Spotify has the best music discovery algorithm and the smoothest and fastest user interface. It allowed me to find new artists and old favorites based on what I already liked and listened to on the app.
The free tier with ads defaults to a low-quality 96-Kbps streaming bitrate, but you can increase it to 160 Kbps. For $10 per month, the Premium tier ditches ads entirely and streams at up to 320 Kbps, which is standard streaming quality today.According to the company, if you’re looking for lossless, the Spotify HiFi layer is on the way, but there are still There’s no release date, even a year and a half after it was announced.
There are now over 82 million tracks on Spotify. Here’s the catalog minus Neil Young, (partly) Joni Mitchell, and others asking Spotify to remove their songs in protest of Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan’s long-spreading Covid misinformation.
Spotify also allows you to add an unlimited number of songs to your personal library, and you can place up to 10,000 songs in each playlist. If you turn on social sharing, you can see what your friends have been listening to and create a group session of streaming playlists at the same time. There is an option on each artist page to only listen to their songs you like, which is a very welcome change from previous years.
Since we last updated this story in February 2022, Spotify has combined albums, compilations, and singles into one location, with the option to separate them. It’s smoother and more convenient than the old way of forcing you to always look at them individually. Playlists and albums each have their own shuffle button, which is a nice touch that lets you know when you’re in shuffle and when to listen to everything in order.
Senior writer Lauren Goode also offers more tips on getting the most out of Spotify.
