Spotify is a big player in the streaming world. It offers a massive catalog of music, an intuitive experience and affordable prices. It also offers features like offline listening and ad-free play.
The service has been known to regularly roll out new features, redesigns and smart social campaigns. It has also focused on improving its recommendations based on past listening activity.
1. Streaming
Spotify offers streaming music to users all over the world. Its founders wanted to create a service that compensates artists and is better than illegal file-sharing services.
Its home page gives you a variety of playlists to choose from that are tailored to your taste. Other features include Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes and Release Radar. Spotify also allows artists to “prioritize” their songs for inclusion in their algorithms.
With Premium, you can download playlists and albums for offline listening. This is great for long commutes or trips away from wifi. You can also easily share songs, albums and playlists by copying the link in the top right corner of the screen. Spotify is available on most devices including desktops, tablets, smartphones and smartwatches. It can also be used in cars with Spotify Connect.
2. Customization
Spotify has a number of ways to tailor its services to users. For instance, it offers a feature called Daylist that creates customized playlists based on daily listening trends. It also has other playlists like Discover Weekly and Release Radar that help find new music. These are available to both free and premium Spotify users.
It also allows users to add friends’ listening habits into a Blend playlist and see where their tastes overlap or differ. It’s a fun way to make discovery more personal. Moreover, Spotify lets users customize their home page by adding playlists and artists to it. It also has a Year in Music feature that charts the most popular songs of the past 12 months. Spotify for Artists provides a platform to track streaming metrics and offers promotional tools for reaching more audiences.
3. Sharing
Spotify has a range of playlists created by other users, which are great for casual listening. They also have a huge catalogue of music and podcasts. If you’re a Premium subscriber, you can download songs to listen offline, though it will consume your data.
The more you use Spotify, the more personalized your experience will be. You’ll have a Made for You section with recommendations based on your recent listening, a Your heavy rotation section of your playlists, and daily mixes.
You can share playlists with friends and follow others. Spotify even has a new feature called Release Radar that alerts you to the latest singles from artists you follow. Premium subscribers get exclusive access to new releases as well.
4. Offline listening
Spotify offers its subscribers the ability to listen to music offline. This is a great feature for people who want to avoid high data usage or are traveling and don’t have a stable internet connection.
Premium users can download up to 10,000 songs and podcasts across five devices. However, they need to connect to Spotify online at least once every 30 days to keep their downloaded media files.
Spotify also offers a variety of music discovery features that are available to both Free and Premium users. These include ‘Discover Weekly’ and ‘Release Radar’ playlists that update weekly, as well as several Daily Mixes. It also has a few ‘Made for You’ playlists that evolve based on your listening history.
5. Discovery
Spotify’s algorithms curate a wide variety of playlists that align with each user’s musical preferences. They factor in a multitude of variables to make these recommendations, including each user’s listening history, liked and skipped tracks, artist and genre preferences, and location.
The feature has drawn parallels to payola, the controversial practice of radio stations promoting and featuring music in exchange for cash. Critics also point out that the new promotion tool could escalate a race to the bottom for streaming royalty rates, as artists and labels may feel pressured to opt in to Discovery Mode in order to see their tracks recommended more often.
To qualify for Discovery Mode, songs must be distributed by a participating distributor (such as Amplify) and have 25,000+ monthly listeners. In addition, tracks must be featured in Radio and Autoplay within the last 7 days.