePod or other Apple devices; The Bad. The Android app and experience isn't as smooth as the iOS one. Spotify is one of the most popular music apps in the world. Within a short period of time, the application has been immensely popular on Android, iOS, Windows, and other platforms. The program offers a huge selection of music, artists, podcasts, and songs. Moreover, it focuses on providing you with personalized content. This overflow menu could also house other features like “save to your library” etc. How to implement the linking along with proper tracking is described in our content linking guide. In all cases, whenever displaying content from Spotify in your app, it should also be clear that the content comes from Spotify.

Editor’s note: This Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium article was updated on October 1, 2020, to include links to relevant information and to address an FAQ about Spotify promotions.

Related: Best music streaming services

The listening experience with Free Spotify is unpleasant

Spotify Free and Premium Spotify may look similar at first, but extended functionality varies greatly.

There are some key functional differences between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium, particularly with the mobile interface. With the free mobile version, you can only skip six tracks per hour, whereas with Premium, you can skip as many as you’d like. Skip limits can put a damper on things when you repeatedly aren’t in the mood for certain randomized songs, but sure it’s a forgivable inconvenience.

Spotify Premium let’s you skip tracks endlessly, the free version does not

Another drawback to Free Spotify on mobile: you can’t select specific songs for playback. Rather, you can select an album or a playlist and shuffle the songs in it. This can get annoying when you have an earworm and just need to listen to that particular song. With Premium, you can listen to that song over and over to your little heart’s content.

There is a caveat with Free Spotify, however; you can select songs for playback with unlimited skips, so long as you are listening to them from one of Spotify’s 15 curated playlists under “Made for You” on the “Home” page. These include popular editorial playlists, such as “RapCaviar” and “Alternative R&B,” and playlists algorithmically tailored to your listening preferences such as “Discover Weekly,” “Daily Mix,” and “Release Radar.” The songs on these playlists change frequently. If there’s a blue shuffle icon next to the playlist title, you may only shuffle songs.

Get ready for annoying ads with Free Spotify

The absolute worst thing about Free Spotify is how frequently ads interrupt playback. The advertisements are incredibly annoying, are surely designed to be that way. Many of them feature the most irritating noises you could imagine, such as traffic horns overlaid with a voice saying things like, “Is this annoying? If you buy Premium, you won’t have to listen to this anymore.” I’ll give them credit, because this tactic of being obnoxious works pretty well: paying for Spotify Premium is almost worth it for the sole purpose of removing these ads.

Listen offline with Spotify Premium

Depending on how much you pay for data, it might be a good idea to save your favorite tunes for offline listening.

With Spotify Premium, you can download an unlimited number of tracks for offline listening. This is great for long flights or if you want to turn off your data while away from home. With Free Spotify, you aren’t able to download any music, so you may be spending money in the form of data usage rather than a Premium subscription.

On the desktop Spotify app, there are fewer discrepancies between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium. For example, on the desktop app you can select any specific song you want with unlimited skips regardless of if you have Spotify Premium or not. However, you are still subjected to ads on Free Spotify with the desktop app, and you cannot download music for offline listening on your computer unless you have Spotify Premium.

A glitch to Spotify Free affords Premium features

In August 2020, there was a glitch with Free Spotify that allowed for unlimited skips, specific song selection, and ad-free listening on both the mobile and desktop versions of the streaming service. This glitch made it almost identical to Spotify Premium, minus the ability to download music for offline listening. I reached out to a Spotify customer service rep, who told me, “To my knowledge we have ads and limited skips on the Free version.” This glitch surely will not last forever, though, so I’m going to have to crown the winner of best listening experience to Spotify Premium.

Winner: Spotify Premium

Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Discovery features are identical

Spotify Discover and Release Radar update every Monday to introduce new songs to its users.

One of the best things about Spotify is the way it promotes discovery of new music. This is apparent in its algorithmically produced playlists, designed to suggest styles of music that align with your listening history. The “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix” playlists are updated frequently with new suggestions. Perhaps you really dislike a recommended song or artist, you can press a button telling it to avoid a certain type of music or to blacklist that artist from your profile. The “Release Radar” playlist churns out new releases from artists you follow and updates weekly.

One of Spotify’s best features is available to Free and Premium users.

Spotify has a large variety of genres, moods, and other categories under the Browse tab, and here you can listen to its editorial playlists to discover new music. It will also recommend editorial playlists based on your listening activity, and it will algorithmically create “Radio” playlists for every song, artist, album, and playlist.

When you create a new playlist, the Spotify algorithm suggests songs for you based on the title of your playlist as well as the songs you’ve already put into it. Regardless of if you’ve paid for Spotify Premium, these discovery features are available and very helpful.

Winner: Draw

Free or paid, enjoy the same social features

Spotify for desktop looks the same no matter what version you subscribe to.

Music has always been a social art form, but things have changed quite a bit since the days my dad would buy the latest Neil Young record on vinyl and sit around the turntable with his friends. Of course, people still get together to listen to music nowadays—though, perhaps not so much in 2020. There’s something exciting about sharing the social benefits of music with others, even when you’re trapped at home. Spotify uses several different tools on its platform to encourage music sharing, and you don’t need to buy Premium to access any of them.

Enjoy collaborative playlists on Spotify

To create collaborative playlists, press the three-dot symbol at the top-right of your screen (mobile), or next to the playlist title (desktop), and select “Collaborative Playlist.” Then, by share the playlist link with your friends. This will let them add and remove songs to and from it. Anybody with the link may do so, and it’s private unless someone holds the link. Collaborative playlists are great for when you and your roommates are throwing a party, or you’re planning a road trip with friends. Heck, they’re even good for when you just want to share some songs with someone regularly.

In a similar vein, if you have a Premium Family subscription or a Premium Duo subscription, Spotify will algorithmically create either a “Family Mix” or “Duo Mix” of songs based on the listening history of all the subscribed members. This isn’t technically a social feature because these playlists are created by Spotify and not the users themselves, so I’m not going to count its absence against Free Spotify.

Peek at what your friends are rocking out to

If you use Facebook, you can link your Spotify account to your Facebook account, making it easy for your Facebook friends to find your profile on Spotify by name or through the Find Friends button on the desktop app. You can search for your friends’ Spotify usernames; browse and add their playlists to your library; view their recent listening history; and, on the desktop Spotify app, view their active listening history.

This is a great way to discover new music and gain an idea of what types of music your friends are listening to. If it creeps you out that people can look through your playlists or see what you’re actively listening to, you can make your playlists private and disable the active listening feed. All of these features are available whether or not you pay for Premium.

Winner: Draw

Some music may be unavailable if you don’t pay for Premium

Free Spotify pays artists less per steam than Spotify Premium does. In response to this discrepancy, Spotify allows artists to set up a paywall for the first two weeks after a release. If an artist chooses this option, their release will only be available to Premium users until the two weeks have gone by. If it’s important to you to have access to all the latest releases, this may be a feature that sways you to pay for Spotify Premium. Additionally, if you value the amount of money your favorite artists are getting paid, Premium is superior in that department. The following chart depicts the average amount Spotify pays artists per stream.

Winner: Premium

Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Sound quality is higher with Premium

While there is no high-resolution option for Spotify users, and Spotify only supports AAC and Ogg Vorbis, lossy file formats, there are still key differences in sound quality between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium. With Free Spotify, the maximum bitrate you can stream at is 128kbps on the desktop app and 160kbps on the mobile app, whereas Spotify Premium affords you 320kbps streaming on both desktop and mobile. In essence, this means that Spotify Premium’s music contains more data points and therefore more detail to its sound.

Spotify Premium has higher quality than Free Spotify, but it doesn’t have a HiFi setting. If you’re looking for a high fidelity streaming service, try Tidal HiFi.

Winner: Spotify Premium

Related: Tidal vs Spotify

There are different priced memberships for Premium, but Free is free

Spotify offers four different types of Premium subscriptions, and some of them are really great deals. First, there is the Spotify Premium Individual subscription, which is $9.99/month. This allows access to all the Premium features such as no ad interruptions, on-demand playback, and downloading tracks for offline listening. If you’re a full-time student at a university or college, you should be eligible for the Premium Student subscription, which is $4.99/month. Not only does this afford you all the same abilities of Spotify Premium, but, if you are a student in the United States, it also includes a subscription to SHOWTIME and the ad-supported version of Hulu.

If you want to share a Premium account with your live-in partner, you can get Premium Duo. It costs $12.99/month and both you and your partner will have your own separate accounts. Along with all the regular Premium features, you have the option to join “Duo Mix.” You and your partner can both go to the “Duo Mix” on your “Made for You” page on the mobile app, click the three dots, and select “Join Duo Mix.” Spotify will algorithmically design a playlist to be appealing to both you and your partner. You can change the mix to be chill or upbeat, depending on the mood, and you can choose to remove any explicit songs from the mix. Each song has the profile picture of either you or your partner next to it, so you can see whose listening activity the song was generated from.

Spotify offers a family plan, a plan for couples, and a student rate.

Spotify Premium Family is very similar to Premium Duo, as all members must live at the same address. Premium Family, though, can support up to six separate accounts, and costs $14.99/month. Parents can choose to block explicit music for specific members, and children can use their Premium Family account on the Spotify Kids app. In addition to these features and all the regular Premium features, your family can listen to a generated “Family Mix” which works just like the “Duo Mix.”

All of these subscription options are very cool, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, free is free. If the absence of needing to fork over a portion of your paycheck every month is enough motivation to deal with the ads, lack of features, and inconvenience of Free Spotify, then Free Spotify is going to be the option for you.

Winner: Spotify Free

What are some lesser known Spotify features?

Spotify constantly and consistently comes out with new features. For example, in 2017, it created a “Time Capsule” playlist for all of its 16-years-old-and-up users, Premium or not. These playlists were personalized based on their extensive listening history. It was created to be the kind of playlist users would have listened to in their teenage years. Pretty cool, huh? Another recent creation of Spotify’s was the “Pet Playlist,” which users could personalize by inputting the species of their pet as well as ranking their pet’s behaviors across a few different spectra. This data was then mixed with the genres and styles of music the user enjoys to create a playlist for users and their furry best friends.

Express yourself on Tinder and Instagram

Spotify has partnerships with many other apps, including Instagram and Tinder. You can share the name, artist, and album artwork of a song to your Instagram story with the click of a button on Spotify. If you link your Spotify account to Tinder, you can publish your frequently played songs on your Tinder profile, you know, to make sure you attract people with as impeccable music taste as yourself. And, of course, you can connect your account with Facebook to find friends more easily.

Spotify plays nicely with Android Auto and has its own Carplay mode

Carplay simplifies the interface, so distractions are lessened.

When you connect your smartphone to your car by Bluetooth, Spotify will automatically go into Carplay mode or Android Auto mode, depending on your OS and if your car is compatible with these features. These features reduce the amount of information displayed on the screen, making it safer to navigate the app while in the car. (We don’t recommend using the app while actively driving, though. Have your passenger do it.) They also make for easy integration with the navigation apps Google Maps and Waze. Similarly, many music-listening devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus, offer Spotify integration for easy access.

That’s a wrap: End-of-year statistics

My personal favorite Spotify feature is “Spotify Wrapped.” In December of every year, Spotify creates an animation of statistics for each user, including but not limited to the song they listened to most over the past year, how many total minutes they spent listening to music over the past year, the podcast the user listened to most often, and the countries all the artists they listened to are based out of. In addition to this, Wrapped shows users the statistics generalized by region and in the world as a whole.

Other Free Apps Like Spotify App

In December of 2019, Spotify even had “Wrapped” stats for the whole decade. “Wrapped” is available for both Free and Premium users, but Premium users get additional personalized data including the number of artists they discovered that year as well as their top new artist from that year. Because of this one small detail, Spotify Premium wins this section, but, all Spotify users get a lot of really cool features.

Winner: Spotify Premium

Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Which one is better?

And the winner is Spotify Premium! It’s pretty clear that Premium has more features than Free Spotify, but whether or not you’re willing to pay for a subscription depends on you, of course. If you can get a student, family, or duo membership, Spotify Premium isn’t too pricey, but if you’re still on the fence, Spotify has free month-long trials of Premium. Until next time, happy listening.

Next: Apple Music review

Not anymore! In September, Spotify teamed up with Google to give away free Google Nest Minis to all Spotify Premium subscribers, new and old. This promotion has since ended, but keep an eye on Spotify's website because it does promotions like this fairly frequently.

You may also like

Did you know there are also at least another 10 best apps like Spotify?

While it may seem like Spotify has it all, the app’s features are limited if you do not pay for a subscription. We have compiled a list of apps that offer other features and benefits, which might best suit your music tastes.

Thankfully, there are lots of great music apps available out there, to ensure you get the best possible experience. Read on for 10 best apps like Spotify that are helping millions of people each day to have access to their favorite the music.

1. Pandora

The popular website Pandora transitioned to an app for both Android and iOS products some time ago. The option of creating your own custom radio station has always been a central feature of Pandora but now you can also use this app on the go.

Spotify only allows users to have 20 custom stations while Pandora let’s you create up to 100, which gives you plenty of space to showcase your diverse musical taste.

Pandora definitely has the tools and interface to compete with Spotify. The only real downsides to using the free version of the Pandora app is that you can not listen in full as many popular on-demand tracks as you wish. Also, the app limits the amount of songs you can skip.

That said, the subscription fee for a premium user account is only $5, which is half the price of Spotify’s paid plan ($10). Currently Pandora is only available in Australia, New Zealand and the United States due to licensing and copyright concerns. If you’re based in any of these areas, this is definitely one of the best and most affordable apps around.

Pandora has also just launched a rebranded new version of its app with iMessage chat allowing you to message your contacts with the standard message features.

2. Deezer

Deezer, the French music service is another app similar to Spotify that let’s you listen to music on demand from their extensive library, including both the ability of a playlist creation and a cool playlist-rating feature.

Listen to radio stations and get access to “hear this”, a create your own tool that shows you new music based on your tastes and to “flow”, another great feature of the app. If you choose the paid subscription of Deezer you’ll be able to listen to your music offline from your mobile without any interruptions from ads or previews.

For more offline listening options, check out these 4 music apps that don’t need Wi-Fi.

3. Google Play Music

Google Play Music is another music streaming option, where it’s free to store music you already have – up to 50,000 songs. You can use it anytime as long as you have an Internet connection. For full access to the rest of the music streaming features you’ll need to sign up for a $10 a month plan. On the bright side, you are allowed to purchase and download music onto your computer from Google Play Music, something that you can’t do on Spotify.

The main selling points are that you’re able to download and purchase music directly from Google Play Music, thanks to licensing and copyright coverage from the main Google Play store. This is an option many Spotify users wish they were offered too!

4. Tidal

New kid on the block Tidal owned by rapper Jay Z is also shaping to be an app in the same league as Spotify. One of the biggest reasons for it’s creation is to offer a music streaming option that favors artists, as more money are given directly to them, instead of going through more standard record label channels.

With a library of over 25 million songs and boasting more than 75,000 music videos in high-definition and exclusive video content not available anywhere else; Tidal is making quite the impression.

To be able to stay true to it’s word and provide a premium quality streaming facility, Tidal only caters to paid app users with multiple subscription options available ranging from $10-20 a month. While a little more expensive, you can sign-up for a free trial to see if it’s worth to you paying a little extra.

If you don’t want to pay to stream music, here are 5 best free apps to download music instead.

5. iHeartRadio

IHeartRadio offers more than just music streaming features; it’s also a live radio app. The live radio feature is a nice addition to the standard features. Of course you can’t skip show segments or songs when it’s live!

This app is very similar to Pandora as it gives users the ability to create their own radio stations. In terms of listening to the music on the live stations, all songs are played in full and you don’t have to pay extra to get access to the full music library.

Being able to stream radio and music from your phone makes it a popular choice for on-the-go users, with the ability to view all different types of radio and musical artists by genre.

6. Slacker

The proper name for this app is Slacker Radio. It doesn’t offer real radio stations but it has the feel of a real radio station as you can assemble huge playlists and even write comments in between songs.

Once choosing the paid subscription in Slacker you are able to use its music on-demand and listen to all of your favorite songs. While it might not be quite as big as Spotify is, it has a pretty big music library and it is definitely one of the best curated apps at the lower end of the price range, currently standing at $3.99 a month. This is for a Radio Plus plan, which gives you the power to listen offline, ad-free, and with unlimited skips music – something that other music apps haven’t managed to implement yet. The premium $9.99/month deal gives you full access to the radio station creation tools and all the other features.

7. SoundCloud

I’m going to be a little biased and announce that this is my favorite app for streaming music. When Soundcloud got a meaty iOS upgrade back in 2014, more people started to take note of this music-streaming app.

SoundCloud has flourished as a streaming app because it is heavily connected to social media. This means that it is easy to share any listenable track at a click. Free downloads are sometimes available through file sharing or you can directly download music from online stores.

You’ve got the ability to follow other users at Soundcloud- you can find and post new content by hitting the home button up top to get a musical based feed, showing what has been posted and reposted by those you follow. Just click ‘like’ to add songs to your ‘like collection’ and ‘repost’ to get songs on your personal Soundcloud stream page.

Free Spotify App

Create almost unlimited playlists (it’s advised to keep lists under 250 songs to help the app function better). By being a SoundCloud Go user, for $9.99/month, they make sure that you won’t have to see any paid ads, although these are infrequent compared to other music streaming apps when choosing the app’s free plan. It also gives you access to a lot of popular music charts that are only playable as a preview when you’re a free-user due to copyright and media laws.

8. Songza

Songza is an App that shows you playlists centered on your listening habits. There is also a time of the day it will ask you what you feel like listening to and thus be giving you playlists to match your mood, opposed to just letting you search for individual artists or songs.

The app is totally free with a clean, bright interface that makes it easy to swipe through playlists. There’s no advertisements on the app and if you like a playlist you can save it or go back to see what you’ve been into most recently.

App Like Spotify But Free

The Songza app moved over to Google Play in January after being bought by Google – read on to find out all the features now available since it’s transition. Things are certainly looking up for Songza even though it isn’t as traditional as other music streaming apps – it offers you something that is unique and if you really want to do the searching yourself you can, by why bother when Songza knows what you like?

9. YouMusic

Specific to Windows Phone, this app is integrated into the standard Windows phone music player and allows to stream YouTube videos. That’s right you can finally get YouTube music videos without restrictions if you have Windows 8/8.1 phone!

So while YouMusic doesn’t offer you all the features of the other music streaming apps, you can still access most music from there and add it to the YouTube playlist function. The app also keeps running outside of the app so feel free to get on the move. Download it from the store.

Music App Like Spotify

10. SoundHound

SoundHound has an audio detection, which allows you to find what song is playing, helps you track songs you’ve already heard or even ones you haven’t heard yet, as it knows what you’re into.

Free Apps Like Spotify

Easily stream or download music from a comprehensive library and import music from your phone if you want to add it to a playlist. A simpler interface, but still great to use and you can pick it up for free from the Windows or Google Store. For more awesome free music streaming apps click here.