Spotify premium worth it?

Jimbo · 8 May 2012 at 09:44

I just tried the 48 hour trial off spotify on my iPhone on Sunday and was very impressed although it didn't have everything on ther I wanted to hear. Overall I liked. Now is it worth paying monthly for the premium service? What is is £9.99 a month? I have it on my iPhone and iPad as well. Presumably I'd only have to pay once? Is free version much worse? I don't want to save just listen to the odd few tracks on my dock of a Friday night.

shanestatham · 8 May 2012 at 10:55

I use it from time to time, I think if it was my only means of getting music rather than nip to the shops then yeah its well worth the £10 price but in all honesty i listen to probs an album a month? maybe less....I find a lot of the radio stations give me the variety i need from music and i also tend to use youtube a lot by making play lists in the house etc.

I dunno i just find a lot of other places to stream, download music for free....

Jimbo · 8 May 2012 at 11:03

Yeah that's a good point thanks. I just found it handy cos we where having a nice night in and the fact I could carry all this music around with me and type a band in and it was there on the dock. Think it would be nice for my iphone4 rather than my iPad.

oli356 · 8 May 2012 at 11:07

Well I've got a year subscription for free because of Virgin Media, might even have another year after that possibly.

I listen to music on my phone for a minimum of 3 hours a day, I've stopped syncing music over and just using my Spotify. I just 'star' the songs and therefore have one big playlist. Listen at 320kbs so it sounds great =)
I listen to a lot of electronic music therefore a lot isn't on there... but I have discovered some new things which is nice.

The offline mode on the iPhone hasn't worked for me in months. It simply won't sync (I even had a replacement iPhone and it still didn't work). Shame.. but I am with GiffGaff so get unlimited data and generally have signal.

Once my subscription runs out I will renew it for sure even if I have to pay

. Can't you use the unlimited version on phones then?

Hxc · 8 May 2012 at 11:20

Get it for £4.99 a month with the NUS discount, well worth it and I sync over wifi (halls internet is unreal

) and play in offline mode. Works fine with my BB

oli356 · 8 May 2012 at 11:50

Hxc said:
Get it for £4.99 a month with the NUS discount, well worth it and I sync over wifi (halls internet is unreal ) and play in offline mode. Works fine with my BB

Cool, didn't know they offered it. Think my card expires on 23rd August, Spotify 28th August.. Hmmm!

Phonesis · 8 May 2012 at 15:05

Spotify has come on leaps and bounds recently. The extreme quality option for 320kbps is a nice new feature. The iPad app is really incredible too. I am really happy to see the ability to stream user created playlists. It means that you can basically play any combination of music and there is no need to create your own imaginative playlists.

I used this the other night at a friend's party and suspect that, as a result, I generated 3-4 new iPad purchases and Spotify subscriptions in the process! The tech is no longer something people can snub. It's just too good.

BloomerzUK · 8 May 2012 at 16:34

I couldn't live without Spotify. I use it daily in work and at home, with Unlimited. I had Premium for a while but couldn't justify the price difference; but if I had a NUS card, I'd do it in a heartbeat! I no longer pirate!

Tunney · 8 May 2012 at 19:48

I love it. It's a great way to discover new music.

Audigex · 8 May 2012 at 21:03

I used to love it, but I decided that I didn't want to support it any more due to the unreasonable limits they put on the free users - launching a "bait and switch" service whereby they gave unlimited free use with 10 seconds of ads every 30 mins or something.

Everyone joins what was a very good service, and quite a lot of people started paying more (myself included) both to support non-piracy and to get extra features such as offline playlists/mobile use - then suddenly they pile on x hours a month usage, x plays per track (per month or ever?) and tons of adverts to try to force people to the pay paradigm. I for one refuse to support a company that does **** like that.

That aside, it's a decent service for the money IF you listen to a wide range of music. I found that I used it a lot to discover music, but YouTube does that too. It works well for finding friends' music, but that only matters for a couple of months until you've found all the good bands.

After that, I realised I was listening to the same 100 or so tracks mostly, along with another couple of hundred occasionally. Most of which I already owned. I figured that for £10/month I could buy 15 songs a month off iTunes and wouldn't be held to ransom of having to continue to pay £10/month to listen to it. For my £120 a year, I buy up to 174 new songs and can use YouTube to listen to any others I want to have an occasional listen to, or to try new bands/artists. The earlier stuff was the starting reason, but I think it was the final realisation that my £120 a year was vanishing into thin air that decided it - I don't want to subscribe to music, I want to own it.

So for "not wanting to support them anymore", and "not making financial sense, when I really thought about it" reasons I went back to iTunes. The fact I got a new car with an iPod dock but from which I can't control Spotify might've been a factor, too. If you don't mind a company that uses bait-and-switch, and don't mind not owning your music, it's a decent service with a few issues (updating the client occasionally deletes all the music, for example).

Gilbert89 · 9 May 2012 at 22:57

If you maximise the use of it I guess it's quite good value for money.

Alpherah · 11 May 2012 at 22:34

Its good but it eats your storage space very quickly, even without offline playlists due to un-deletable cache files.
Only way to free up the space is to periodically delete the app and re-install.

Arthur17 · 12 May 2012 at 17:05

Has anyone tried Rdio now that it is available in the UK?

snitcher · 12 May 2012 at 17:10

my flatmates at uni use the free spotify version. i think an alternative to that is having the radio on.

oli356 · 12 May 2012 at 17:21

snitcher said:
my flatmates at uni use the free spotify version. i think an alternative to that is having the radio on.

How can you compare the radio to spotify...?

Music I hate and don't want to listen to and no choice what is playing vs what I want to hear.

CaptainRAVE · 23 Aug 2013 at 20:41

Bit of a thread revival, but currently trying out premium. Not sure if I will stick with it once I get busy with work (might downgrade to unlimited), but it seems a lot better than it used to be. Enjoying the sound quality and the fact that I can use it on other devices like my ipad and then hook it up to the lounge/bedroom sound systems.

Hyburnate · 24 Aug 2013 at 00:28

I think I'd buy it, but I don't have much of a data plan so it'd use it instantly

Fallen god · 24 Aug 2013 at 03:27

I use it at work a lot, I love the social aspect of it, now have a few playlist that I share with my GF and we build them up together.

Was thinking to move over to Google Play all access but Im lazy so I think ill stick with spotify.

Matthew.M · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:45

I use it. It's all about the offline playlists for me, sync at home then listen on the go and in the car.

Infam0us · 26 Aug 2013 at 21:11

Use it on my mobile and PC, happy to spend £10 to sync playlists and add music at the click of a button