Every Spotify Premium Plan explained: which is right for you?

Jump to section:

• Spotify Free
• Spotify Premium
• Spotify Premium Family
• Spotify Premium Duo
• Spotify Premium for Students

Spotify Free

You can listen to Spotify for absolutely nothing, but be warned that the features and experience will be quite limited. The two biggest drawbacks of the free plan are that you can only listen in Shuffle mode, and that you'll hear advertisements every couple of tracks. You can still access playlists, search for new music and listen to Spotify's Radio stations. You will also be limited when it comes to skipping. You can skip six tracks per hour, every hour. Ration them out. If you find yourself skipping six tracks in a row, perhaps the free model is not for you and its worth upgrading to premium.

What you can do with Spotify Free

• Listen to more than 35 million tracks on shuffle
• Use it on desktop or mobile
• Listen to podcasts and audiobooks
• Take Spotify abroad for 14 days

What you can't do with Spotify Free

• Listen without ads
• Skip tracks an unlimited amount of times/play single tracks instantly
• Listen offline
• Listen in higher quality
• Use the Spotify app as a remote control for desktop

Spotify Premium

Spotify Premium is the go-to subscription plan for most music fans. For £9.99/$9.99 a month, you can have unlimited access to Spotify's service. That means no more ads, on-demand tracks, the ability to download music to play offline and the option to listen to the Spotify music library abroad.

For anyone who travels a lot, likes to carefully create playlists and share music, or likes to listen to albums from start to finish, Spotify Premium is an absolute must. You can get a 1-month free trial of Premium to test the service and see if it works for you before paying the full 10 bucks, and Spotify often runs promotional campaigns that allow new accounts to get discounted prices, so keep an eye out for those.

If you like the idea of Spotify Premium but don't like the idea of the full 10 bob a month subscription fee, there are alternatives. New plans are launching at Spotify all the time, so if you live with other music lovers or are studying, there are options for reducing the fee.

Spotify Premium Family

Premium Family is a subscription plan for up to six family members living together. You get six Premium accounts for one price, and it is hugely popular with both families and those living in shared housing. Each member of the family has their own individual Premium account, so there’s no need to share login details. Basically, everyone in the family gets all of the benefits on a personal Spotify Premium account for a total price of $14.99. If you live in a house with five other people, you could pay just $2.50 each for your own Spotify Premium accounts. You can ask for much fairer than that. There are parental controls that give you the option to enable or disable explicit content for members of your family.

All members of a Premium Family plan must be residing at the same address, and it's here where the catch comes in. Spotify Family is widely abused, with groups of friends using one address to sign up and split the cost of Spotify Family despite not living together. Spotify knows this, and in September 2019 it was announced that it would now start requiring GPS data from users to prove that they do, indeed, live at the same address. Still, for legitimate families and cohabitants, Spotify Premium is a great deal if there are between three and six of you. If you live as a couple, read on...

Spotify Premium Duo

Spotify Family was still a decent deal for couples living together because it brought two Premium subscriptions down from $10 each to $7.50 each. However, Spotify announced in March 2019 that it was sweetening the deal even further. As part of the new Premium Duo subscription, cohabiting couples can have their own Spotify Premium accounts for just €12.49 per month in Europe, bringing your price down to €6.25 per month each. There are also some romantic sharing features added, such as Duo Mix, which will create a playlist automatically based on the music listened to by the two people in the contract.

Premium Duo initially rolled out in Colombia, Chile, Denmark, Ireland and Poland first, but it will come to more markets soon. Whilst it has not been explicitly stated by Spotify, it is likely that Duo will be subject to the same GPS data requirements as the Family plan to reduce the number of people scheming the system.

Spotify Premium for Students

If you are in full-time education you can also save money on your Spotify Premium account. Students get Spotify Premium for 50 percent off for a whole year, bringing the month down to a fiver. You can renew your Premium for Students subscription every 12 months, but only up to a maximum of three times. This will cover a typical undergraduate degree in the UK, for example. You'll also get access to Hulu's ad-supported plan and Showtime for no extra cost.

You'll have to verify your student status through a third-party service before you can qualify for the discounted price and it's pretty easy to switch to Premium for Students if you are already a Premium subscriber. It's worth noting that you cannot combine this student plan with another discounted subscription, such as Premium for Family.

All Spotify Premium subscriptions can be canceled at any time. To find out how to do that, read the step by step guide at the link below:

• How to cancel your Spotify Premium subscription

Do you use a special Spotify Premium plan? Share your experience in the comments section below.