Menu
Chances are that you’ve heard of Netflix, the popular website that allows you to stream movies and television shows (i.e. watch them as they load from the Internet) whenever you want, and as often as you want. Now, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do the same thing with music, listening to whatever songs you wanted, as often as you wanted, and as many times as you wanted?
Swedish entrepreneurs Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon thought so, and that’s why they created Spotify.com in 2008. Since then, Spotify has quickly become one of the most popular services of its kind. As of June of 2015, Spotify had over 75 million users listening to the music that they love through it.
So what exactly is Spotify?
Spotify is what is known as a music streaming service. This means that it plays songs off the Internet as they load through the Spotify application. You can also create playlists of songs that you like, or create “radio stations” based on music that you already like to discover more music that you might enjoy.
The songs aren’t actually on your computer (with some exceptions), which is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because your songs can’t get deleted or go missing, since Spotify is always in control of them. However, it’s also a curse because you can only play the songs in the Spotify application; you can’t play them anywhere else, or move them to another device (unless that device also has Spotify on it).
Why use Spotify?
- It’s free — You don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want to. You can get a paid subscription, though, to get extra features such as higher sound quality and being able to listen to certain songs without an Internet connection.
- It’s modular — Spotify works on all sorts of devices. You can use it on your Windows or Apple desktop computer if you listen to music most often at home. You can also put it on your iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or Android-powered smart phone if you want your tunes on the go. You can even put it on your PlayStation video game console!
- It’s customizable — Add songs that you like to your collection, and then put them in playlists of songs that go well together. You can also pick a song, artist, album, or playlist that you like and have it play random songs that are similar. Rate what you hear, and Spotify will play more of what you like and less of what you don’t!
- It’s social — Follow your favourite artists on Spotify and be among the first to listen to their new tunes, or check out music mixes put together by your friends and other users. You can even share your listening habits on other social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr!
How does Spotify work: 4 steps to enjoying music on Spotify
1. Head over to the Spotify website, and sign up for a free account.
The first step to using Spotify is to get yourself an account. This lets Spotify identify you as a unique user. You can sign up using your Facebook account, or you can sign up with plain old email. Just enter a user name and password, your email address (and a copy of it), your date of birth, and your gender. Then click Sign Up and you’re set!
2. Purchase a subscription to Spotify Premium to get the most out of Spotify (optional).
You can use Spotify for free, but your options for using it will be somewhat limited. For example, you will see advertisements in the application, and hear advertisements between songs. You will also not be able to download your playlists of songs in order to listen to them even if you aren’t connected to the Internet.
A Spotify Premium subscription costs $10 per month. However, Spotify has various promotions that allow you to subscribe for a period of time for free (or almost free), or even cut the cost of your subscription in half.
Our How Much Does Spotify Cost article has the lowdown on Spotify Premium, including how to sign up for it and how to take advantage of various discounts for it.
3. Download and install the free Spotify application on your device of choice.
You can use Spotify to listen to music right on the website, but the easiest way to use it is probably to download the Spotify application and install it. If you think you’ll use Spotify mostly on your desktop computer, you can get the Spotify application right off the website. Or, if you want to use Spotify on the go, you can get the application on your iPad/iPhone or Android-powered smart phone through the Apple App Store or Google Play, respectively.
4. Enjoy as much music as you want on Spotify, however you want to listen to it!
The remainder of our course tutorials (i.e. excluding our “Extra Resources” section) will teach you how to use the essential features of Spotify. Our “How to Use Spotify” tutorial will show you some of the basic features of the application. How you use Spotify from there is up to you!
- Want to find a specific song, artist, album, or user? Searching is super easy on Spotify!
- Want to create your own custom music mix of your favourite songs? Create Spotify playlists!
- Feel like having Spotify make you a random music mix based on songs and artists that you already like? Head over to our Spotify Radio tutorial!
As you see, Spotify can be used for free, is available on all sorts of different platforms, and offers you several different options for discovering and managing your favourite music. No wonder it’s one of the most popular music streaming services on the Internet today! So, does Spotify sound intriguing to you (no pun intended)? Then stick with us as we dig a little deeper into what you’re capable of doing with Spotify in the rest of our Spotify course.
More Great Related Articles
Is it possible to automatically switch my Android Spotify app to 'offline mode' when not connected to Wifi?
I've just had 1.5GB of data downloaded via Mobile data connection which has over maxed out my limit!
I'm not sure why this has happened (I can only assume it's re-downloaded some playlists?), but I would like to prevent this from happening again.
CurtCurt21222 gold badges33 silver badges1515 bronze badges
migrated from superuser.comMar 24 '14 at 13:37
This question came from our site for computer enthusiasts and power users.
3 Answers
No need to do that, if your device runs at least Android 4.0:
- From your homescreen, go to Settings → Data Usage
- tick the checkbox to enable data limit
- in the graph, move the bars to some level suiting you (can be imaginary high, to not toggle your mobile data off altogether when reached)
- scroll down until you find the Spotify app, tap its entry to open details
- scroll to the end of that screen, tick the checkbox to 'limit background data'
Done. Now, unless Spotify is running in foreground, it should no longer automatically use mobile data.
This setting has no effect to WiFi, so it would perfectly fit your needs: while on WiFi, Spotify feels no restriction. As soon as you switch to mobile data, the app is no longer allowed to automatically transfer anything in background – but should still permit actions you trigger when the app is in foreground.
Izzy♦Izzy77.3k5252 gold badges263263 silver badges779779 bronze badges
Go to Settings and untick 'Download over 2G/3G'.
This way Spotify won't download/update playlists when WiFi connection is not available.
It can however still stream music, so to disable that just tick the 'Offline mode' option.
If you leave it ticked it won't stream music anymore and you will be only able to listen to previously downloaded playlists. Also, you settings will be preserved and the next time you start Spotify it will still be in Offline mode, preventing unwanted Mobile data traffic.
vanogridvanogrid
It is not possible to programmatically toggle offline mode (ie, by creating an Intent or with Tasker or something). However you can limit streaming quality over mobile networks, same with downloading of offline playlists.
Spotify is aware of some users having problems with high data usage, and some of the recent 1.x releases have contained fixes for these types of problems. So always make sure that you have the latest version of the Spotify app installed!
Nik ReimanNik Reiman
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged spotify or ask your own question.
Pandora and Spotify are both popular music streaming services, built to help users find their favorite jams and to discover tons of new music without having to put in much work, but which one is the best music streaming service overall? After considering a wide variety of factors, we think Spotify is a better choice for most people. To see how we chose, here’s the full analysis.
Background
Pandora’s Music Genome Project helped revolutionize the music industry — for better or worse — when it debuted in 2000, creating a new standard for online music streaming. Since then, numerous competitors have sprung up, with iHeartRadio, Last.fm, TuneIn, and more borrowing Pandora’s “radio station” model with varying degrees of success. In fact, Pandora has been so successful at radio-style programming that SiriusXM recently agreed to purchase it.
Spotify, meanwhile, was conceived by two Swedish businessmen who simply wanted a way to listen to all their favorite music in the same place. The service debuted in 2008 and has since gone gangbusters, growing into one of the most successful on-demand music platforms in the world, with more than 140 million active daily users and more than 70 million paying monthly subscribers. While Apple Music is the only on-demand service that comes close to matching Spotify’s might, Pandora’s on-demand service offers even more reasons to give it a shot.
If you’re a music lover, both services are certainly worth using, but if you’re considering upgrading to paid tiers like Spotify Unlimited or Pandora Premium, you will want to know what you’re getting for your hard-earned cash. We pit Spotify and Pandora against each other to help you decide which is right for you.
Music catalog
For years, Spotify enjoyed a massive lead in this category, touting tens of millions of songs in an ever-growing library. For most of its existence, Pandora’s catalog included roughly 1 to 2 million songs — nothing to scoff at, but hardly a number capable of competing with Spotify or Apple Music. Following the acquisition of Rdio, however, Pandora inked deals with several major record labels and eventually launched Pandora Premium, its on-demand service. Spotify still has more music — owing mostly to remixes and covers you won’t find on Pandora — but the libraries are very comparable, and there aren’t any notable artists who appear on one service and not the other. Some artists have exclusive deals in place with other platforms, while others prefer to keep their work away from streaming services entirely. All told, Spotify holds a slim lead in sheer numbers, but there is essentially no difference between the two here.
Winner: Tie
Social features
There is no denying music’s incredible power to connect people. Realizing this is a valuable tool, Pandora and Spotify afford their users the ability to connect with friends, share their favorite songs, or simply recommend artists and playlists. However, these streaming clients differ vastly when it comes to comparing the social components of each service. Pandora’s rather lackluster attempt at social features essentially offers little to satisfy social media junkies. Users do have the ability to share their favorite stations across Facebook and Twitter, but because on-demand playback is locked behind a paywall, it feels fairly empty.
Spotify easily gets the nod in this category, providing users with a slew of options for sharing music and connecting with friends. Spotify users all have the ability to share individual songs, entire playlists, and even specific artists with any of their friends/followers on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Skype, or Tumblr by simply clicking the three dots on the right. Spotify also added barcodes to songs, which you can scan with your phone for song data. The service also lets users collaborate on playlists, and even make them public for anybody to follow. Simply put, Spotify wins this one easily.
Winner: Spotify
Music discovery
Everybody wants to find musical diamonds in the rough, and a big part of a streaming platform’s value comes from its ability to help users find new tunes. Music discovery is the backbone of Pandora. The Music Genome Project we mentioned above is the engine that drives Pandora, offering the uncanny ability to provide listeners with songs they like based on a vast amount of variables. In addition to creating radio stations, the Music Genome Project helps to curate playlists (if you have Pandora Premium) by automatically adding music once you have selected a few songs.
Spotify is no slouch in this category, either, and the company has made acquisitions to get better at it over time. The extremely popular “Discover Weekly” playlist, a 30-song list that magically shows up each Monday, blends music you love with music you’re likely to love. Spotify is constantly adding similar features so you can keep discovering. Spotify’s home interface is also brimming with themed playlists, and you’re just one click away from the “Discover” tab, which features personalized recommendations based on your listening history. We’re still inclined to give Pandora the nod here, however. After all, music discovery is its primary function and its radio stations far outshine Spotify’s at present, but Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature is hard to beat.
Winner: Pandora
Free versus paid versions
Both services offer free — albeit limited — access to streaming music supported by occasional ad breaks. The ads aren’t overwhelming, and the free offerings provide a great way to test drive these services before splurging on a premium account, but these services differ greatly.
With a free Pandora account, subscribers are limited to radio functionality — pick a song (or an artist, or an album, or any combination), and it builds you a station. Hit the “thumbs up” button to tell Pandora to play similar music in the future, and hit the “thumbs down” button to make sure you never hear that song (or songs like it) again. Moreover, users of free options only have access to a lower-quality audio stream (limited to 64k AAC+ at best), and aren’t afforded the luxury of downloading a desktop client like users of Pandora Plus or Pandora Premium. Both mobile and web users have access to similar features — the same amount of skipped songs, the same available stations, and the same occasional advertisement.
For Spotify users, the free experience is far more robust. The ads are here, too — as is the loss in audio quality — but with a free Spotify account, you can listen to music on-demand via the desktop and web apps (mobile users are limited to on-demand listening from 15 playlists that Spotify generates based on their taste every 24 hours).
You can also try the ad-free versions of each service for free. Pandora offers a 60-day free trial of its $10 per month Pandora Premium service (which includes ad-free radio and on-demand streaming), 30 free days of its $5 per month Pandora Plus service (ad-free radio stations, but no on-demand streaming), while Spotify offers a free 30-day trial of its $10 per month Spotify Premium service (on-demand listening and radio stations). Both services also offer a discount for yearly membership.
With free access to on-demand music, Spotify takes this category every time.
Winner: Spotify
Mount and blade war band download. Has anyone ever had this experience and know how to fix it?Submitted November 27, 2018 at 04:41PM by dingvs https://ift.tt/2DNdlap.
Why Is Spotify Offline On My Phone
Cost
While Spotify may offer better choices for freeloaders, Pandora’s $5 per month tier is a killer option for those who want to rock out to quality tunes, but don’t have the scratch to shell out the full $10 per month (though we find it hard to believe that’s a burden for most folks). While both services offer $15 per month family plans — which is currently the best option for a group — Spotify has begun testing Spotify Duo, a price plan built just for two people, which comes in somewhere between $10 and $15. That said, if you want to go ad-free with Spotify, you’ll have to pay at least $10 per month, which gives Pandora the win.
Winner: Pandora
User interface and experience
Though not necessarily a deal-breaker — both platforms look and feel great — it’s worth pointing out how the user experience differs between services. Pandora offers three different methods for playing music; a mobile application for Android or iOS, an in-browser player, or a downloadable desktop program (Pandora Plus or Premium only). With an easy-to-use interface and intuitive controls, each version provides largely the same experience. Users also have the ability to sort radio stations either alphabetically or by date for quick access. No matter which way you listen, you will have access to background information on the artist currently playing, listings of similar artists, and links for users to quickly buy any song that strikes their fancy. “Browse” and “My stations” sections allow you to quickly switch between listening and discovering.
Spotify Offline Mode
Spotify also offers three apps — web, desktop, and mobile for Android or iOS — and they each feature an incredibly polished user interface. The desktop version functions like iTunes (but is less cluttered), meaning most people should find navigating it straightforward and intuitive. Searching for music via the program’s search bar produces Google-like results, auto-generating artists, songs, or albums as you type. On both the mobile and desktop versions, the left item bar offers easy-to-access links to saved playlists, local files, downloaded songs, and Spotify Radio stations. When using the Browse feature, users have access to newly released music, daily curated music news, and a discovery tab that recommends new artists and songs based on a user’s listening history. The company has also continued to develop its radio-style algorithm, adding a feature called Endless Artist Radio, which are personalized playlists based on your listening history that are even downloadable for offline playback. Recently, Spotify added an artist-blocking feature, letting you prevent specific musicians from showing up on your playlists. There’s no denying that Spotify offers users a more well-rounded user experience, and its solid platform and slick interface make it an even more attractive option. Pandora’s no slouch, but Spotify reigns supreme here.
Winner: Spotify
Other information
Location: If you’re not located in the United States, go ahead and ignore Pandora altogether — it’s only available stateside following the removal of support in Oceania territories. Spotify, on the other hand, is available in a vast number of countries.
Compatibility: With Wi-Fi-enabled smart speakers reaching an all-time peak in popularity, you might want to consider whether your favorite speaker is natively compatible with Spotify or Pandora. Popular smart speakers like the Sonos One and the Amazon Echo line support both Spotify Connect and Pandora Everywhere via Wi-Fi; here is a full list of Spotify devices and a full list of Pandora devices. Keep in mind, integration with devices like smart speakers often requires a paid account.
Conclusion
Despite having existed for nearly twice as long, Pandora simply can’t keep up with Spotify’s impressive versatility and usability. The recent introduction of Pandora Premium means users can listen to a massive collection of specific songs and albums at their pleasure, but Pandora is playing catch-up at this point, and it’s pretty far behind. Spotify has better social features, better apps, and more value for your dollar. If you’re constantly looking to expand your musical horizons and are in love with radio-style listening, Pandora is absolutely a reasonable investment, but in general, we recommend choosing Spotify.
Why Is Spotify Offline
Overall winner: Spotify
Editors' Recommendations
Hi guys,
Ive been told to get anything changed we must gather many comments so Sonos will develop the change. So please comment if you think this would be good.
You need to find a way that we can use Spotify (in the sonos controller) in OFFLINE mode. So we can listen to our play lists without using our bandwidth.
The only way i can work out this can be done is using the spotify homepage and using a sonos connect, we all know these cost a further few hundred dollars and with some efforts we should be able to use the spotify features in the sonos controller with greater ease. Sonos is heavily advertised in regards to music services etc so please increase the features in this area in regards to the controller.
With the new chrome devices on sale you need to keep up to stay ahead.
Thanks
Mike
Ive been told to get anything changed we must gather many comments so Sonos will develop the change. So please comment if you think this would be good.
You need to find a way that we can use Spotify (in the sonos controller) in OFFLINE mode. So we can listen to our play lists without using our bandwidth.
The only way i can work out this can be done is using the spotify homepage and using a sonos connect, we all know these cost a further few hundred dollars and with some efforts we should be able to use the spotify features in the sonos controller with greater ease. Sonos is heavily advertised in regards to music services etc so please increase the features in this area in regards to the controller.
With the new chrome devices on sale you need to keep up to stay ahead.
Thanks
Mike