Spotify is a digital music streaming service that gives you access to millions of songs, podcasts, and videos from artists around the world, just like Apple Music.
Spotify is immediately attractive because you can access content for free simply by signing up with an email address or connecting with Facebook. If you’re not interested in Spotify Premium’s monthly subscription fees, or just want to dive in and try it out, it’s easy to get started and there’s no commitment.
You can find the main differences between Spotify Free and Premium in our separate feature, but as a quick recap, the free version is ad-supported, just like the radio stations. The free version of Spotify is accessible on PC, laptop, and mobile phone, but the full service requires a Spotify Premium subscription.
How does Spotify work?
Getting started listening to music on Spotify is easy:
- Visit the Spotify website and sign up. We recommend signing up for Facebook if you have an account, as it will make it easier for you to find and follow friends, see what they’re listening to, and share songs with them.
- Choose a subscription level. We recommend going for Spotify Premium as it gives you access to more features, is more flexible, and will connect with more devices.
- Download and install the free Spotify app. There are versions for desktop and iPhone/iPad and Android phones.
- Sign in to your account on those devices and start listening.
Can you download music from Spotify?
Yes and no. With Spotify Premium you can set music to be available “offline”, but that’s not the same as downloading music in the traditional sense. For example, you may not attempt to game the system by downloading an album and then canceling your subscription at a later date. And you can’t download the tracks to burn to CD or copy to other devices.
The idea of Spotify offline mode is to allow you to have access to your favorite music when you are trying to save mobile data or traveling somewhere where internet access may not be easy.
With Spotify Premium you can have up to 10,000 songs available for offline listening on up to five different devices. Downloading songs, albums or playlists on Spotify is also simple, which is great. Just toggle the switch next to Download on the album you want to download for offline listening. Alternatively, click on the three dots at the top right and click “Download”.
How much data does Spotify use?
The amount of data Spotify consumes will depend on the streaming quality you choose; more on this in a minute. Here’s a rough guide to how much data Spotify will transmit:
- An hour of music playback will use around 50MB of data when the quality is set to “normal”.
- At normal quality, you can play about 24 hours of music for about 1 GB of data usage.
- In high quality, 1 GB will be used in less than 15 hours.
- With extreme quality, you will use 1 GB of data in 7 hours.
- You’ll use a lot more data with video playback.
You can check and change the quality of streaming and downloading songs using mobile data in your device settings.
High-quality streaming and audio quality
There are four different levels of streaming quality for Spotify. The stream is in Ogg Vorbis format and uses the following bit rates for each of the quality levels:
- Down to 24kbps
- Normal transmissions at 96 kbps
- High to 160kbps
- Very high transmissions at 320 kbps
The quality level you use will depend on your data usage preferences and choices, but it’s worth noting that Very High is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers. Also, with the web player, Spotify free users only get access to 128 kbit/s quality versus 256 kbit/s for premium users.
