You can get started with Spotify’s free plan, but it’s limited and serves up ads. As a result, a few artists including Joni Mitchell and Neil Young removed their music from the platform.Īvailable in: 180+ countries ( see list) Pros and cons Pros In case you missed it, Spotify basically got some backlash for hosting “The Joe Rogan Experience” a while back as some critics accused it of spreading covid disinformation. Now, that’s not going to affect you directly if you’re just listening to music, but if you care about supporting the artists you listen to, there are better platforms to do it on.Īnd finally, there’s the whole “Joe Rogan controversy”. But in all honesty, if you’re a casual listener (rather than a true audiophile), you probably won’t even notice.Īnother big downside is that the artist payout on Spotify is quite low. That’s not quite “CD-quality” (1411kbps).

It’s one of the only platforms that still doesn’t offer lossless quality music, but it has announced plans to launch a new Spotify HiFi tier at some point in the future-so there’s still hope.įor now, if you use Spotify, you’ll be stuck streaming audio tracks at a maximum bitrate of 320 kbps. The first and biggest downside is that Spotify doesn’t offer a HiFi option… yet. There are a few major drawbacks to be aware of. There are over 80 million tracks to choose from, and the vast majority of popular artists are on Spotify.Īll that said, let’s be real: Spotify isn’t perfect. As you listen, Spotify will get to know your tastes and compile curated playlists just for you.Īside from that, it also offers incredibly fast performance, a sophisticated feature set (remote control options, synced queues, etc.), a generous free tier (supported by ads), and excellent podcast integration.Īnd of course, as the largest music streaming platform in the world, it also has one of the largest music catalogs.

It also offers best-in-class recommendation algorithms. And with Spotify Connect, you can remotely control listening on all your home devices, like PS4/PS5s, Sonos One, Amazon Echo, Google Nest speakers, etc. There are native Spotify apps for iOS and Android. Here’s why.įirst off, no other service comes close to Spotify in terms of integrations and device compatibility. But despite some well-founded criticisms (which we’ll get to), it’s still, in my opinion, the overall best music streaming service on the market.

Listen, I know Spotify has taken some heat recently.

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