The highly competitive space gains and loses services every few years, but one thing remains the same: Spotify is one of the best music services around. Despite serious competition from everyone from the pioneering Pandora to newish kid on the block Deezer, Spotify is still a top player in this crowded category. Spotify lacks the informative DJs and news and weather updates found in the co-Editors' Choice award-winning Slacker Radio, but it makes up for those shortcomings with video content, digital comics, podcasts, and other offerings.
It's an excellent music streaming service that delivers the goods. Spotify Pricing and Plans Users can dive into Spotify using one of the two listening plans: Spotify Free or Spotify Premium. The free version serves audio and banner ads as you listen at 160Kbps, manage your digital music files, and connect with others using the built-in social networking features. The $9.99-per-month Spotify Premium lets you hear select albums before they're released, play songs on demand, and cache songs for offline playback on your computer, phone, or other devices. It also increases audio quality to 320Kbps. Feature- and quality-wise, Premium is worth the extra moolah. That said, Spotify doesn't let you record audio as, the Editors' Choice for streaming services focused on live content, does.
In this review, I focus on the iOS and Android apps, the ones getting the most attention from Spotify. There are apps for Mac and Windows desktop, plus Windows Phone, but you'll get a somewhat. Get Spotify Premium free for 60 days - CNET Here's the deal: Get a free 60-day Spotify Premium subscription free of charge. That's double the usual trial period. The offer ends November 1. Spotify® New 60-Days Free Trial Terms and Conditions Spotify® 60-Days Free Trial Offer Terms and Conditions.
Spotify's Family Plan grants six people individual premium accounts for an incredibly wallet-friendly $14.99 per month. This directly competes with and 's $14.99 per month family plans. Apple and Google's offerings also let six household members subscribe to the service for $14.99 per month. Has two family plans, Family Premium ($14.99 per month) and Family HiFi ($29.99 per month), that let up to five household members sign up for the service. The difference between the two tiers is audio quality; Tidal Family HiFi boasts lossless, high-fidelity sound, while Family Premium does not. Lacks a family plan; Spotify's co-Editors' Choice really needs to step up in that area. The Catalog Spotify's library boasts more than 20 million songs, plus audiobooks, comedy, radio dramas, podcasts, poetry, and speeches.
It's a rich collection, and I am pleasantly surprised that it includes Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech in its entirety. Spotify's non-music extras act as a counter to Slacker Radio's The Weather Channel, and Tidal's in-depth music editorials and exclusive tour videos. On the topic of Tidal, if you're an audio fiend, you may want to check out that service. The streaming music platform, fronted by the music industry's Illuminati, has a high-end $19.99 plan that delivers non-compressed, FLAC (at 1,411Kbps) audio that sounds absolutely incredible with a decent pair of headphones.
That's not to say that Spotify's audio is spotty; it's actually quite enjoyable, with decent audio separation. By default, the music is streamed at 160kbps, but premium account holders can bump it to 320kbps. The tunes sound pretty good, too, especially if you have. Sadly, Spotify no longer serves up lyrics in its browser- or desktop-based apps.
Clicking an artist's name pulls up additional songs by the artist, and an About tab that contains an artist's biography, photos, and hyperlinks to related Spotify pages. I killed quite a few minutes in testing leaping from Alicia Keys to Isaac Hayes to Booker T. And The M.G.' S and reading the in-depth bios and sampling tracks. However, Slacker Radio's DNA station does a better job of fleshing out artist profiles through the use of interviews and playing the music that influenced the artists' sound.
The Spotify Experience Spotify's library won't let you down. I streamed the entirety of A Tribe Called Quest's We Got It From Here.Thank You 4 Your Service, Hannah Williams & The Affirmations' Late Nights & Heartbreak, and Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin II. Spotify has a good mix of major and indie artists, including Taylor Swift, who once had a notable falling out with Spotify over money that saw her remove her catalog from the service.
You can build playlists with any of the tracks or albums in Spotify's deep catalog. By default, Spotify streams tracks on your playlists with gapless playback. Spotify also gives you the option to crossfade songs, and even the ability to adjust the number of seconds (1-12) to fade.
It's not something I use, but DJs (or wannabe DJs) might find it appealing. If you want to build a playlist with a friend, turn on the collaborative playlist option to let your playlist be edited by others. Besides listening to singles, albums, and playlists, you can create an Artist Radio station that plays music from your favorite musicians, as well as similar-sounding musicians. I like Harlem's Artist Radio, which served up tunes from Dum Dum Girls and other indie rock notables in testing. Oddly, I was able to skip more than a dozen tracks in the little time I spent with Spotify Free before I upgraded to Spotify Premium; typically, streaming music services like Slacker Radio limit you to six skips.
Not that I'm complaining. You can, of course, like and ban songs to customize the Artist Radio experience, as you can with most music-streaming services. Spotify lacks Slacker Radio's news and weather updates, as well as the informative DJs who host particular playlists and the music history-filled Slacker DNA stations. Instead, it has Spotify Sessions, original artist recordings made in Spotify Studios. I tolerated Kelly Clarkson's mediocre cover of Prince's 'Kiss,' but rather enjoyed John Legend's 'All of Me.' Line-In, a recently added feature, lets listeners supply Spotify with metadata that will be used to help clean up some of the messy organization on the service's backend. By opting into Line-In, you answer a series of questions that task you with confirming an album's release date, identifying a song's genre, flagging a track that contains hate speech, or other such activity.
It's a shame that Spotify doesn't give people, say, a month of free Premium service for their efforts. Spotify also has a small number of music videos, many of which are Spotify originals (like RapCaviar and Viva Latino). During testing, I didn't see any videos starring classic artists like Michael Jackson or Prince.
If you desire that, I recommend checking out. If you're concerned about streaming your favorite tunes over, say, a public Wi-Fi signal, you need to get yourself a. A virtual private network safeguards your phone, tablet, or PC from snoopers and, depending on the location of the VPN server, may let you access music licensed to other regions.
Using a VPN to get around licensing restrictions violates Spotify's terms of service, though, so tread carefully. Archie Comic Books In an unusual move, Spotify partnered with Archie Comics to bring, well, Archie to the music platform. These comics, which are available to both free and paid Spotify members, aren't your mom or pop's Archie funnies; these are from the excellent 2015 reboot that features stories from Mark Waid and Fiona Staples. In addition, the -powered books are motion comics, so you experience dynamic panels and excellent voice acting.
They're pretty good! So far, there are just six issues available, with each one lasting roughly 10 to 15 minutes. And in case you're wondering, Archie is the lone comic book series on the Spotify platform. For a deeper dive into digital comics, check out Editors' Choice. Spotify's Mobile Apps. As previously mentioned, Spotify is also available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
The version I tested on my Google Pixel XL smartphone has the recent update that by tweaking the interface and adding new features. You can, of course, execute basic actions, such as applying a crossfade or gapless playback, but there are other new features that sound a bit more interesting. For example, Spotify has partnered with Genius, one of the web's most-popular lyrics sites, to offer Behind The Lyrics. This feature, which is currently only available in English, displays key lyrics (but not full lyrics!) as they're sung or rapped. In addition, Behind The Lyrics delivers behind-the-scenes information, such as song facts or inspirations.
It's a cool addition that very much reminds me of VH-1's classic Pop-Up Video show. In terms of streaming tech, Spotify's mobile apps have four audio settings: Normal (96kbps), High (160kbps), Extreme (320kbps), and Automatic, which varies based on your network connection. An Excellent Streaming Music Service Simply put, Spotify is an excellent, Editors' Choice-winning streaming music service, whether you're listening on your desktop or a mobile device.
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It has tons of great music, exclusive tunes, and a limited digital comics catalog, all of which combine to make it a top pick for streaming music and more pop culture-related content. If you prefer musical deep dives, check out Slacker Radio, which is also an Editors' Choice.
If you are like me, then your phone is your go-to control device. Whether I'm using headphones or a, I use on my and rarely touch the desktop app. After discovering playlist folders, however, when writing about, I wondered what other tricks the desktop app might have up its sleeve that aren't available on the mobile app. Here, then, are five such features, starting with the very useful and much appreciated playlist folders. Playlist folders If your list of playlists is long and difficult to peruse, then you need to start grouping your playlists into folders. Fire up the desktop app, go to File Create Playlist Folder and give it a name. You can then drag playlists into it.
You can't create or edit playlist folders with the mobile app, but thankfully your playlist folders do appear on the mobile app. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Add local files Sure, Spotify has a library of more than 30 million songs, but you can fill in any gaps by pointing Spotify to the deep cuts in your personal music library. The desktop app will automatically scan your computer to find music files, but you can also add tracks manually. To do so, click the down-arrow button in the top-right corner and click Settings. Scroll down to Local Files, click the Add a Source button, and then choose the files you want Spotify to add.
View song history The mobile app gives a Recently Played belt that lets you scroll by the playlists and albums you've listened to recently, but it doesn't give you a song-by-song list. The desktop app does. On the Now Playing belt at the bottom of the window, click the small Queue button that sits to the right of the playback controls.
It'll bring up your Play Queue, but if you click History, you can see the song history of the songs you've played, whether you played them on your phone or computer. Drag-and-drop sharing When you hear a great track that you want to share with a friend, the desktop app makes it as easy as dragging and dropping. Just drag a track from the Spotify app to your email compose window or message app and you can send a link to the song. The link will open the song in Spotify's web client. When I shared a link via Gmail, it was just a plain ol' hyperlink. When I shared via the MacOS Messages app, however, the link turned into a pretty preview of the song with album art.