- How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Know
- How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Work
- How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Take
- How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Get
Spotify offers three membership levels: a free service that lets you play up to 20 hours of music a month (as noted by the New York Times) with occassional advertising, a $4.99-a-month Unlimited plan that lets you stream unlimited music, without the ads, and a $9.99 Premium service that offers downloadable or streaming music for your smartphone. I've used spotify free for the whole summer and fall at work, listening music non-stop almost, so you can guess my '10 hours' has long gone by, when suddenly, today at 12:20 Spotify decided that NOW the 10 hour has been filled, stopping my listening to a wall.
- Spotify Premium: Spotify Free: Monthly Price: $9.99 (or $4.99 for students or $14.99 for a 6-account family deal) Free: Annual Price: $99: Free: Library: More than 40 million songs.
- If you have ever tried Spotify on mobile, you’ll probably know that free users aren’t allowed to stream on-demand music; this feature is only limited to Premium subscribers. Using the mobile app, Spotify Free.
For another look at the Spotify launch, see “Why Spotify Will Kill iTunes.”
Unless you’ve been living somewhere without net access for the past week or so, you have heard about Spotify, an online music service that just launched in the U.S. The initial reviews have been pretty positive, and it has generated a lot of buzz, although it’s quite similar to some services that have been available here for some time (Rhapsody comes to mind). But there’s something pretty insidious buried inside music rental models like this. It’s prime territory for a bait-and-switch strategy. In fact, this approach could be exactly what the music labels are relying on.
At first blush, paying a monthly amount to “borrow” content like this over the net seems like a pretty good idea. Many of us have used Netflix or Hulu and become accustomed to the idea of paying our monthly subscription fee and getting to watch as much as we want. Both of these companies have done a fantastic job with their offerings. Netflix has become so popular that it recently surpassed the amount of Bittorrent (“pirate”) traffic on the web, proving that it’s compelling offerings, not lawsuits, that win customer’s hearts and minds. But if Hulu and Netflix are so fantastic, what’s the concern about Spotify?
Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV.
Think about it. It is relatively rare to own a movie or TV series that you sit through and watch multiple times. Sure, there are some classics where that’s the case, but most people watch a video once and that’s it. Music is not like this. The same songs get listened to time and time again. We build playlists (custom CDs or even mix tapes, if you’re old enough) around them. It’s the very reason most people don’t just listen to the radio. They want to own their favorite songs and albums so they can play them when they want. Understanding this — that we consume audio in a fundamentally different way from video — is critical to understanding why, from a consumer point of view, paying a monthly rental fee is a risky way of obtaining music.
Let me illustrate why.
Again, unless you’ve been living somewhere without internet for the past week or so, you would have seen the outrage when Netflix upped its prices. Well, if you think this is bad, just wait until Spotify does it. With Netflix, if the price gets out of step with what the company delivers you every month, it’s a pretty simple decision to stop subscribing. You were paying your $10 per month to watch your movies or TV shows, you watched your shows, and now they’re charging too much. So you stop subscribing. You don’t lose anything, because you don’t really want to re-watch all those old shows and movies that you’ve already seen. All you need to do is find somewhere else to watch next week’s episode, or next month’s movie.
But if Spotify were to do this and you choose to stop subscribing, all that music you have on your Android or iPad is gone. You can’t get the music out, and there’s nothing to suggest that you’ll be able to get the playlists on your computer out as easily as Spotify does from iTunes.
This makes it the ultimate breeding ground for a bait-and-switch strategy: once you’re invested, your willingness to pay goes up dramatically. Most of us would probably be willing to pay quite a lot to not lose all our music. That becomes all the more alarming when the initial indications suggest that Spotify is a tricky balancing act to make profitable. Three big variables affect its profitability: the percentage of paying users, the amount they pay each month, and — here’s the real gotcha — the cost of track licensing.
I’ve got no insider knowledge that Spotify is planning on raising prices. But I do know this: Spotify get all its content from the same place everyone else does — the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don’t like the new price, you don’t have to buy the new track. In Spotify’s world, if you don’t like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear. Here’s what one user in the U.K. had to say about that:
“It’s really frustrating, and it seems to be happening a lot. Spotify has changed how I buy and listen to music, and I pay for Premium so that I don’t have to download albums from iTunes, but now I’m having to do both.”
If you’re interested in seeing what the buzz is about, you should try it out. But beware. Spotify may try to resist price increases. But, given what we know about the record industry and how it approaches licensing negotiations, I wouldn’t let my music get held hostage to a monthly ransom.
Spotify on Wednesday expanded the free tier of its service to all devices, including smartphones and tablets.
How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Know
In the past, free Spotify users could only access Spotify Radio on mobile devices and tablets, but like other radio services, this prevented them from listening to a specific artist or music in their own playlists. The new offering expands on-demand listening to free users on tablets, and allows smartphone users to listen to their own playlists or music from a specific artist in shuffle mode.
See also: Spotify Expands Free Streaming to All Devices
Spotify created the following chart, which shows the access options that users have:
When it comes to specifics on how everything works, it becomes a bit more complicated. Fortunately, Mashable spoke with Charlie Hellman, Spotify's vice president of product, who broke down the company's new mobile offering.
Can Free Users Listen to Any Song They Want on Mobile and Tablet?
You can listen to any song you want, and in any order, if you use Spotify on a tablet. On iOS, this means the iPad or iPad mini. On Android, Spotify is setting 7-inches in diagonal as the screen minimum for tablets. The app will determine which version of the experience you see in Android.
On the tablet, the play-on-demand feature works the same as it does on desktop. You will have ads every five to six songs, and you can't save playlists for offline listening. Spotify decided to treat the tablet as a desktop after observing how people use the product.
In a post-PC world, the tablet is increasingly becoming the main home computer for many consumers, including Spotify users; for that reason, the company chose to make the experience on-par with what you'd get on the desktop.
On smartphones, only Spotify Premium users have the option to listen to specific songs on-demand.
How Does Free Listening on Mobile Work?
Although Spotify doesn't offer free on-demand listening via mobile, it has substantially expanded the types of music you can listen to, and how you can listen to them. Spotify on roku tv.
You can now listen to music from any artist in 'shuffle' mode; this means you can search for an artist, then instantly listen to a station that only features that particular artist. It's a big switch from typical online radio services, such as Pandora and iTunes Radio, which may let you create a station around an artist, but wind up having other artists in the mix, too.
Promo code spotify premium. What's more, you can listen to your own Spotify playlists in shuffle mode. Be aware, however, that there are a few rules about how they work.
What Are the Rules for Free Shuffle Mode?
Your playlists will need to meet several parameters to work in free shuffle mode. (Don't worry, Spotify will automatically fill out your playlist if it doesn't meet these requirements.)
They include:
- A playlist must have at least 20 songs
- A playlist must consist of at least three albums
- Even if you list the same track 20 times in a row, it still only counts as one
How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Work
Spotify said the vast majority of playlists have more than 20 songs, and include many different artists. Although this means you can't listen exclusively to a shuffled mix of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, you can listen to Rolling Stone's playlist for its top 100 tracks of 2013.
Plus, as long as you add a few songs from other albums to your Random Access Memories playlist, you'll be guaranteed to hear the whole album during your listening session.
How Is This Better Than Pandora, Songza or iTunes Radio?
![How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133943596/224149850.jpg)
The biggest change is that you can choose to only listen to a specific artist — something the other services don't offer. What's more, you can listen to playlists you create.
Songza is a playlist-oriented Internet radio product, but its licensing rules mean that users can't listen to playlists they create themselves.
This is also true for other streaming services that offer access to curated playlists. Usually, it's fine, especially when users are passively listening to tunes. Where it becomes problematic is if you've collected a bunch of tracks for an event, such as a holiday party. What's the point of having the ultimate holiday playlist if you can't even play it back on your own device?
Can Free Users Create Playlists on Mobile?
Yes. Free users can create their own playlists or add songs to existing playlists in the app; this means if you want to add a track from Spotify Discover to an existing playlist, you can do so without having to worry. You can also create new playlists with music or artists you come across.
How Do Ads Work on Mobile and Tablet?
Just as they do on the desktop and within Spotify Radio now. Interruptions and ads will come every five to six songs.
Should I Bother Paying for Spotify Premium?
How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Take
This will totally depend on how you listen to music. If you mostly listen to playlists while on your phone, and avoid selecting albums and tracks, you may not feel the need to pay for Spotify Premium. What's more, if you use an iPad or Android tablet for most of your listening, you no longer need to pay to play any song you want.
Still, Spotify Premium continues to have advantages. On the smartphone side, the biggest advantage is that you don't have to deal with ads, and you can save music for offline listening; this is really useful when on an airplane or the subway. Spotify Premium users can also stream audio in higher quality, so if you're an audiophile (at least in the context of streaming music), you get higher fidelity sound.
Spotify told Mashable that getting rid of ads and offline playback are actually the two biggest reasons users upgrade to Spotify Premium. The goal of the new Spotify freemium offering is to encourage users to listen to as much music as possible.
'We've found that the more stuff we give users, the more users are willing to pay us,' Hellman said. It's a good point. I know I have personally found that the value in subscription music services really shows itself the more I use it. Having more mobile listeners gives Spotify a chance to convert more of those listeners into Premium subscribers.
How Many Hours Does Spotify Free Give You Get
How Do I Get Started Using the Free Mobile Offering?
Make sure you are running the latest version of Spotify for iOS or Android, and the option is available now. For free users, browsing artists or accessing your playlists will show an option to 'Shuffle Play.'
On Android tablets and the iPad, you now have the ability to listen to any track you want at will.
Images: Spotify