- Spotify Premium Vs Spotify Free
- Spotify Basic Vs Premium
- Spotify Free Vs Premium Benefits 100%
- Spotify Free Vs. Premium
Highlights:
- Spotify officially launched in India.
- It offers free and premium subscription plans to users.
- Here’s how the two tiers compare.
Spotify has finally officially launched its services in India and it comes in both, free and premium, plans. The service can now be used in the country as a web app, desktop app, on iOS and Android devices without needing a VPN. The company has also priced it competitively as it starts at almost the same price as Apple Music, at Rs 119 per month, for users who have never opted for Spotify Premium previously, but what extra do you get when going for the premium account subscription over the free one? Which one would suit you better? These are some of the questions one will find answers to in this article, along with some more information on the newly launched online music streaming service.
- Spotify Free vs. Premium: Playback Review. Firstly, let's see the sound quality. Directly, Spotify premium offers music audio with higher bitrate up to 320kbps. Normally you can enjoy free Spotify music with a standard 160 kbps quality. Maybe some music lovers prefer a higher-quality music listening with the premium.
- Spotify says it offers users unlimited access to over 35 million songs and that remains the same for all users of Spotify, be it Premium or Free. The only difference is that while Premium users.
- There’s a whole lot more to Spotify Premium than exclusive releases, although Premium subscribers do get the chance to listen to releases before other subscribers. You get all the benefits of an Unlimited subscription — no ads, no time restrictions, and international access — plus lots of special features. When Lady Gaga released her blockbuster.
Spotify Free VS Spotify Premium
Same as many other music streaming services in India, Spotify also enables users to create a free account to stream music from. There is no charge levied on free account holders, however, one will encounter ads between songs. Ads are a basic way for any music streaming service to generate revenue and free Spotify users in other countries also encounter ads every four or five songs when listening to music. Additionally, they can only skip six songs in the span of an hour and Spotify employs shuffle play that disables users to select what they want to listen to and if one wants to listen to a particular track, they can add it to the queue and hope it comes on.
Spotify Premium Vs Spotify Free
Fortunately, Spotify has not implemented track skip limit or Shuffle Play in India, which means users here can skip and play the songs, all they want. However, upgrading to a premium Spotify account means there won’t be any annoying ads between songs. Additionally, there are some perks only a premium user gets to enjoy like the ability to download and listen to music offline and bumping up the audio playback quality to 320kbps. These features will help users to save up on data since the internet connectivity in India is still patchy in many areas.
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.
So, does it make sense to upgrade to Spotify premium? Well, it depends. If you are someone who can’t bear ad interruptions while listening to music, or want to save data by downloading songs when streaming offline, then it makes complete sense to go for the Premium subscription. Additionally, keep in mind that Spotify is well known for using algorithms to curate playlists for users based on their mood. This is the key highlight of Spotify and we ourselves are impressed by how quickly the app learns from a user’s listening habits and plays favourable tracks accordingly.
Spotify is offering a 30-day free Premium tier trial so that one can try it before shelling out Rs 119 per month for the service. Interestingly, the app’s premium service can also be availed for one day or a week, along with the regular one month, six months and one-year prepaid plans. For students, Spotify premium is available with a great discount as it starts at Rs 59 per month, just Rs 1 shy of what Apple Music offers for students.
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It's never been easier to listen to any music you could possibly fathom, no matter where in the world you are, but that doesn't mean the choice of how to do that is easy.
While alternatives like Pandora, Tidal, and Amazon Music exist and have their audiences, it certainly seems like the big battle right now is between Spotify and Apple Music. Spotify has offered a premium subscription for longer, but Apple has picked up considerable steam in recent years.
Spotify Basic Vs Premium
Which one should you actually use, though?
That's sort of a tough question to answer. Both services cost $10 per month, so it's not a simple math problem. The biggest differences between the two streaming juggernauts exist in the margins, so that's where we'll look as we try to determine who has the better value between Apple Music and Spotify.
What exactly do I get for $10?
The content offerings for the two paid services are remarkably similar. For $10 per month, you get access to tens of millions of on-demand tracks from artists both major and obscure. You'll never hear an ad if you pay for Spotify Premium or Apple Music, either.
On top of that, you can make and share playlists, check out playlists other people have made, and browse official playlists curated by Apple and Spotify. Both services have radio features as well as algorithmic music recommendation, which we'll get into later.
On the surface, using both Spotify Premium and Apple Music is a remarkably similar experience. You'll be fed a bunch of hand-crafted and mathematically generated playlists up front before you most likely just go back to listening to the playlists you made again and again. As such, it's hard to crown a champion based on a bullet-point features list.
Discovery isn't just a Daft Punk album
One of the things that makes streaming services novel is the ease and quickness with which a user can discover new music on them. Both Apple Music and Spotify Premium can help you out here, but I think one service is a bit better than the other.
Spotify's 'Discover Weekly' playlist is one of the service's flagship features. Every week, Spotify will build a playlist of music you may not have heard but you might like, based on what you've been listening to. There's also 'Release Radar,' another regularly updated playlist that feeds you new music from artists you like.
Aside from that, the app will generate several 'Daily Mix' playlists made up of things you've listened to before. Apple Music also brings weekly new music and old favorites playlists, but it feels barebones by comparison. It's totally fine, but just not as good as what Spotify does.
Both services let you browse by genre and mood, with themed playlists centered around holidays and whatnot popping up in both apps from time to time. This really does feel like splitting hairs, but I think Discover Weekly gives Spotify an edge over Apple in this regard.
What can I actually listen to?
Apple Music's iCloud integration is one department in which Spotify lags behind. Turn on the iCloud Music Library feature and you can sync any music you've put in iTunes on Mac or PC to all your Apple Music-enabled devices at once.
In other words, you can use Apple Music to listen to things that aren't actually available on it or any other streaming service. That's pretty awesome, and Spotify doesn't really have anything comparable.
In terms of native music selection, there doesn't seem to be a massive difference between the two. Chances are anything even semi-recognizable is going to be available either way, but if not, Apple Music can help fix that via iCloud.
Anecdotally speaking, Spotify seems to have somewhat looser restrictions on what people can put there. That means there seem to be more parody rap songs about Fortnite and other nonsense on Spotify, but Apple Music certainly isn't lacking in things like that, either. Still, Spotify gets some points for having more of a Wild West feel in terms of content.
Also, one minor point in Spotify's favor is the community playlist feature. It's fun to share a playlist with several people and build one monstrous collection of music without a singular creative vision.
Apple wins the cloud game, but what about device support?
In terms of pure volume, Spotify wins the device support competition pretty handily. Spotify has apps basically anywhere you can get apps, from Android and iOS to smart speakers, smart TVs and even the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It's hard to beat ubiquity.
Apple Music is no slouch in that regard, either, as it's available on Android and Windows PCs as well as Apple devices. Since Apple's hardware and software ecosystem is one big, happy family, Apple Music will work well for people who own and religiously use multiple Apple devices.
If you have an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and HomePod, you might as well keep it in the family and use Apple Music with them.
Spotify Free Vs Premium Benefits 100%
What about the actual audio quality?
If you're not an audiophile, this one is easy to answer: It doesn't really matter.
Apple Music and Spotify stream using different audio formats, and Spotify has nice quality controls within the app. That said, the difference is going to be negligible to most people. CNET performed a nifty test comparing the two and found that it shouldn't be a deciding factor between the two services.
Spotify Free Vs. Premium
If you are an audiophile, just subscribe to Tidal, I guess.
So who is the winner?
I don't think there's a clear victor in the value competition between Spotify Premium and Apple Music. All things being equal, I'd go with Spotify; I've already got years of playlists built up, the recommendation engine is better, and community playlists are a lot of fun.
That said, there's a clear case for Apple Music. If you're the kind of person who has spent the past decade or more building up a massive music library on iTunes, there's a ton of value in the iCloud syncing feature. You could have all of your favorite music as well as anything you don't own that's on the streaming service, all on one device.
From an ethical perspective, it doesn't seem like either of them is particularly great for artists. Pretty much every major streaming service has come under fire for severely underpaying artists. If that matters at all to you, it might be best to just buy your music.
But if streaming is the way to go, Spotify is probably the better option for someone who is starting from scratch.