Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services on the market. It offers Spotify Free and Spotify Premium subscriptions, but what are their differences? Here we compare their prices, features and audio quality.
We are focusing on these two formulas but note that Spotify offers a plan for students at €4.99 or $5.56 per month and a family plan at €14.99 or $16.50 per month. Both offer a free trial month.
Price Of Spotify Premium
As the name suggests, Spotify Free is free. However, if you wish to benefit from more advanced options, you must then subscribe to its Premium offer; it will cost you € 9.99 per month.
If you’re not sure if you want to sign up for Spotify Premium, then start with its 30-day free version.
Characteristics Of Spotify
Spotify Free is ad-supported, so ads are played after listening to a few songs.
Despite this inconvenience, you can discover different playlists, manage them as you wish. In addition, you will be able to preserve your 4G using the Data saver option.
Finally, to be able to choose the order of passage of your music and switch from one song to another as many times as you want, you will need to make sure that your list contains the Play option and not Random play.
Spotify Premium, on the other hand, leaves no room for any advertising, so you can enjoy your music without interruption. Play all the songs you want, wherever you want, even abroad and from any Spotify interface (computer, internet or application).
The other strong point of this subscription is the possibility to record your favorite songs for listening offline, so you will not have to request your data. In addition, you have the right to download up to 3,333 titles on up to three devices.
Audio Quality Of Spotify Premium
Spotify uses different sound quality settings for streaming by adopting the Ogg Vorbis format. Its standard bit rate for listening from a smartphone is 96 Kbits. On the other hand, when listening from your computer, this bit rate increases to 160 Kbits, thanks to the web player.
If you opt for the Spotify Premium version, then you will get audio streaming of 320 Kbits, which is considered to be “high quality” on computer and “extreme quality” on smartphone.
