What Is Spotify And How Does It Work?

Spotify is a popular audio streaming service that launched publicly in Europe in 2008 and has since expanded to most major markets including the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Spotify is primarily known for its music streaming service, which allows users to stream music from major labels on the web or via one of the many official Spotify apps. In addition to streaming music, Spotify also functions as a tool for consuming podcasts.

Spotify is a completely legal way to stream music online and listen to podcasts. The company licenses tracks from major and minor record labels to include in its large music library, and pays the rights holders an undisclosed amount based on the number of times Spotify users listen to each track.

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

Listening to music on Spotify is completely free, however, all regular users are presented with banner ads within the official apps and the occasional audio ad between songs as a trade-off.

Those wanting to remove ads can pay for Spotify Premium, Spotify's paid membership that removes all advertising from the apps and enables song downloading for offline listening. 

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.

Spotify Premium does have a few benefits, though, that may appeal to some users.

• Improved audio quality. Free streaming plays songs at 160kbit/s while Premium offers a higher quality playback at 320kbit/s.
• No ads. Audio and banner ads are completely removed from the Spotify experience.
• Offline listening. The ability to download songs for offline listening is unlocked for Spotify Premium users.
• Hulu (ad-supported) plan. All Spotify Premium users are given a free Hulu (ad-supported) subscription as part of their plan.
• Showtime subscription. Those who sign up for the Spotify Premium for Students plan get access to the Showtime cable channel and streaming apps in addition to all of the above perks.

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 at the same address full access to all Spotify Premium benefits on all of their personal accounts.

To use the Spotify streaming service, you need to create a Spotify account. This can be done via the account creation page on the Spotify website or by tapping Sign Up Free after opening the Spotify app on your device.

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

If you have a Facebook account, you can also use this to log into Spotify without creating a Spotify account beforehand. Logging in with Facebook means that you won't have to worry about remembering a password. It will also add some social features when using the Windows 10 Spotify App.

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.

Spotify is also supported on Samsung Smart TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Google ChromeCast in addition to Sonos, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Denon, Bose, and Chromecast Audio smart speakers.

Some car models also feature Spotify Music streaming connectivity.

On the Spotify Music apps, you can follow other users to see what sort of music they like. If you use the Windows 10 Spotify Music app, the right side of the app will show a live feed of what all of your friends are listening to in real-time which makes the music-listening experience much more social.

Here's how to find your friends on Spotify.

Spotify users who pay for the Spotify Premium service have the ability to download songs on the Spotify apps for offline listening at a later time. Unfortunately, there's no way to download just an individual song by itself. A song can only be downloaded as part of an album or playlist.

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

If you truly only want to download one track, you can get around this limitation by creating a new playlist with just the one song in it.