It pays to pay for Spotify

Mark "Lucky" Lynch breaks down Spotify and its paid premium service. This review offers insight into the program and gives an analysis of what to expect....

ImageBeing a Premium member of the Spotify Network, it has become quite an adventure testing out the waters on this fairly new music streaming service. When it first started, it was very unknown. Not a lot of people really used it. It looked like iTunes mixed with Pandora and it didn’t offer much of a library to start. Since then it has taken off and now has a massive library and many users. Now, a paid option has been implemented.

I will admit that I don’t buy CDs anymore. I stick to digital downloads. I do miss back in the day when special editions of albums were in fact ‘special,’ but now they just come with a couple of bonus tracks and rarely anything cool. Unless you’re Coheed & Cambria, it’s very hard to find a band that’s putting out awesome special editions of their albums. That’s why I feel most people are into digital distribution these days.

Spotify offers as much of a library it possibly can. There are a few bands that haven’t made the roster yet, but so far I have had no complaints. With the paid premium version you can put the Spotify app on your phone, tablet, PC, and laptop. For a music lover like myself, this is awesome. With premium you can listen to any song in their library and create playlists to download to your device and listen to them within the app.

This means if you’re on the phone you can listen to the music on or offline. Got data? You can browse and listen to any artist. Add songs to playlists. Same thing with your tablet and laptop. When you are using it on your laptop or PC you can see what your friends are listening too. Share music and playlists with them. After my Premium 30 Day Trial was up I kept the service.

Of course you can still get Spotify for free. But if you are interested in checking it out and have a Paypal account. Do yourself a favor and sign up for the 30 day premium trial. It’s well worth it. The normal free version only let’s you search for an artist and play a radio like Pandora. I’ve personally used Pandora and I’ve used someone’s ‘paid’ version of Pandora. Spotify blows it out of the water, even down to improving the station to play more songs that you want to hear. Spotify listens better than Pandora.

Also if you don’t really care about having Spotify to mobile, you can get a lower paid version that’s only 4.99 a month. It allows you to have Spotify on your laptop or PC but not your phone or tablet. You can definitely keep it at home or on your laptop for trips. Some people will argue they can use YouTube or Pandora for these same things. Spotify is just the best at delivering music with the best quality. With all the enhanced paid options it makes the experience even better for a music lover.

There is a bit of controversy with Spotify. Some artists are claiming that the royalties they receive from Spotify are next to none, some as low as pennies per stream. This has to do with a royalty cut that Spotify pays to their record company or label. And then that record company or label then passes it on as another cut to the artist. So on one end, the artists are not getting much out of this program.

On the other hand indie artists and musicians not signed to a label or record like me, love this tool. Even if I only get pennies a month for my streams, someone is listening. And if that someone likes my music enough to support me they will find my Bandcamp and buy my album. At the bottom line that’s what counts. Give Spotify a try, if you love music, you will love this program. And remember, support music everywhere you go!

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Music

Writer, The Pit: Sports and Entertainment masufan@gmail.com
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