Spotify has become one of the essential online services for every music lover. Although Apple Music pursues it at a good pace, it continues to lead the sector, exceeding 100 million users. Of course, most of these users are still free, and according to the latest data announced in September, paid users exceed 40 million.
For this reason, because more than half of its user base remains unpaid, in May 2016 they aggressively reduced the price of their family plans making it even more attractive. But how is the payment service for this service today? We will review how the Spotify Premium apk is, what it has and what it lacks, and if it is worth paying for the subscription taking into account what it offers to users.
On a personal level, I have to admit that since Spotify Premium began offering the possibility of downloading your favorite albums to listen to them offline on the mobile, the service has managed to keep me downloading music by torrent because it is more complicated than doing it from your app But as no two users are the same, we will start by reviewing the main differences in the payment method with respect to the free one.
Spotify Free vs Spotify Premium
The main differences between the two modalities are explained in a very basic way by Spotify itself in the Premium section that you access to inform you about the service. The main one is just what you are thinking, being able to say goodbye to advertising so you don’t suddenly skip the announcement of a group you hate in the middle of your favorite playlist. But there is much more than that.
For example, the second great advantage is that the Premium mode makes the mobile application useful. If you do not pay, the app for Android or iPhone is quite basic, and in fact the only thing you can do with it is to listen to music randomly. These changes in the Premium mode, where you have access to the entire catalog to listen to what you want when you want.
Being the free mode of the mobile app basically a playlist, it is quite annoying that the number of songs you can skip is limited. That is because they have left only for paid users the possibility of skipping without any limit all the tracks that you do not like or do not feel like listening.
You also have to keep in mind that, depending on the rights and negotiations with artists and record companies, there are some albums or specific songs that you cannot play if you are not a paid user. In addition, the social functions of sharing music with your friends are also somewhat limited in the free mode.
When you are a Free user you will not have another of the most important functions of the service, that of being able to download music. When you are Premium, Spotify allows you to download up to 3,333 songs on three different devices, for example your mobile, tablet and laptop. This way you can listen to your favorite albums or playlists offline, something that makes a difference when traveling or to save data.
And of course, if you have good speakers or headphones in your house you won’t want to settle for basic sound qualities either. Premium mode unlocks 320 kbps quality on both desktop and mobile clients.
What is still missing from Spotify?
But in all services there is always room for improvement, and Spotify is no exception. To start, you should ask for a better designed mobile application, since the one they have now has some shortcomings. In this aspect it seems that they are already testing a new design for their new applications, it will be necessary to see what improvements it incorporates beyond giving more presence to the covers during reproduction.
Nor should he fall asleep on the laurels in a matter of catalog. There are still quite a few discs that are not there, which forces you to buy and digitize them or to resort directly to P2P, downloads. The exclusivities of other services of the competition and the artists who decide to release their album later on Spotify are also a problem for their subscribers, so they would have to be marked as a New Year’s purpose to negotiate that aspect better.
The most audiophiles may also miss some specific options with which to get a little more juice. Visually, Spotify does not have any type of graphic equalizer, a reproduction that many other offline players have been having for years. Nor does it have any option to listen to music with lossless quality, something that would not hurt for the most demanding, although there was a little more to pay for it.
And finally, Spotify could not help to unify its content by offering on the desktop the same as on mobile. If you are a Spotify Premium user, your mobile application has long included a catalog of video channels and podcasts, but these two sections are not on the desktop. It is absurd, especially in terms of videos that are sure to look better on your desktop monitor.
So is Spotify worth it?
As always happens, the definitive answer to most of the questions we ask today depends on how you listen to music. If you only do it in a casual way, always on the PC, and you are not one of those who listen to music on your mobile phone, you can probably go perfectly without paying for the service, even if you eat ads from time to time.
However, if you are a person who listens to music regularly, it is worth paying the 10 euros for your Premium service. In fact, if you get together with friends and family, the thing gets even better, since for 15 euros you have your famous Family Plan , from which up to six different users can benefit, an offer currently almost unmatched by other competing services.
Personally I have to say that Spotify has changed the way I listen to music. Some of the benefits of Premium do not appreciate them until you use them, but once you do it is impossible to go back and return to the basic model, especially thanks to the world of possibilities that opens the online mode with high quality music.
Before, what I was doing was digitizing my wide physical collection of CDs, complementing it with some P2P downloads and taking it all in the microSD of the mobile using an Android player. Now what I carry in the SD are almost a hundred discs downloaded directly with Spotify. It is exactly the same experience, only it is easier to download them on your mobile and you know that you are contributing with your money so that your favorite artists can continue making the music you like.
Although I am a Spotify user, I also don’t want you to stop looking at what the competition offers. In fact, here you have a comparison with what each of the different music streaming services offers. But if you doubt between Spotify Free and Premium, I think that today the mode of payment is absolutely worth it, since you take advantage of the money you invest.
