PSA for Spotify Premium subscribers.

Premium has just seen a price rise, but Spotify has introduced a Basic tier.  The only difference between Premium and Basic is access to audiobooks.  If you don’t listen to audiobooks, jump onto your account and downgrade the subscription.

OK, the difference is like a quid a month, but still.

Good spot thanks 👍

The only difference?

My good sir, it’s more than that. But it’s also not a “completely ad-free experience” either.

Spotify Free:

Access: Provides access to a library of over 80 million songs and 2.6 million podcasts.
Ads: Includes ads during playback.
Quality: Streams music at 160kbps (lower audio quality).
Limitations: Limited skips (you can’t skip tracks freely).
Offline Listening: Not available for offline listening.
Cost: Free, but with the trade-off of ads and limitations.

Spotify Premium:

Access: Same extensive library of songs and podcasts.
Ads: Completely ad-free experience.
Quality: Streams music at 320kbps (higher audio quality).
Unlimited Skips: Skip tracks as much as you want.
Offline Listening: Download music for offline listening.
Exclusive Content: Access to exclusive content not available on the free version.
Cost: Requires a monthly subscription fee. And your first born son.

Basic != Free

Yes, basic seems to be a new category. As a “duo” member it’s £2pm cheaper. As only one member (me thankfully) gets access to the 15hrs of free audio books it’s basically £2pm a month for that service. As their pricing for listening beyond that are extortionate I’d only ever use the free hours. I’ve been using it for books I’d otherwise have to use a credit for in audible and only plan on listening to once.

Now they’ve split it away like that I envision a stealth creep up in price difference that’ll need to be watched. Still just about fine but another pound and it’s to basic for us I think.

Cost: Requires a monthly subscription fee. And your first born son.

Ha! Joke’s on them. My first born son is a complete waste of space

Apparently Premium has higher audio quality. That doesn’t bother me that much, but I’m surprised the local unidirectional cable cognoscenti haven’t been all over your case about it.

EDIT – I was wrong – bit rate is the same.

Just downgraded to the basic duo. I’ve listened to the odd book but won’t miss it.

Thanks @Cougar 👍🏻

Just downgraded to Basic Duo!

Thanks!

It’s a pity they still don’t seem to have a subscription that just gets music at high quality. I switched my family sub to Apple when Spotify started pushing iffy podcasts.

That’s the 1st and last time I’ve ever been referred to as a premium individual. Back to basic individual for me!

Thanks for the PSA, wasn’t aware of this.

Weirdly, basic seems not to be available in Ireland. Booo

And here’s another one who you’ve just saved £1 a month – thanks!

Thanks @cougar.  £2/month retained, you just reversed the price rise for us.  (Noone in the family has ever even listened to an audiobook on spotify)

Thanks for heads up. Just downgraded from premium duo to basic duo

You will have to price my audiobooks out of my cold dead hands.

I listen to audiobooks pretty regularly so not worth it for me.

What I would like though is a way to get rid of adverts in podcasts.  It really annoyed me when they changed premium from Ad-Free listening to Ad-Free Music listening.  There’s nothing worse than an ad or two playing in the exact place to ruin the flow of the podcast.

I have sufficient audiobooks – well, audio dramas – to outlast me.  It honestly never even occurred to me to look for such things on Spotify in the first place.

There’s nothing worse than an ad or two playing in the exact place to ruin the flow of the podcast.

See also: YouTube.

I don’t get adverts on YouTube for desktop, I’m not entirely certain exactly why but I have my main browser fairly locked down so some things simply don’t work.  It was a shock to the system playing videos on the TV, ads just cut in mid-sentence with no warning, it’s really disconcerting.

Thanks for this

FYI – If you do change within the app, (Duo premium to duo basic here) the current plan still shows as active and and looks as though you’ll still be billed on that.

The option you’ve chosen to change to disappears

It only appears to be confirmed in the web account info. Bit of a faff but it is there

Another thumbs up here, takes the edge off the price raise pain

Thanks for the PSA, another basic duo signed up for here.

What I find really odd though is what actually is “premium” about the premium accounts? Being able to listen to some audio books doesn’t seem enough to cover it, but might just be a terminology hangover

Am I missing something here, I don’t seem to have this “Premium Basic” option. Is it only an option once you’ve subscribed to Premium?

What I find really odd though is what actually is “premium” about the premium accounts? Being able to listen to some audio books doesn’t seem enough to cover it, but might just be a terminology hangover

No ads, being able to listen to an album in the correct order of play. Using Pink Floyd as an example, listening to DSOTM with adverts, and tracks playing in a random order, is a very unsettling experience

Not Premium Basic, ‘Basic’ where it says ‘Premium.

That said, I don’t have it either – good to know it’s not just me!

Thanks for that @cougar

No ads, being able to listen to an album in the correct order of play. Using Pink Floyd as an example, listening to DSOTM with adverts, and tracks playing in a random order, is a very unsettling experience

All of which you appear to be able to do in Basic (not Free)

All of which you appear to be able to do in Basic (not Free)

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous post/pic 😉

I never realised that I could get audiobooks on Spotify.

Thanks for that !

Well, it kept giving me an error message and wouldn’t let me change to Basic, so I cancelled it altogether.

andy5390Full Member

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous post/pic 😉

Not sure what you mean – your screenshot doesn’t show the “Basic” packages

I posted a screenshot showing that I had no Basic option

I then said (in my next post), Premium is ad free and lets you play music in any order

You pointed out that Basic also lets you go ad free and play music in the order you want.

I referred you to my previous post, in which I included a screenshot showing my options. Basic wasn’t one of them.

Thus, I have no way of knowing what Basic does or doesn’t provide.

I didn’t think that was too difficult to follow. YMMV