Spotify Free Vs Premium Features

Discover its playlists and stream your music collection on demand with free, Premium and student rates. Spotify offers both free and paid subscriptions to enjoy millions of songs with or without commercials. If you’re a student, it discounts its rates for the four years you’re in school.

  • The paid plans and pricing for Spotify are streamlined compared to Amazon. Spotify is free with ads or $9.99 a month for ad-free Spotify Premium access to all the platform's music.
  • What are some lesser known Spotify features? Express yourself on Tinder and Instagram. Spotify has partnerships with many other apps, including Instagram and Tinder. You can share the name. Spotify plays nicely with Android Auto and has its own Carplay mode. That’s a wrap: End-of-year.

Being one of the best ways to listen to music on multiple devices, Spotify has established itself as one of the most favored music and video streaming services around the world. Not only it gives you unlimited access to millions of songs, but also provides personal recommendations and pre-made playlists to cater to every budget and lifestyle.

There are basically two main tiers of Spotify subscription plan: Free and Premium. You can access the huge catalog of over 30 million songs, regardless of your subscription plan, according to Spotify. However, only basic features are free with adverts and some limitations, while additional features like Spotify Connect, offline access, music streaming quality, and Shuffle mode are limited to only premium users.

To provide a more tailored listening experience, Spotify put some restrictions and limitation in place for the free subscription plan, while providing unlimited ad-free access to the premium users. This article mainly compares the two Spotify subscription plans from various aspects such as price, features, and streaming quality.

Spotify Free vs. Spotify Premium

If you just care about the music and those annoying ads don’t bother you or the audio quality doesn’t mean much, you can for the Spotify Free plan. That will do just fine. Unless you don’t want to compromise on the sound quality, go for the premium plan. Well, besides the higher sound quality, the premium Spotify plan offers a plethora of features including offline support, Spotify Connect, and more. Let’s take a look at the differences between them in detail.

1. Price

The first and probably the biggest difference between Spotify Free and Premium plan is the cost. While, Spotify Free, as the name suggests, is absolutely free of cost for everyone, the Spotify Premium service will cost you $9.99 a month. Students will get 50 percent discount on the premium plan, making the subscription at $4.99. The premium plan will offer unlimited access to over 30 million songs. Users can also try a free one-month trial for the premium plan before subscribing it.

2. Ads

You can access and listen to millions of songs in the Spotify Catalog, but be prepared to get interrupted by the annoying ads, if you choose to go for the Spotify Free plan. After every one or two tracks, a short advert or two will be played that will interrupt your flow and disrupt your listening experience. Spotify Premium, on the other hand, allows you to enjoy music without any interruptions by removing all adverts from the tracks, regardless of the device you’re using.

3. Accessibility

Some tracks won’t even play in the free plan and you’re bound to listen to music only in the Shuffle mode or pre-made playlists while using the mobileapp (both iOS and Android). But, of course, you can use the desktop and web interfaces to enjoy a hassle-free listening experience with access to millions of tracks and playlists. Premium, on the other hand, provides unlimited access to millions of songs without any restrictions, which means you can listen to any song or playlist at any time, regardless of whether you’re using the mobile app or the desktop interface.

4. Sound Quality

Sound quality also differs a lot in both the Spotify plans, which eventually affects the overall listening experience. Generally, Spotify uses three different sound quality settings for audio streaming in the Ogg Vorbis format. It provides 96 kbps as the standard bitrate for mobile devices, which jumps to 160 kbps for desktop and web interfaces ‘standard’ and ‘high quality’ for mobile. If you opt for the Premium subscription plan, you’ll get ‘high quality’ for desktop, which is 320 kbps and ‘extreme quality’ for mobile users. Premium users will automatically get a better listening experience with higher sound quality.

5. Offline Access

Another major difference between the free and premium plan is offline access. In the free plan, you always need to stay online to listen to music and you cannot download tracks to play offline. Spotify Premium, on the other hand, allows you to download or sync up to 3,333 songs on all the three devices. You can save any album or playlist in the quality you want for offline listening.

6. Other Features

The Spotify Premium subscription offers a lot more, such as access to Spotify Connect, which allows you to expand your music streaming service beyond the device you use to listen to music. You can control exactly how and where your favorite music plays by using multiple devices. You can instantly switch to your speaker from your mobile without interrupting playback, making seamless transitions between your device and wireless speakers and beyond.

Spotify FreeSpotify Premium
Provides free access to Spotify catalog with no cost at all.Premium subscription costs $9.99 a month prior to one-month free trial ($4.99 for students).
Plays short adverts every one or two tracks, interrupting your perfect listening experience.Premium offers ad-free listening experience without any interruption.
Access to only Shuffle mode or pre-made playlists in mobile devices, without any restrictions in desktop and web interfaces.Provides full access with no restrictions, regardless of the device you’re using.
You need to stay online to listen to music at all times.It provides offline listening experience with unlimited skips.
Provides 96 kbps as the standard bitrate for mobile and 160 kbps for desktop and web interfaces.Provides ‘high quality’ for desktop and ‘extreme quality’ for mobile with 320 kbps bitrate.
Doesn’t support Spotify Connect.Features Spotify Connect which controls the way your music plays across multiple devices.
Access is restricted depending on the device.Allow you to play any track at any time without any limitations.

Summary

Both the Spotify subscription plans have their fair share of pros and cons. If the sound quality doesn’t bother you much and you’re fine with the ads interrupting your listening session every now and then, the free subscription will do just fine. The Spotify Premium, on the other hand, is meant for the true music enthusiasts who cannot compromise on the sound quality and in fact, prefer high-quality music without those annoying ads. Premium is probably the perfect investment for the right enthusiast who knows his/her music.

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What bitrate does Spotify stream at? This is might be the first question that you may take a deep consideration before choosing Spotify music as your music streaming service. Generally speaking, you may have known that 320kbps is the highest streaming quality that you can get from Spotify, but I guess, you may be unclear on how can you get it. Don't worry, here is the full introduction of the Spotify bitrate comes for you.


In this post, we will share you with the details of the bitrate of Spotify free and Premium and the full tutorial to adjust Spotify bitrate for enjoying the lossless audio streaming service. Apart from this, you will get extra tips on how to get Spotify music downloaded with high quality. Curious, right? Let's get started with the first part: What bitrate is Spotify use?


Related Reading:

Spotify free features



Part 1. What Bitrate Does Spotify Stream At?

Spotify offers automatic, low, normal, high, and very high quality with different bitrates for different users by formatting the music as OGG Vorbis format. Following is the full table about all the bitrates that Spotify streaming at.


Bitrates

Streaming Quality

Free or Premium

Platforms

24 kbps

Low

Both

Desktop, mobile and tablet

96 kbps

Normal

Both

Desktop, mobile and tablet

128 kbps

Normal

Free

Web Player (AAC)

160 kbps

High

Both

Desktop, mobile and tablet

256 kbps

High

Premium

Web Player (AAC)

320 kbps

Very High

Premium

Desktop, mobile and tablet

Pay Attention: Low Streaming Quality isn't available on the Windows desktop app.



According to the table above, the highest bitrate for Spotify Free users is 160kbps while the highest for premium users is 320 kbps. After learning about the Spotify bitrate, you can set about setting the Spotify bitrates to enjoy the high quality of Spotify. Keep reading.


Part 2. How to Get High Quality Streaming on Spotify?

There are two ways for you to enjoy high quality on Spotify. The first method is to set the high quality, and the second is to use Spotify equalizer. Take these 2 methods together will be better for you to get lossless audio.


Method 1. How to Set High Music Quality on Spotify

Following we will take the Windows as an example. If you want to enjoy high music quality on your Mobile devices or MacBook, you can also follow the same operation to make it. Downloading the Spotify app first to prepare the following operation.


One Step to Set Your Music Quality on Spotify

- Run the Spotify app on your computer or mobile devices, and the whole main interface of Spotify will appear. Now click to 'Down-arrow' button to enter the Settings page.


- On the Settings page, scroll down to 'Music Quality'. Under the Music Quality, there is 'Streaming quality'. Hit to the 'Down-arrow' button to choose the high quality. Spotify Free users can choose 160 kbps high quality while Premium users 320 kbps.


If the high quality doesn't suit your needs on enjoying Spotify, then you can set the Spotify Equalizer to enhance the sound quality.


Method 2. How to Set Music Equalizer for Enjoying Spotify Music

Spotify equalizer is only available on mobile devices. In this post, we will take the iPhone 7 as an example. Operations are the same on Android and other mobile devices.


Two-Step to Use Music Equalizer for Enjoying Spotify Music


Step 1. Open Settings page of Spotify Music

- Run the Spotify app on your Mobile. On the main interface of Spotify, hit the 'Gear' button to enter the Settings page, where you can see various settings for Spotify.


Step 2. Choose Your Favorite Music Equalizers of Spotify

- On the Spotify Settings page, click to 'Playback' for the following operation. Scroll down to 'Equalizer' then press the 'Button' to open the Spotify equalizer. As a Hip-hop fan, I will choose Hip-hop as my music equalizer of Spotify.


After learning how to enjoy lossless audio from Spotify, we would like to share you with an extra tips to fulfill your needs on the lossless audio streaming of Spotify. Keep reading to get the ultimate lossless audio streaming service from Spotify.


Extra Tips: How to Get Spotify Music Downloaded with High-Quality Bitrate?

Spotify Basic Vs Premium

As a premium users, you just need to press the button to get your music fully downloaded with the same bitrate. However, even though you have fully downloaded, the music is kept in cached files. Even harder if you are Spotify Free member. Here we would like to give you an extra tips on getting Spotify music downloaded with high and lossless audio parameter. So that Premium subscribers can enjoy 320Kbps sound quality while Free 160kbps.


To download Spotify Music for free, a best Spotify Music converter or downloader is required. And TuneFab Spotify Music Converter is such a handy music converter as well as high quality music downloader for both Spotify Free and Premium to download Spotify Music, playlists, albums and more with high quality (For Spotify Premium, reach up to 320 kbps, for Free users, reach up to 160 kbps) to various and common music file formats like MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC and more. Learn more from the following features of the TuneFab Spotify Music Converter.


Features of TuneFab Spotify Music Converter:

- Cover all kinds of Spotify music: tracks, songs, playlists, albums, audiobooks, even podcasts (Mac only), and more.

- Download Spotify music and store as common audio formats: MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, AIFF (Mac only).

- Superfast conversion speed to speed up the whole conversion: 5X conversion speed. (Windows Only)

Features

- Spotify Bitrate and sample rate can be adjusted as per your need. For example, the maximum reaches up to 320 kbps, satisfy Spotify Free and Premium needs.

- Various output settings are available for options.

- Keep original audio quality with metadata and ID3 tags preserved.

- Fully compatible with Windows 10/8/7 and macOS 10.10 to 10.15.

- Dig out more.

New Spotify Features


We will take Windows as an example. If you are running the macOS system, please keep reading since the whole operation is the same.


Step 1. Run TuneFab Spotify Music Converter

- Choose the right version from the button above to download and install TuneFab Spotify Music Converter on your computer. After the installation is over, hit the 'iCon' to run it on your computer. Then you will see the main interface as follow.


Step 2. Add Spotify Music/Playlists/Albums to Spotify Music Converter

Spotify

Spotify Premium Vs Spotify Free

- On the main interface of Spotify Music Converter, there is an 'Add Files' button. Click to 'Add Files' button, then you can add the Spotify music by copying the Spotify URL and paste it onto the main interface or dragging the Spotify Playlists/Albums and dropping them onto the Spotify Music Converter.


- We highly recommend Spotify users to add Spotify Music via dragging and dropping methods. When all the music has successfully added, bear in mind to click on to 'Add' again.


Free Vs Premium Spotify

Step 3. Set Output Folder & Output Format

- Now, click to 'Options', next to 'Add Files' to set your output settings.


- On the 'General' tag, you can choose the output folder and customize the output files. Hit the 'Select…' button, you can choose the output folder according to your need. If you don't make any changes, then all the Spotify music will be stored in the default output folder.


- Move to the below of Output Folder, you can see 'Output Files', where you can customize the way that your output files display. Besides you can choose the sorting way of the output folders like Album. More output file settings are available to select as per your needs.


- Now, move to the 'Advanced' tag, next to the 'General'. On the Advanced page, you can adjust the conversion speed, reaches up to 5X, and Spotify bitrates and more. Besides, you can choose audio formats from the drop-down list. MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG are available for selection.


Tips: We highly recommend choosing MP3 or M4A with 320Kbps bitrates and 44100 Hz for output the high audio quality.


Step 4. Download Spotify Music with High-Quality Preserved

You are one step closer to fully download Spotify Music now. Just click to 'Convert' and then to download Spotify Music with High Quality. Just waiting for several minutes, then you can enjoy Spotify Music with high quality fully downloaded.


That's all for today. It is time for you to make up your mind on choosing your favorite music bitrate that you want to enjoy on your Spotify Music, one of the best streaming services. However, no matter what bitrate you may be going to choose, I am sure that you can free from the problem with downloading Spotify Music with the High quality now. Thanks for reading, hope you will enjoy Spotify freely right here. See you!