The wait is finally over, Spotify is now available in India on App Store & Google Play. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek first announced plans to launch in India in March last year, everyone in India was eagerly waiting for the launch. The world’s most popular music streaming service has customized its “Search” section by adding new genres such as Bollywood, Punjabi & more along with the old ones for its launch in India. It also will offer a free ad-supported tier, as to most of the many major streaming services already available in the country. Spotify will be competing with the major contenders JioSaavn, Gaana, Google Play Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music in the Indian market.
Spotify Premium can be accessed by paying Rs 13 for a day, Rs 39 for a week, Rs 119 for a month, Rs 389 for a quarter, Rs 719 for six months and finally, Rs 1189 for a year. But do you really need a Spotify premium account for your daily music dose and are the added services really worth the price you pay?
We’ll be comparing the difference between the two:
Audio:
There’s more to Spotify Free and Premium than just its features. The major difference is as basic as it could be and it’s the audio quality. While a premium subscription to Spotify will let you enjoy music at a bitrate of 320 kbps, Spotify Free will only allow users to listen to songs at 96 kbps when on mobile and 160 kbps when using on the desktop. While low bitrates were appreciable when data consumption was limited because of higher prices, it really doesn’t make sense to use high bitrate audio when the internet speeds are soaring high and the rates are affordable as well. These features will help users to save up on data since the internet connectivity in India is still patchy in many areas.
Ads:
Advertisements are the basic means for generating revenue for anything sold online and Spotify is no different. For users wishing to not purchase Spotify’s premium subscription, the app will display you adverts for every four or five songs you play or skip. This is however not the case in Spotify Premium as the app comes with no adverts and users can fully utilise the screen for seamless music listening.
Music library:
Spotify says it offers users unlimited access to over 35 million songs and that remains the same for all users of Spotify, be it Premium or Free. The only difference is that while Premium users will get to play even the latest releases, Free members will have to wait for at least two weeks after a new artist album is out to listen to it.
Playback:
Spotify users in other countries they can only skip six songs in the span of an hour and Spotify employs shuffle play that disables users to select what they want to listen to and if one wants to listen to a particular track, they can add it to the queue and hope it comes on.Fortunately, Spotify has not implemented track skip limit or Shuffle Play in India, which means users here can skip and play the songs, all they want. Spotify Premium, on the other hand, offers no strings like these and allows users to tap and play whoever track they want, when they want to. There’s no need to for Shuffle Play but users can use it if they wish to mix and match. Apart from that, users can choose from any song or set of tracks, be it from an album, playlist, daily mixes or radio stations.
Downloads:
While Spotify Free offers the same vast library as Spotify Premium, it doesn’t support offline listening. What this basically means is that Spotify Free doesn’t offer track downloads as Spotify Premium does. Spotify Premium allows you to download up to 10,000 songs each across five devices with the ability to listen to tracks, albums, and podcasts without an internet connection when already saved. This feature can also save users data when on the go or when mobile networks aren’t reliable.
Conclusion:
So, does it make sense to upgrade to Spotify premium? Well, it depends. If you are someone who can’t bear ad interruptions while listening to music, or want to save data by downloading songs when streaming offline, then it makes complete sense to go for the Premium subscription. Additionally, keep in mind that Spotify is well known for using algorithms to curate playlists for users based on their mood. This is the key highlight of Spotify and we ourselves are impressed by how quickly the app learns from a user’s listening habits and plays favourable tracks accordingly.
Make sure to follow our Perfectly Curated Playlists on Spotify here.
We are giving away 2 Premium subscriptions on Spotify that recently released in India. Follow the rules and be the lucky one!⚡
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