What Is Spotify and How Does It Work?

Spotify is an audio streaming service launched in Europe in 2008 and has since expanded to most major markets, including the United States, Canada, and Australia. In addition to streaming music, it also functions as a tool for consuming podcasts.

How Does Spotify Work?

Spotify is a legal way to stream music online and listen to podcasts. The company licenses tracks from major and minor record labels for its extensive music library. It pays the rights holders an undisclosed amount based on the number of times people listen to each track.

Listening to music on Spotify is entirely free, but you see banner ads within the official apps and hear the occasional audio ad between songs as a trade-off.

You can listen to entire albums on Spotify in addition to playlists curated by Spotify staff, artists, and other users. Likewise, you can create Spotify playlists and share them.

If you want to remove ads, you can pay for Spotify Premium, a paid membership that removes all advertising from the apps, enables song downloading for offline listening, and more.

Spotify Free vs. Spotify Premium

Using the free version of Spotify is a completely legitimate option for most people who enjoy streaming music and don't mind the occasional commercial playing between songs. But, Spotify Premium does have a few benefits you may find appealing, including:

• Improved audio quality: Free streaming plays songs up to 160kbit/s while Premium offers a higher quality playback up to 320kbit/s.
• No ads: The Spotify Premium experience removes audio and banner ads.
• Offline listening: Spotify Premium users get the ability to download songs for offline listening.
• Showtime subscription: The Spotify Premium for Students plan includes access to the Showtime cable channel and streaming apps in addition to all of the above perks.
• Listening parties. Premium users can listen to Spotify with up to five friends and take turns picking songs using the Group Session feature.
• Enhance. This feature rounds out playlists you create by adding one recommended track after every two you've added.

Spotify Premium costs $9.99 a month, while the Spotify Premium for Students option costs $4.99 a month.

A Spotify Premium for Family payment option is also available for $14.99 per month. This subscription model gives up to five people who live together full access to all Spotify Premium benefits on all of their accounts. The Spotify Duo plan includes two Premium accounts for $12.99 per month.

Spotify for Podcasters

The Spotify for Podcasters program gives content creators an avenue to reach a global audience. The service is free for podcasters, which means they get to keep almost all of the revenue from their subscribers. Through Spotify's Anchor podcast publishing platform, creators can add videos to their podcasts, create polls, and engage with subscribers in other ways.

How to Create a Spotify Account

You need to create a Spotify account to use the streaming service. You can do this via the account creation page on the Spotify website or by tapping Sign Up Free after opening the Spotify app on your mobile device.

To create an account, you need to enter a valid email address, an account password, a username, your birthday, and your gender. The entire process takes around a minute to complete.

How Can I Listen to Spotify Music?

You can listen to Spotify within any web browser on your computer or smartphone via the official Spotify web player or by downloading an official Spotify Music app for your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, Windows 10 device, Mac OS computer, or your Xbox One or PlayStation 4 console.

Samsung Smart TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Google Chromecast support Spotify in addition to Sonos, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Denon, Bose, and Chromecast Audio smart speakers. Some car models also feature Spotify Music streaming connectivity.

While the web player works completely fine on a Windows 10 computer, the best Spotify desktop experience is easily the official Windows 10 Spotify Music app, which contains much more functionality, such as offline playback.

How to Find Friends on Spotify

You can follow other users on Spotify to see what they're streaming. If you use the Windows 10 app, you can see a live feed of what all of your friends are listening to in real-time, making the listening experience much more social. Here's how to find your friends on Spotify:

1. Select Search.

2. Type the name of the friend you're looking for into the search bar.

   If you can't find your friend, check with them to see what name they're using on Spotify. They could be using a nickname or an alias.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select See all profiles.

   

4. Scroll through the list of search results and select your friend's name.

5. Once on your friend's profile, select Follow to follow them.

How to Download Songs From Spotify

If you pay for the Spotify Premium service, you can download songs for offline listening. Unfortunately, there's no way to download an individual track by itself. You can only download a song as part of an album or playlist.

To download a playlist or album on Spotify, open it and select the Download switch. The entire playlist or album should now download to your smartphone or tablet.

If you genuinely only want to download one track, you can get around this limitation by creating a new playlist with just that song in it. Here's how:

1. Open the song you want to download and select the ellipsis in the top-right corner.

2. Select Add to Playlist > New Playlist.

3. Enter the name of your new playlist and choose Create.

   

4. Select Your Library from the bottom menu.

5. Select Playlists, then select the name of your new playlist.

6. Select the switch next to Download.