For the first time in its history, Spotify has decided to also grant users who use the free version the opportunity to choose the songs they prefer without being bound exclusively to “Shuffle” mode, that is, to random reproduction. The novelty represents a significant change because so far the freedom to select a specific song was a prerogative of the Premium subscribers, or those who paid a monthly fee. From today, however, anyone who uses the Spotify app – on Android and iPhone smartphones – will be able to look for a song and start the reproduction immediately. However, some limitations remain: for example, there is a maximum roof of songs that are reproducible “on demand” in an hour, beyond which the random mode is activated, even if the company has not yet declared what the exact number of songs granted is. In this way Spotify tries to offer greater freedom of use without eliminating the differences between the free and premium version, which continues to guarantee exclusive advantages such as the “lossless” audio quality, that is, without compression and comparable to that obtainable with a CD, added a few days ago.
The new advanced functions added in Spotify Free
The new advanced functions added to Spotify Free had long been expected by users and, finally, were also made available to users who are not subscribed to the premium version of the service. We summarize them below.
- Pick & Play: allows you to reproduce any passage from any playlist or album of your liking.
- Search & Play: offers the possibility of looking for a specific song and you can reproduce it from the right.
- Share & Play: it is a function designed to listen to a piece shared by a friend or an artist on social media.
In addition, the application is receiving in parallel other functions designed to make the musical discovery more intuitive. One of the most relevant is the possibility of creating and modifying personalized playlists, adding not only tracks chosen by users but also using automatic suggestions generated by the algorithm. More indicated your musical tastes, the more accurate will become the advice. In addition, users also have the opportunity to customize the cover of each playlist, choosing images, colors, graphic effects and texts.
Another innovation that you will find by updating the app is “Daylist”, a dynamic playlist that varies according to the time of the day or day of the week. If, for example, in the morning you prefer energy sounds and in the evening more relaxing music, the algorithm will build a selection that adapts to these rhythms. You can save a static version to listen to it in the future, so as to maintain a sort of musical diary of your daily moods.
Free users will then have access to consolidated discovery functions such as “Discovery Weekly”, which weekly offers a renewed mix of suggested songs, or “Radar releases”, dedicated to the new artists who are already followed by users. Added to this is the possibility of reading the lyrics of the songs directly inside the app, displayed in real time when listening. This tool, often called “Lyrics”, allows not only to better understand the meaning of a song but also to share portions on social networks or in chats.
The goal for which Spotify has decided to implement these functions must be sought in the need to increase the involvement of its huge base of free users (according to an estimate these are 433 million), already more numerous than the premium (whose amount is only 276 million subscribers), exposing them to a richer and more personalized experience, albeit always supported by advertising. According to what is reported in an article by Techcrunchin fact, that “In recent months, Spotify’s advertising activity has crossed a difficult period»And for this reason, the music streaming platform”It would like advertising revenues to represent 20% of overall revenues, but in June they had grown only to 11%. By adding new free features, Spotify could increase the involvement of its free users’ base, which would therefore be exposed to a greater number of advertisements».
How to have the new functions of Spotify Free
In order to have the new functions of Spotify Free, all you have to do is update the app to the most recent version by going to the updates section of the Play Store or the App Store (depending on the device in use) and touch the update at the Spotify app. Keep in mind that the release of the new functions that we described in the previous lines began yesterday, Monday 15 September, and therefore it could take a few days for the news to be available for everyone.
