Spotify is a well-known music streaming service with the highest number of subscribers and a great ecosystem for music lovers. It application has many unique features than its competitors.
Spotify is a music streaming service, probably the first to get noticed as a streaming platform for music back in 2008. It continues its legacy and has been the best streaming service for a decade now expanding to 60+ regions. It has brought in other services like comics and videos to an extent which soon might even expand into other platforms.
Spotify
Spotify is a cross-platform application available in every mobile and PC operating systems. Name an OS and you will have Spotify available already. Spotify has the widest of reach as a music streaming application and no doubts why it has reached such heights. The quality of music, the collection of songs and custom playlist are sure the best in Spotify. The app works quickly and is flawless in Android and iOS. The user interface is very simple and easy to understand and operate.
The application allows customisation to some extent like audio overlay, play similar songs at the end of the playlist. There are no options to alter the looks of the app itself. The new overhaul for the Android application looks gorgeous and the same goes for the iOS too. You get 4 options to choose from in the sound quality - Normal (96kbps), High (160kbps), Extreme (320kbps), and Automatic which selects quality based on the data connection speed.
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Catalogue
Regarding collection of songs, Spotify is hands down the best. Form the retros to the current day releases you can find all in the Spotify app with high definition audio. It is said to have 35 million songs on its catalogue out of which 20% is not even streamed once since its upload. Which means Spotify has songs that we are not even aware of. Regarding song collection, it is neck to neck with its competitors, especially Apple Music which has 30 million songs in its catalogue.
Spotify Features
Features are found in abundance some unique and some common ones. But whatever the feature they promise to deliver is perfect in functionality and easy to use.
More than the collection what makes Spotify a compelling choice is their personalisation and the song selection algorithm which in our experience turned out to be extremely exceptional. It learns your listening history, liked and skipped songs and caters songs similar to that. It even goes a step further by creating a personalised playlist for every user called daily mix. The whole list seems to go very well with your likes. For your reference, I hear songs from two languages – English and my vernacular language and it still makes a very relatable playlist for different languages.
The default playlists available are very good in my thoughts. You get top charts for various regions and various genres of music. You also get time period playlists and recent.
Artist’s profiles are listed with their songs and can be followed to get updates on new songs and playlist. You also get a specialised playlist for every artist. With famous artists, you get to exclusive behind the scenes videos and others only on Spotify.
Like an artist, every other user gets a profile that can be searched and followed which is great for following your friends and family. You can look what your followers hear and try that music which widens the possibility to listen to new music and acts as a social media for listening to music. People also can follow the playlist created by anyone if the playlist is made public.
There is a toggle available in the settings menu to turn on or off the continuous play option. Turning on will play songs with no lag while skipping through the playlist. This feature though takes a lot of data is cool and lag free.
Radio is available but not live radio unlike it’s US competitors. You can either play song, artist or genre radio. In fact, the lack of live radio is the only feature that makes Spotify little less than being complete.
You don’t get complete live lyrics scrolling along the song but it has a more fun feature. Spotify in partnership with Genius (lyric service) offers this feature called “behind the lyrics†which offer lyric insights and interesting tips from behind the scenes flashing by while the song is playing. This is a new attempt by Spotify available for paid users only as of now.
It connect is one of the underrated features of Spotify. You can connect to multiple devices logged in with the same user ID and play across devices instantaneously. If you have played half of the playlist on your PC last night and want to hear the rest on your way to the office in the morning, your device should be ready to go on the exact song. With Spotify, you can control music, change volume across devices in the same account.
Spotify has quite a good portfolio in podcasts. All the major podcasts from major radio channels are present and free to access for everyone.
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Spotify Subscription Fee
Spotify app is available free for download. You can download the Spotify application from the respective app store and log in/sign in to start using their services. The application is usable without subscription too with limitations. Limitations like only shuffle play, limited access to playlists and limited skips per hours ap-ply and no extreme quality music streaming.
What is surprising is Spotify grants permission to use personalised playlist even to non-premium users. Subscription costs 10 USD per month for individuals which is certainly not low but is worth every penny. The family plan comes comparatively cheap at 15 USD.
How Good are the Competitors?
There are some notable competitors for Spotify in the US – Tidal, Slack Radio, Deezer, SiriusXM Internet Radio. Of course, there are far better applications for radio listening but nothing comes close to being the well-balanced platform for music, podcasts and radio.
Apple music comes close in terms of music streaming alone but what it is not on par with Spotify is personalisation and song selection. Apple music is limited to very few platforms, not to mention Apple Music’s Android app which is quite laggy and crashes a lot. Overall It excels as a complete package which is proven by its increasing customer base every year.
