Spotify Free: What is (and is Not) Included with Your Membership

Recently, Spotify pleased music fans everywhere by launching a new, free tier of their subscription music service called Spotify Free. According to the Spotify website , this new service takes many features of Spotify that used to be available to only premium subscribers, and makes these features free for everyone to use. But just what can you do with Spotify Free? And perhaps more importantly: what are the limitations of the free music service?

With Spotify Free, you can listen to any song you want in the Spotify database, anytime you want to, as long as you are using a desktop PC or a tablet. So, you can search for the one particular song you want to hear (or a particular album), click on the search results, and play the music in whatever order you want. You can also listen to music with unlimited skips and a very limited number of ads. Desktops and tablets are where Spotify Free really shines.

On mobile devices like cell phones, however, the Spotify Free offering is much more limited. On Spotify Free for Mobile, you won't be able to fire up any track at any time like you can on desktop. Instead, you are limited to shuffling playlists. So, you can make a killer playlist of music that you like, but you won't be able to play it in order and instead will need to allow Spotify to pick the order that your music is played. Spotify Free also limits the audio quality of streaming music to mobile devices, meaning that if you want the highest quality audio stream, you'll need to pony up for Spotify's paid Premium membership. Also of note, the only way to download music for later listening without a data connection is with a Spotify Premium membership.

I also found that the ads on Spotify Free are much more obtrusive on the mobile device, with multiple ads playing every couple of songs. This is almost annoying enough to drive people to the paid membership, which I suppose is the point. Although there are definitely limitations to Spotify Free, the service used to be completely unaccessible on mobile devices without paying for a Spotify membership, so Spotify Free is definitely better than nothing. For true music fans, however, the ability to play whatever song you want whenever you want to hear it might leave them wanting more than the Spotify Free membership has to offer.