Is Spotify free?

Spotify is sort of free. It is what is commonly referred to as a “freemium” service. This means that you don’t have to pay any money to sign up for the service or use it. However, the service has several features that are locked unless you purchase and maintain a paid subscription, known as Spotify Premium.

Spotify Features: Spotify offers a range of features that suit all users, but they don’t all come for free. Here’s what you get. Spotify Free: Unlimited streaming for 6 months; More than 35 million tracks; Social networking tools built-in; Track skips; Ad-supported; No offline mode; Want more? Spotify Plus: The premium version offers much more. Spotify has two versions; one is the standard free version, which lets you stream any song but comes with ads and a set of restrictions that can be removed in the premium version of Spotify. In this post, you will find out how to download Spotify Premium APK for free.

For instance, if you only have the free version of Spotify:

  • You will see advertisements in the Spotify application, and hear them between songs.

  • You can only skip songs a certain number of times over a certain length of time.

  • You cannot download songs to be able to listen to them when not connected to the Internet.

  • You will not be able to customize the order in which certain songs play (on a mobile device).

  • Your audio quality will be somewhat limited.

How much does Spotify Premium cost?

Spotify Premium costs $9.99 per month (plus tax) in both the United States and Canada, charged at the beginning of each month. If you cancel your subscription in the middle of the month, you will not get a refund for your fee for that month, but you will avoid paying more fees until you renew your subscription.

Are there ways to get discounts for Spotify?

Absolutely! Though Spotify no longer offers 30-day (or 60-day) free trials, it does offer users a 3-month trial of Spotify Premium for a 99₵ flat fee. It only works if you’ve never used Spotify Premium before, though, either through a free trial or some other promotion. We’ll show you how to get it at the end of this tutorial.

(NOTE: after the time period for this trial has expired, if you haven’t cancelled your subscription, you will continue at the usual monthly rate of $9.99 plus tax.)

There are also other discounts that you can get. For instance, with the Spotify Family promotion, you can have up to 5 family members (yourself plus four others) use the same paid subscription. Instructions for how to set it up can be found at this link.

You can also get 50% off your subscription if you are a student at an American college. We’ll tell you more in our Spotify Student Discount article.

How to get a Spotify (almost) free trial

  1. Go to www.spotify.com in your web browser. In the top-right corner, click Upgrade.

  2. On the next screen, click Get 3 Months for 99₵.

  3. You’ll be prompted to log into Spotify. If you don’t have an account yet, visit our How to Sign Up for Spotify tutorial to learn how to make one. Otherwise, just enter your user name and password for Spotify, and click Log In.

  4. On the next screen, click in the highlighted boxes and type in or select your credit card number, the month and year that your credit card expires, your credit card’s security code (move your mouse cursor over the “?” to learn where to find this number), and your mailing code. Then click the box labelled “I’m Not a Robot” and complete the activity that appears.

    You can also click PayPal to pay for your subscription with a PayPal account, if you have one.

  5. When you’ve filled in all of your information, scroll down and click Start Premium.

You will receive a confirmation email of your order. Enjoy Spotify Premium! Also, if you ever want to cancel your subscription to Spotify Premium, our How to Delete Your Spotify Account tutorial will show you how to do so.

More Great Related Articles

Effective as of January 1, 2020

Spotify

1 Introduction
2 About this Policy
3 Your rights and your preferences: Giving you choice and control
4 Personal data we collect from you
5 What we use your personal data for
6 Sharing your personal data
7 Data retention and deletion
8 Transfer to other countries
9 Links
10 Keeping your personal data safe
11 Children
12 Changes to this Policy
13 How to contact us

1. Introduction

Thanks for choosing Spotify!

At Spotify, we want to give you the best possible experience to ensure that you enjoy our service. To do this we need to understand your streaming habits so we can deliver an exceptional and personalized service specifically for you. Your privacy and the security of your personal data is, and will always be, enormously important to us. So, we want to transparently explain how and why we gather, store, share and use your personal data - as well as outline the controls and choices you have around when and how you choose to share your personal data.

That is our objective, and this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) will explain exactly what we mean in further detail below.

2. About this Policy

This Policy sets out the essential details relating to your personal data relationship with Spotify USA Inc. The Policy applies to all Spotify services and any associated services (referred to as the ‘Spotify Service’). The terms governing your use of the Spotify Service are defined in our Terms and Conditions of Use (the “Terms and Conditions of Use”).

From time to time, we may develop new or offer additional services. If the introduction of these new or additional services results in any material change to the way we collect or process your personal data we will provide you with more information or additional terms or policies. Unless stated otherwise when we introduce these new or additional services, they will be subject to this Policy.

The aim of this Policy is to:

  1. Ensure that you understand what personal data we collect about you, the reasons why we collect and use it, and who we share it with;
  2. Explain the way we use the personal data that you share with us in order to give you a great experience when you are using the Spotify Service; and
  3. Explain your rights and choices in relation to the personal data we collect and process about you and how we will protect your privacy.

We hope this helps you to understand our privacy commitments to you. For further clarification of the terms used in this Policy please visit our Privacy Center on spotify.com. For information on how to contact us if you ever have any questions or concerns, please see Section 13 ‘How to contact us’ below. Alternatively, if you do not agree with the content of this Policy, then please remember it is your choice whether you want to use the Spotify Service.

3. Your rights and your preferences: Giving you choice and control

The General Data Protection Regulation or 'GDPR' gives certain rights to individuals in relation to their personal data. Accordingly, we are happy to offer transparency and access controls to help users take advantage of those rights. As available and except as limited under applicable law, the rights afforded to individuals are:

  • Right of access - the right to be informed of, and request access to, the personal data we process about you;
  • Right to rectification - the right to request that we amend or update your personal data where it is inaccurate or incomplete;
  • Right to erasure - the right to request that we delete your personal data;
  • Right to restrict - the right to request that we temporarily or permanently stop processing all or some of your personal data;
  • Right to object -
    • the right, at any time, to object to us processing your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation;
    • the right to object to your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes;
  • Right to data portability - the right to request a copy of your personal data in electronic format and the right to transmit that personal data for use in another party’s service; and
  • Right not to be subject to automated decision-making - the right to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated decision making, including profiling, where the decision would have a legal effect on you or produce a similarly significant effect.

In order to enable you to learn more about these rights, exercise these rights with ease, and record your preferences in relation to how Spotify uses your personal data, we provide the following resources:

  • Privacy Settings (accessed via your account page) - allows you to exercise choices about the processing of certain personal data, and an automated ‘Download your data’ function to download basic account and usage information.

  • Privacy Center - provides a convenient central location where you can find more information about how Spotify uses your personal data, your rights in relation to your personal data, and how to exercise those rights.

  • Notification Settings (accessed via your account page) - allows you to choose which marketing communications you receive from Spotify. You may toggle these settings to opt in or out of receiving different types of email and push notifications. Please note that email marketing messages from Spotify include an opt-out mechanism within the message itself (e.g. an unsubscribe link in the emails we send to you). Clicking on the link in an email will opt you out of further messages of that category (e.g. Artist Updates). You can use the Notification Settings page to exercise choices about all categories of email and push marketing communication.

  • Cookies Policy - provides more information on how we use cookies, including for interest-based advertising. You will also find information about how you can manage your cookie preferences and opt-out of certain types of tracking; and

  • Customer Support resources - We have several pages on our customer support site which provide further guidance about data protection questions. A key source of information is the Data Rights and Privacy Settings article which includes answers to “frequently asked questions” about personal data processing in the Spotify Service.

If you have any questions about your privacy, your rights, or how to exercise them, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the ‘Contact Us’ form on the Privacy Center. If you have concerns around our processing of your personal data, we hope you will continue to work with us to resolve them. However, you can also contact and have the right to lodge a complaint with the Swedish Data Protection Authority (Datainspektionen) or your local Data Protection Authority.

Additional privacy rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) can be found in our supplemental policy “Additional California Privacy Disclosures”, which contains supplemental disclosures relating to the processing of your personal data.

4. Personal data we collect from you

We have set out in the tables below the categories of personal data we collect and use about you and how we collect it:

Does The Free Spotify Use Data

The table below describes personal data collected when you sign up for the Spotify Service:

Does Spotify Use Phone Data

Categories of personal dataDescription of category
User DataThis is the personal data that is provided by you or collected by us to enable you to sign up for and use the Spotify Service. Depending on the type of Spotify Service plan you sign up for, this may include your username, email address, phone number, birth date, gender, street address, and country.
Some of the personal data we will ask you to provide is required in order to create your account. You also have the option to provide us with additional personal data in order to make your account more personalized.
The exact personal data we will collect depends on the type of Spotify Service plan you sign up for, how you create an account, and whether you use third party services (such as Facebook) to sign up and use the Spotify Service. If you use a third party service to create an account, we will receive personal data via that third party service but only when you have consented to that third party service sharing your personal data with us. Please note that the available plans and sign-up options may differ by country.