Spotify: Music and Podcasts

Review by eFreeware

What stands out about Spotify is not any single feature but the breadth of what one app holds: a catalog of more than 80 million songs, over 4 million podcasts and, more recently, hundreds of thousands of audiobooks, all reachable from the same place. Few apps ask you to switch between music, spoken-word shows and long-form books without leaving the player, and that combination is the reason the app has passed a billion installs and holds a 4.3 average across more than 36 million ratings.

That breadth shapes who it suits. If your listening habits move between a favorite album, a daily mix, a podcast episode and a chapter of a book, Spotify is built for exactly that pattern. If you mostly want one narrow thing, a single album collection or one podcast feed, the app still works, but the value of the catalog is what you are paying attention to.

Searching by a lyric you half remember

The feature I find most distinctive is lyric search. Rather than needing the title or the artist, you can type a fragment of a line and let the app find the track. It looks like a small thing, but it addresses a real problem: the song you want is often the one whose name you cannot recall, and typing the words you do remember is a more natural starting point than guessing at a title.

The rest of the discovery layer supports that same idea. Daily mixes are assembled for you, top songs can be browsed by genre, country or decade, and the catalog is organized into more than 40 category genres covering everything from workout and sleep to classical, jazz and kids and family. You can also create and share your own playlists, or follow ones other listeners have put together.

For podcasts, the model is closer to a subscription feed: you follow shows so you do not miss episodes, and you build a personal podcast library. Individual episodes can also be bookmarked into playlists, which lets you mix spoken audio into the same lists as music if that is how you listen.

Music that follows you between screens

Spotify is not confined to a phone. The same account works on a tablet, desktop, PlayStation, Chromecast, TV and Wear OS devices, and the developer describes sound quality as consistent across them. In practice that means a playlist started on one device can be picked up on another, and a Wear OS watch can control playback on your phone or any other compatible device.

The watch side goes a little further than remote control. Tiles and complications give quick access to the app, and on Premium you can download content to the watch for listening without your phone nearby. That is a meaningful difference for anyone who leaves the handset behind on a run or a walk.

Audiobooks round out the catalog, with more than 300,000 titles available. There is a regional limit worth noting: audiobooks in Premium are currently offered in Australia, the UK and the US. Premium Individual subscribers, along with Duo and Family plan managers, get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month.

What the free tier asks of you

The app is free to download, and the developer says the catalog of songs, albums, podcasts and audiobooks can be played without paying. The trade is advertising: the app contains ads, and the free experience includes ad breaks. In-app purchases are also part of the app, which is how the paid tiers are sold.

Premium is the paid route, and the developer lists what it changes: albums and playlists without ad breaks, offline downloads of music and podcasts, and on-demand playback of your top songs. There are four subscription options, Individual, Duo, Family and Student, with no commitment and the ability to cancel at any time.

One more requirement sits outside the subscription question. Participation can be turned off inside the app settings.

Getting more out of a large catalog

With a catalog this size, the practical challenge is narrowing it rather than finding something to play. The genre and mood categories are a reasonable starting point when you have no particular artist in mind, and the daily mixes are useful for the days when choosing feels like work. Searching by lyric covers the case where you know the words but not the name.

If podcasts are your main interest, treating the follow button as a subscription is the simplest way to keep a library manageable, and bookmarking individual episodes into playlists gives you a place to keep the ones you want to return to. For audiobooks, it helps to know the monthly listening allowance on the relevant plan before starting a long title.

Offline listening is the feature that most changes how the app fits into a day, since downloads are a Premium capability. If your listening happens in places without a reliable connection, that is the part of the subscription that matters most. If it happens mostly at home or on Wi-Fi, the free tier covers a great deal of what the app does.

The case for paying, and for not paying

The free version is genuinely usable: the catalog is available, the discovery tools are there, and the main concession is advertising. Anyone who can live with ad breaks gets a large amount of music and spoken audio without spending anything, and the app itself costs nothing to install.

Premium is best understood as removing friction rather than adding content. The four plan options mean the cost can be shared across a household or reduced for students, which softens the decision for regular listeners.

A catalog app for mixed listening habits

Spotify suits listeners whose tastes move between music, podcasts and audiobooks and who want one app to cover all three. The cross-device support, including Wear OS playback control, makes it easy to carry the same library from a phone to a TV or a watch.

The decision comes down to advertising and offline access. Listeners who can tolerate ad breaks will find the free tier generous. Those who want uninterrupted albums, downloads for travel or listening on a watch without a phone should look at one of the four subscription options, and should check the audiobook allowance and regional availability if books are part of the plan.

What's new

We’re always making changes and improvements to Spotify. To make sure you don’t miss a thing, just keep your Updates turned on.