![Premium Premium](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133919022/470044683.png)
All in all, the Spotify Free vsPremium audio (sound) quality is a close race to call. However, the Premium version offers more exciting features. Spotify Free vs Premium: Listening Experience. Both Spotify free and premium versions offer listeners a unique opportunity to listen to their favorite tracks anywhere. Lots of people will tell you “Oh yes, the difference is huge”. There are many answers right here using words like “massive” and “crisper” and “depth”. Spotify supplies 320kbps Ogg Vorbis high-quality streaming for Premium users and 128kbps for free-plan users. If you are using sensitive sound equipment then the difference will be.
Spotify Premium High Quality Audio
How Pandora and Spotify Work
When a user visits Pandora and creates a radio station based on, for example, his or her favorite artist, Pandora searches for similar artists and songs using the complex algorithms of the Music Genome Project, a music database that Pandora has patented. The Music Genome Project compiles information on songs, first categorizing each one by genre. A musician then analyzes every song for up to 30 minutes at a time, finding unique characteristics with which to further categorize the music by (e.g., types of instruments used, gender of lead vocalist, rhythm, tonality, etc.). Most songs have hundreds of attributes that help Pandora determine the similarities and differences between one song and another.
Pandora users can further customize their personal radio stations by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that are recommended to them. They can also share their stations with friends; however, linking to specific songs directly is impossible due to licensing restrictions.
Spotify is less about new music discovery than it is about replacing traditional music players, like iTunes or Windows Media Player, with streamable music. Spotify depends on a large catalogue of roughly 20 million songs to accomplish this—a sticking point in some countries when major record labels have not wanted to make deals with the company. In theory, users should be able to create an account on Spotify, search for any song or artist that they like, and begin streaming that music with Spotify's online player.
Playlists
On Pandora, radio stations are really just playlists (and vice versa) and come with the same limitations that all Pandora stations come with. Users can build their own stations/playlists based on their favorite music, use friends' shared playlists, or take advantage of one of many public Pandora stations that are based on genre. However, manually adding individual songs or albums is not supported.
Playlists on Spotify work in the same way that playlists in traditional media players work. Music is manually added or removed by the user. The only difference between Spotify's playlists and traditional media players' playlists is that Spotify's can be easily shared (and even co-edited). This has made Spotify a popular choice among those searching for a free or cheap and legal way to share their favorite artists and songs. It has even led to the creation of full websites (e.g., Playlists.net) dedicated to sharing and rating spotify playlists.
Pandora allows users to create up to 100 unique stations/playlists, while Spotify puts no limit on the number of playlists a user can create.
Phone Apps
Pandora has mobile phone apps for Android and iOS, as well as some limited support among Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries. On the iPhone, the Pandora app can only be installed using a U.S., Australian, or New Zealand iTunes account.
Spotify has apps available on a wide variety of mobile devices around the globe. Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are all supported.
Free vs Paid Subscriptions
Relatively few restrictions are placed on non-paying Pandora and Spotify members. The most jarring difference between free and paid memberships on both services is the presence of ads; paying members experience no audio ads on Pandora or Spotify.
Pandora's premium membership is known as Pandora One and costs $4.99 a month. Spotify's subscription is known as Spotify Premium; at $9.99 a month, it is more expensive than Pandora One.
As of 2014, students can subscribe to Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month provided they have a .edu email address from an accredited college or university in the U.S. that they can prove they are enrolled in. This reduced pricing is available to students for three years.
Restrictions on Free Membership
Both Pandora and Spotify put restrictions on non-paying users. The restrictions have changed numerous times over the years as both companies have tried out different pricing models and been affected by changing licensing fees or laws.
At present, Pandora's restrictions on its free members are as follows:
- Audio advertisements that last for 15 to 30 seconds periodically interrupt music. The number of ads served up in an hour varies depending on the operating device (i.e., whether listening to Pandora via computer, mobile, or car).
- Restrictions on how many songs can be skipped in a day. Six skips are allowed, per hour and per station; only 30 skips are permitted across all stations in a 24-hour period. Clicking the 'next' play button, selecting 'I'm tired of this track,' or downvoting (giving a thumbs down to) a song while it plays all count as a skip.
- Reduced audio quality. Music for free members plays at 64 kilobits per second in an AAC+ format. Built-in apps for televisions and other non-mobile devices, like Roku, may receive a slightly higher quality of 128 kbps.
- Timeouts. To avoid paying royalties on songs that users might not be listening to, Pandora periodically times out if the player has not been used in a while.
Spotify android stuck on waiting to download pc. Spotify places similar restrictions on its free members:
- 15- to 30-second audio ads.
- Reduced audio quality. However, at 160 kbps in the Ogg format Spotify's free version offers a higher quality sound than Pandora does.
Premium Membership Benefits
Pandora One's benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Higher audio quality of 192 kbps.
- Downloadable desktop application. Users are no longer limited to using Pandora on their mobile devices or in the browser.
- Custom skins for the web application.
- Fewer timeouts, allowing users to listen for longer periods of time without having to interact with the player.
Spotify Premium benefits include the following:
- No ads.
- Ability to download music for offline listening.
- Higher audio quality of 320 kbps for some songs.
- Use of Spotify Connect, which allows users to hook up other hardware to Spotify's mobile app.
Library Size
In 2011, Tim Westergren, a founder of Pandora, stated that the service had over 900,000 songs in its library catalogue at the time. More recent statistics are difficult to find, but it is likely Pandora has well over a million songs in its database as of 2014. Pandora has a good track record of finding and adding obscure independent artists, which aids users in discovering new music.
Because Spotify depends on having songs available on demand, the company has been more aggressive about making deals with major labels as well as well known independent labels. In 2012, its catalogue was said to hold about 20 million songs; however, the size of the catalogue varies by region due to licensing restrictions.
Social Features
Pandora and Spotify provide users with several ways to share music, but Spotify has more widespread, general sharing capabilities than Pandora does.
On Pandora, users can share links to stations via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Users can also share links to individual tracks, but the web address points to general song information—lyrics, purchase info, and a link to create a station based on the song, not listen to it directly (see an example).
With Spotify, users can share individual songs, full albums, and playlists. This is done via special links that target the Spotify application itself. Spotify add friends on app. This flexibility has led many third-party websites to adopt Spotify links as a method to legally share music. And as of 2014, Spotify has teamed up with Last.fm, an online music statistics and recommendation service, to try to compete with Pandora.
Parental Controls
For parents who are concerned about the music their children might listen to, Pandora is the better option, as it offers parental control options that will play censored versions of songs and exclude others entirely. Because every song is analyzed by real people, Pandora's parental controls are very reliable and do not simply rely on 'Parental Advisory' labels.
In contrast to Pandora's rigorous parental control system, Spotify offers no such capabilities. This means that explicit, uncensored music is available to anyone who signs up to Spotify.
Other Features
Download spotify for free. While Spotify's flexibility may make it more universal on the web in some respects, Pandora is found a lot more frequently beyond computers and mobile devices. Not only do many audio-video receives, media players, and HDTVs carry default support for Pandora, but so too do many modern automobiles that have digital radio systems.
Spotify can be found on or downloaded for many mobile devices and media players, but it is rarer on HDTVs and is not built in to any vehicle's digital radio systems by default. In some cases, Spotify Connect can be used to join Spotify with a device or set of speakers, which are controlled via the Spotify mobile app, but Connect requires a premium membership.
Availability and Popularity
Pandora is much more popular than Spotify in the U.S.
Pandora has more users than Spotify does, but Spotify's service is available to more users around the world. Whereas Pandora only serves users in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, due to licensing issues, Spotify reaches dozens of countries and territories (click here for a full list). This has made Spotify popular outside of the U.S., but Americans remain loyal to Pandora according to statistics.
Download music spotify ipad. In 2014, Pandora reached 200 million users, with nearly 70 million active each month. By comparison, Spotify has about 40 million users as of 2014, 10 million of them premium subscribers.
Both Pandora and Spotify depend on banner advertisements, music-interrupting ads, and premium member subscriptions for funding. However, as of 2014, both companies operate at a net loss.
Recent News
References
When the compressed music came out, people reckoned that it was only for some time, that the quality would improve. However, lossy music rapidly gained its admirers due to file's small size. It looked very appealing to be able to store thousands of songs no matter what the quality is. Sadly, compressed music was in favor for quite a while, at least, longer than it should have. As a consequence, musicians waste hours and days in studios re-recording what they think of, quantity has taken over quality and what appeared to be a bliss turned out to be evil.
Digital music streaming services is not a brand-new thing. The problem is that there’s so much music to discover and even though some services say they have some exclusives, most music collections are more or less similar, making possible over 30 million tracks for streaming.
Spotify doesn't need any kind of introduction. If you don't know what it is, you must be living in the Stone Age.
For those who still haven't googled, Spotify is a digital music streaming service that offers access to millions of songs, playlists, and podcasts from artists all over the world. It rapidly extended as a nice streaming service for several reasons:
- Free subscription with ads.
- Millions of tracks available.
- $9.99 / month .
- Supported in 60 countries.
It seemed like an outstanding service, but the world is now shifting towards Hi-Res music, and Spotify has no victory there. Today I will explain to you why Spotify is already in the past, Spotify Hi-Res is no Hi-Res and suggest a better alternative.
Spotify Sound Quality
Like the rest of music streaming services, Spotify uses compressed audio files so that you can stream and download music without pauses or interruptions. Streams are in OGG (Ogg Vorbis) at 96 kbps on mobile, 160 kbps for so-called 'High' quality on mobile and 320 kbps on mobile and computers for Premium subscribers. These digits are enough to refuse to use the service. If you reckon it makes no difference, you can check out the short-film The Distortion of Sound, where Slash, Snoop Dogg, Michael Shinoda, and the rest will explain in detail why compression is no good for 2017. The worst thing about compressed music is that loudness entirely predominates over the quality thus making the sound more ripped and not exactly what was recorded in a studio. Louder doesn't imply better music experience, and right now is the time we accept it.
Fortunately, there's a better alternative. VOX Music Player for Mac & iPhone plays most music formats including Hi-Res ones (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, etc.).
Spotify Hi-Res
There's been lots of hype around Spotify's announcement about the introduction of so-called Hi-Res Premium account. For extra $5-10 (it randomly varies from account to account) you are offered an opportunity to listen to CD quality at 44.1 KHz/16 bit frequency while real Hi-Res starts at 48 KHz/24 bit. Sure, CD quality is better than compressed OGG but is it worth it? I doubt. The only player able to support playback of such quality is VOX Music Player for Mac & iPhone, where you don't think about the quality because you know for sure what you've uploaded.
Spotify Interface
Spotify should make it more comfortable to find songs because if there's at least one misspelled letter, it would be hard to find what you've been looking for. Another annoying feature is that you can't put the songs in any kind of order which makes it really challenging to find any song. If you are listening to an album, and then add songs one by one, what you eventually have is that exact album but with songs in reversed order. Storing music a bit pain in the ass, so you have to think in advance in what order you want them to be on your added music list.
Free Vs Premium Spotify
As an alternative, VOX Music player has its own cloud storage called VOX Music Cloud Storage. It is a limitless cloud which has only one purpose – store all your Hi-Res library thus tackling the problem of Hi-Res file's size. It instantly syncs with you VOX account so you can enjoy the music you have on the cloud. Additional great feature is the option to download songs, which may be useful if you know for certain you won't be having any internet for some time.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Spotify Radio
What Spotify calls Radio is actually just a set of pre-made playlists of different genres. It is also common that these playlists confuse some algorithms and you have EDM music playing on an Alternative channel. Discovering new music narrows down to Browse. It has dozens of playlists and to know how the playlists work there, read the next section.
For people who tend to explore new music with radio, VOX Music Player makes it possible to listen to more than 30,000 stations from all around the world. It appeals to any taste regardless of the genre or country. You will always find new music and be able to explore new genres with no problems.
Spotify Daily Mix
Playlists, as well as radio, focus on assisting people with exploring previously unknown artists. Spotify has millions of pre-created playlists starting from 'The Best of .. [band's name]' to Top-50 of a country you pick. Unfortunately, Your Daily Mix section is based on what you already have on your music list, so there's little chance to actually discover something new, local or underground. Another flaw of Spotify's playlist is that they usually offer most popular tracks of a particular genre or musician. For example, if you regularly listen to some trip-hop, you will most likely find Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack and the rest of the genre bests on your Daily Mix.
VOX Player doesn't provide pre-made playlists since we believe playlists are very personal and private. Musicians usually spend hours in studios creating something unique not to be put in one line with hundreds of different artist just because someone decided they sounded alike.
Conclusion: Spotify + Hi-Res?
Streaming services have made their contribution to humanity, but it's high time we moved into the future, and it's all about Hi-Res music. We strongly encourage you to stop hurting your ears and choose the best alternative to Spotify for your iPhone. VOX Music Player has everything and more and can satisfy the needs of even the most demandable listeners.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Spotify Premium Sound Quality Reviews
Start experiencing the best audio player now.