What Is Spotify And How Does It Work

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

Spotify is known primarily for its music streaming service, which allows users to stream music from major web labels, or through one of the many official Spotify applications. Spotify also serves as a platform for downloading podcasts as well as streaming music.

How Does Spotify Work?

Spotify is a fully legal means of streaming music online and listening to podcasts. Based on the number of times Spotify users listen to each track, the company licenses tracks from major and minor record labels to include in its large music library, and pays the rights holders an undisclosed sum.

Along with playlists compiled by Spotify staff, musicians, and other users, you can listen to entire albums on Spotify.

Listening to music on Spotify is entirely free, but all frequent users are viewed as a trade-off with banner ads within the official apps and the occasional audio ads within tracks.

Spotify Free vs. Spotify Premium

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.

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.

How To Create A Spotify Account

How To Create A Spotify Account

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.

You’ll need to enter a valid email address, account password, username, birthday and gender to build a Spotify account. It only takes around a minute to complete the whole operation.

You can also use this if you have a Facebook account to sign in to Spotify without building a Spotify account beforehand. Logging in with Facebook means you won’t have to worry about keeping a password in mind. When using the Windows 10 Spotify App, it will also add some social features.

How Can I Listen To Spotify Music?

How Can I Listen To Spotify Music

Using the official Spotify web player, or installing an official Spotify Music app for your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, Windows 10 pc, Mac OS computer or Xbox One or PlayStation 4 console, you can listen to Spotify in any web browser on your computer or smartphone.

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.

How To Download Songs From Spotify

How To Download Songs From 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.

  1. Open the song you want to download and tap the ellipsis in the top-right corner.
  2. Tap Add to Playlist.
  3. Tap New Playlist.
  4. Enter the name of your new playlist and tap Create.
  5. Tap Your Library from the bottom menu.
  6. Tap Playlists.
  7. Tap the name of your new playlist that you just created.
  8. Tap the switch next to Download.