Whether you like music, podcasts, or just the ability to drone out the deafening silence then Spotify is a great music streaming option for you.
Easily the most prolific music service, Spotify offers both free and paid services for lone wolves, couples and families. If you’ve got questions, we have answered them below.
- What is Spotify
- What does free Spotify get you?
- What do you get with Spotify Premium?
- How much does it cost?
- Finding new music on Spotify
- Spotify Wrapped
- How much data does Spotify use?
- Spotify for Artists
- How much do artists get paid?
- FAQs
What is Spotify
Spotify is an audio streaming service providing access to millions of songs, podcasts and videos from artists across the world. The service is available on both desktop and mobile applications across most prominent operating systems.
Android and iOS devices all support Spotify but Huawei devices that came out since the Google Incident do not. If you have a new Huawei you can still download Spotify through the Amazon app store which effectively sideloads the platform to your phone.
Anyone can gain free access to Spotify simply by connecting an email address or Facebook account, however premium access comes with a cost but benefits to match. For people not ready to make a commitment, or who want to test the service before agreeing to a monthly fee signing up is a simple process.
What does free Spotify get you?
As the devil would say in his creepy store of knick knacks, everything is free but you will pay a price. In this instance the price is paid in advertisements, mostly.
Free Spotify comes with ad breaks, and a limited amount of skips. You also won’t be able to download music to listen to offline nor can you listen to music without it being in Shuffle mode.
You can however play any playlist, album, or artist, as well as discover new music and share tunes with your friends.
Realistically you get a lot for nothing, but it probably isn’t the best option for musical aficionados.
What do you get with Spotify Premium?
Spotify Premium is, clearly, Spotify’s premium service. For a monthly subscription fee you can listen to as much music as you want ad-free, on-demand, and offline.
This means you can curate and play your playlists in their intended order, download music and podcasts to listen to when you’re offline, and of course, no more pesky ads.
There are a range of subscription options available for individuals, couples, families and students.
How much does Spotify Premium cost?
Prices for Spotify Premium start from just $5.99 per month for students, and go up to $18.99 for a family account. You can also opt in as an individual for $11.99, or a duo for $15.99.
Let’s take a closer look at what each of these plans mean.
| Price | Number of accounts | Family or Duo playlists | Parental controls | Free trial | |
| Individual | $11.99 | 1 | No | No | 1 month |
| Duo | $15.99 | 2 | Yes | No | 1 month |
| Family | $18.99 | 6 | Yes | Yes | 1 month |
| Student | $5.99 | 1 | No | No | 1 month |
Individual Spotify Premium
The individual plan is suited for just one person. For $11.99 you’ll be able to create one account with unlimited access, personalised playlists, the ability to download music to listen to offline, and of course your streaming will be ad-free.
This subscription plan comes with a on- month free-trial for those who have not yet tried the service, but it is contract-free so you can opt out at any time.
Duo Spotify Premium
With Duo plans you’ll have access to everything that the individual plan has except you can create two separate accounts.
Each account is its own separate entity with personalised playlists and suggestions, but you’ll also get a regularly updated Duo Mix which is a playlist that combines both of your music tastes into one. Perfect for road trips.
At just $15.99, the Duo Spotify subscription comes to just under $8 per person, per month.
Family Spotify Premium
Spotify Family plans allow up to six accounts for just $18.99 per month. That’s just over $3 per person, but you’ll all need to live under the same roof in order to be eligible.
While the Family account has all the benefits of the Individual subscription, it also comes with parental controls such as the ability to block explicit music and access to Spotify Kids. This is an entirely separate app made - you guessed it - just for kids.
Just like Duo, you’ll also get a Family Mix playlist created out of a combination of music from across your connected accounts. That could be a real mismatch.
Student Spotify Premium
Student discounts are few and far between, but Spotify still recognises the broke uni student. Those studying at an accredited higher education institution can get 50% off the Individual plan pricing for up to 12 months.
In order to qualify you’ll be required to submit information sufficient for the platform to verify that you are a student such as your name, a valid educational institution, email address, date of birth, and perhaps even further documentation.
While you can cancel your subscription at any time, you can only get the student discount for 12 consecutive months. If during this time you cancel and then start it back up again, any months you missed in between will be forfeited.
Finding new music on Spotify
One of the aspects that Spotify prides itself on is its curated playlists, radio, and how it helps users discover new music.
Each account gets access to playlists made for you based on your listening preferences. Below are each bespoke playlist available with your account and some extra details on them.
| What is it? | Update frequency | |
| Daily Mix | You’ll get up to six different playlists based on the genres you enjoy. These playlists include some of your favourite tunes and recommendations from Spotify. | Frequent updates depend on how often you listen |
| Discover Weekly | Songs that Spotify thinks you’ll enjoy based off your listening habits | Every Monday |
| Release Radar | New releases that Spotify thinks you’ll like based off your listening habits | Every Friday |
| On Repeat and Repeat Rewind | Songs you blasted on repeat recently, and historically | Every 5 days |
| Daily Podcasts | Podcast eps you’ll like based on your listening trends | Frequent updates depend on how often you listen |
Spotify Wrapped
If you have a social media account, you’ve probably seen a lot of people’s Spotify Wrapped whether you like it or not.
Spotify is constantly taking stock of what you listen to and how frequently in order to curate these playlists above. Your Spotify Wrapped quantifies what you’ve listened to throughout the year and shows you things like Top Artists, Top Songs, most listened to genres, and even if you’re a top fan of certain artists.
How much data does Spotify use?
How much data Spotify uses depends on your playback quality, but on the default Normal setting you’ll use around 43.2MB per hour.
This is based on approximate Kbps usage as indicated by the streaming service. The Low setting uses just 24Kbps, Normal uses 96Kbps, High uses 160Kbps, and Very High which is only available on Spotify Premium uses 320Kbps.
Audio quality can be changed on desktop, mobile, and tablet but if you use the official web player you will use 128Kbps on Spotify’s free version or 256Kbps on Premium. Note that podcasts are all played at a maximum of 96Kbps on mobile and tablet, you won’t be able to increase this quality.
| Approximate Kbps | 3 minutes (1 song) | 1 hour | |
| Automatic | Dependent on network connection | Dependent on network connection | Dependent on network connection |
| Low | 24Kbps | 540KB | 10.8MB |
| Normal | 96Kbps | 2.16MB | 43.2MB |
| High | 160Kbps | 3.6MB | 72MB |
| Very High* | 320Kbps | 7.2MB | 144MB |
*Only available on Spotify Premium
Spotify for Artists
While Spotify is great for listeners, it is also a leading choice for artists. Getting started on the platform you’ll need a Distributor to handle your music’s licensing, distribution and of course to pay your the royalties from your streams. If you don’t have one, the platform has a list of preferred and recommended distributors to get you started.
Once you are registered with Spotify as an artist you’ll have the opportunity to pitch to playlist editors to get your tunes in to more ears, see what playlists your songs get added to, create marketing campaigns within the app, see your audience stats, and of course get paid per stream.
How much do artists get paid on Spotify?
Unfortunately the answer is “not much,” and that just sucks. According to Business Insider, in 2020 artists were getting paid as little as $0.0033 per stream which means you’ll need around 250 streams to make one measly dollar.
How much artists earn on Spotify is calculated monthly. It takes the tally of the total number of streams, determines ownership of the song and the distributor and pays those first, before finally paying the artist.
If you really want to support your favourite musicians, the best thing you can do is buy their merchandise. Or you know, stream a song non-stop all month. Say it’s a three minute song, and you stream it on repeat for a full 30 days you could rack up 14,400 streams. That comes to about $47.52 for your favourite artist.
Maybe just buy the t-shirt.
FAQs
How to change Spotify username
To change your username on Spotify follow the below steps.
- Go to Settings in the Spotify app
- Select your Profile
- Tap Edit Profile
- Edit your username and picture as you wish
How to delete Spotify account
To delete your Spotify account you’ll first need to cancel your Premium service. Once you’ve done that;- Go to Customer contact form on the Spotify website
- Choose Account
- Select I want to close my account
How to cancel Spotify Premium
All Spotify Premium accounts are contract-free so you can cancel at any time.
- Login to your Spotify account on a desktop at spotify.com/account
- Go to Your Plan
- Click Change Plan
- Scroll down to Spotify Free
- Click Cancel Premium
Anula Wiwatowska
Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram
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