The best streaming services offer slick interfaces, high-quality audio and access to millions of tracks. Best music streaming services: free streams to hi-res audio: Read moreI don't understand the comment about Qobus being more expensive than Tidal. So Tidal is £19.99 for their HIFI service and the equivalent Qobus is £15.
It isn’t just ads that get in the way either as both have other limitations to their free tiers. The first, and most important limitation when talking about a music streaming service is sound quality. If you’re on the free tier YouTube Music will stream at 128kb/s and Spotify maxes out at 160kb/s on mobile.
Upgrade to Spotify Premium. Spotify Free plan only offers 96 kbps and 160 kbps for choosing from to stream, but 320 kbps with Spotify Premium. To improve the streaming sound quality of Spotify, you can upgrade to Spotify Premium.

Spotify’s free version provides plenty of listening options for anyone who doesn't way to pay for a monthly subscription. It’s an easy choice for the best free streaming service as it provides the same personalized features as Spotify’s premium plan and includes a full-featured desktop app.

Spotify is arguably the most popular streaming service in the world. It has a massive library of music as well as a sizable library of podcasts. In this Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium breakdown, we’re going to see if the paid version is worth the monthly fee, or if you’re better off bearing through the ads to save money. You may even discover some features of Spotify along the way.

Editor’s note: This Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium article was updated on October 1, 2020, to include links to relevant information and to address an FAQ about Spotify promotions.

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The listening experience with Free Spotify is unpleasant

Spotify Free and Premium Spotify may look similar at first, but extended functionality varies greatly.

There are some key functional differences between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium, particularly with the mobile interface. With the free mobile version, you can only skip six tracks per hour, whereas with Premium, you can skip as many as you’d like. Skip limits can put a damper on things when you repeatedly aren’t in the mood for certain randomized songs, but sure it’s a forgivable inconvenience.

Spotify Premium let’s you skip tracks endlessly, the free version does not

Another drawback to Free Spotify on mobile: you can’t select specific songs for playback. Rather, you can select an album or a playlist and shuffle the songs in it. This can get annoying when you have an earworm and just need to listen to that particular song. With Premium, you can listen to that song over and over to your little heart’s content.

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There is a caveat with Free Spotify, however; you can select songs for playback with unlimited skips, so long as you are listening to them from one of Spotify’s 15 curated playlists under “Made for You” on the “Home” page. These include popular editorial playlists, such as “RapCaviar” and “Alternative R&B,” and playlists algorithmically tailored to your listening preferences such as “Discover Weekly,” “Daily Mix,” and “Release Radar.” The songs on these playlists change frequently. If there’s a blue shuffle icon next to the playlist title, you may only shuffle songs.

Get ready for annoying ads with Free Spotify

The absolute worst thing about Free Spotify is how frequently ads interrupt playback. The advertisements are incredibly annoying, are surely designed to be that way. Many of them feature the most irritating noises you could imagine, such as traffic horns overlaid with a voice saying things like, “Is this annoying? If you buy Premium, you won’t have to listen to this anymore.” I’ll give them credit, because this tactic of being obnoxious works pretty well: paying for Spotify Premium is almost worth it for the sole purpose of removing these ads.

Listen offline with Spotify Premium

Depending on how much you pay for data, it might be a good idea to save your favorite tunes for offline listening.

With Spotify Premium, you can download an unlimited number of tracks for offline listening. This is great for long flights or if you want to turn off your data while away from home. With Free Spotify, you aren’t able to download any music, so you may be spending money in the form of data usage rather than a Premium subscription.

On the desktop Spotify app, there are fewer discrepancies between Free Spotify and Spotify Premium. For example, on the desktop app you can select any specific song you want with unlimited skips regardless of if you have Spotify Premium or not. However, you are still subjected to ads on Free Spotify with the desktop app, and you cannot download music for offline listening on your computer unless you have Spotify Premium.

A glitch to Spotify Free affords Premium features

In August 2020, there was a glitch with Free Spotify that allowed for unlimited skips, specific song selection, and ad-free listening on both the mobile and desktop versions of the streaming service. This glitch made it almost identical to Spotify Premium, minus the ability to download music for offline listening. I reached out to a Spotify customer service rep, who told me, “To my knowledge we have ads and limited skips on the Free version.” This glitch surely will not last forever, though, so I’m going to have to crown the winner of best listening experience to Spotify Premium.

Winner: Spotify Premium

Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium: Discovery features are identical

Spotify Discover and Release Radar update every Monday to introduce new songs to its users.

One of the best things about Spotify is the way it promotes discovery of new music. This is apparent in its algorithmically produced playlists, designed to suggest styles of music that align with your listening history. The “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix” playlists are updated frequently with new suggestions. Perhaps you really dislike a recommended song or artist, you can press a button telling it to avoid a certain type of music or to blacklist that artist from your profile. The “Release Radar” playlist churns out new releases from artists you follow and updates weekly.

One of Spotify’s best features is available to Free and Premium users.

Spotify has a large variety of genres, moods, and other categories under the Browse tab, and here you can listen to its editorial playlists to discover new music. It will also recommend editorial playlists based on your listening activity, and it will algorithmically create “Radio” playlists for every song, artist, album, and playlist.

When you create a new playlist, the Spotify algorithm suggests songs for you based on the title of your playlist as well as the songs you’ve already put into it. Regardless of if you’ve paid for Spotify Premium, these discovery features are available and very helpful.

Winner: Draw

Free or paid, enjoy the same social features

Spotify for desktop looks the same no matter what version you subscribe to.

Music has always been a social art form, but things have changed quite a bit since the days my dad would buy the latest Neil Young record on vinyl and sit around the turntable with his friends. Of course, people still get together to listen to music nowadays—though, perhaps not so much in 2020. There’s something exciting about sharing the social benefits of music with others, even when you’re trapped at home. Spotify uses several different tools on its platform to encourage music sharing, and you don’t need to buy Premium to access any of them.

Enjoy collaborative playlists on Spotify

To create collaborative playlists, press the three-dot symbol at the top-right of your screen (mobile), or next to the playlist title (desktop), and select “Collaborative Playlist.” Then, by share the playlist link with your friends. This will let them add and remove songs to and from it. Anybody with the link may do so, and it’s private unless someone holds the link. Collabo

Spotify Free Stream Quality