
No more time limits on Spotify - mrhicks
http://news.spotify.com/uk/2014/01/15/no-more-time-limits-on-spotify-freeyourmusic/
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marban
I’m a regular subscriber but I’m getting more and more confused about what I’m
actually paying for. Is it really 'just' about shuffle vs. selective play at
this point?

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louhike
As said in another comment, you get a better audio quality and the avaibility
to store music offline (I found it quite useful on my mobile phone). Of
course, the quality will only matter to some people.

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k-mcgrady
>> "As said in another comment, you get a better audio quality and the
avaibility to store music offline (I found it quite useful on my mobile
phone). Of course, the quality will only matter to some people."

As you say the quality thing will only matter to some people. The ability to
store music offline is also becoming a less important feature as mobile
networks improve. I have to admit I still use it quite often but looking ahead
a few years Spotify really needs to differentiate their premium product more.

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Dewie
> The ability to store music offline is also becoming a less important feature
> as mobile networks improve.

I only need it when I don't have wifi, but I think I'm going to start using
mp3 players again because managing the whole download/undownload thing in
Android Spotify is tedious and the overall useability of the app is crap.

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pc86
I have LTE in my area so I may be an exception, but I was listening to Spotify
in my car for over an hour yesterday without any WiFi connectivity.

The app itself is sometimes a pain (particularly via the controls on my car
steering wheel...), like the inability to change whether I've liked or
disliked a song.

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Dewie
> I have LTE in my area so I may be an exception, but I was listening to
> Spotify in my car for over an hour yesterday without any WiFi connectivity.

I have a 50MB limit. And the stupid app doesn't let me differentiate between
playing offline and playing only when I have wifi, so if wifi is turned on on
my mobile and also the 3G (which I might have on because I want to browse some
websites when I'm outside my home or going somewhere), and the wifi doesn't
work for some reason, Spotify will happily leech off my data plan with me
being none the wiser.

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circa
I really cannot stand the UI in Spotify. Also, making albums "playlists" just
to listen to them is incredibly annoying. Maybe that is gone now but I have
been a very happy Rdio subscriber for over a year now. I am really excited for
Beatsmusic.com to launch on the 21st as well.

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ajtaylor
I agree with the album playlists issue. My account has a _ton_ of playlists
for exactly this reason. That said, the browse and discovery screens have
found quite a bit of interesting music for me so I'd call it a wash at this
point.

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Dewie
Yeah, I either have to make playlists or search for the things I want each
time. So I end up with a ton of playlists, with no way of searching or
filtering them.

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krelian
As someone who wants Spotify to succeed I don't know if the recent changes are
a good sign or not as to how the company is doing.

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odonnellryan
I feel good: I don't think they'd be able to make certain actions without some
bargaining power.

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k-mcgrady
I don't think they had to bargain with labels for this. They previously had
unlimited free streaming - I think they chose to limit it to see if it would
increase subscriptions. It's possible they were forced to do it by the labels
but personally I don't think that was the case (although I have no evidence).

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nettletea
They probably just observered listening habits. I'd fire up Spotify, listen to
it for a day or two, then hit the limit (that I always seem to forget exists).
And just switch it off for another month or so. Limits or adverts would suit
me. I hate, hate, hate the ads, and soon tire of the free service. My laptop's
sound is pretty horrid that it's not worth me buying the subscription, but
Spotify is still useful as a sampler.

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krelian
Unless I'm misunderstanding something you're actually an example for why this
would be a bad business decision for them. Even though you use the service a
lot (max your limit in two days) and hate the ads, you're still not willing to
pay it. Now with limits removed you will be using more of their resources for
nothing in return.

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nettletea
I will listen more now, but that's probably a good thing. I barely used it in
the past because of the limit (no idea what it was, but I'd hit it). As I said
if I had a higher quality audio device to listen to songs on, that could
handle Spotify, I'd most likely buy a subscription.

I don't know why they don't just randomly make tracks unavailable for free
accounts. Or they could remove two or more songs from each album. I didn't
even mind the 5 plays of a song limit. The adverts are pretty annoying, but I
take them on the chin in exchange for the music.

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Renaud
I just noticed that there is a huge variation on the premium price depending
on where you live:

    
    
      US: USD 9.99
      UK: GBP 9.99, that's about USD 16.30
      FR: EUR 9.99, that's about USD 13.60
      HK: HKD 48,   that's about USD  6.20
    

I'm in Hong Kong and I recently subscribed to premium. I can see that some
songs are not available (about 5% seem greyed out but most of what I want to
listen to is accessible), but I can't believe that I'm paying nearly 3x less
than the UK!

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nkvoll
Norway pays around $16.09 monthly and still has around the same amount of
songs that are unavailable as well. It's getting better -- a year or so ago
around 7-8% of the top 100 everywhere were unavailable to us. Still cost the
same.

Same story with Netflix. Costs more here than in the US, but the content is
waaay worse. It's often 2-3 years behind the original airing of the episodes
in US, so it's not in any way useful to stay current.

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workhere-io
_Same story with Netflix. Costs more here than in the US, but the content is
waaay worse._

Use the US version of Netflix instead. Try
[https://unlocator.com](https://unlocator.com) (currently free because it's in
beta - works like a charm) or [http://unotelly.com/](http://unotelly.com/).

Here in Denmark it's completely legal to use the US Netflix. I don't know
about Norwegian laws, though.

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vinceguidry
I love how on their "Channels unblocked page" it claims to support "all the
major streaming services."

What's not on the list? Youtube.

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RossM
This is starting to feel a bit like a race to the bottom. There's not a lot
left to charge for - offline storage, higher quality and ad-free playback.
Offline storage is becoming redundant with an increasing WiFi presence, and
audio quality isn't a huge draw (I hear enough people playing music through
their phone speakers).

Rdio already offers ad-free playback on the web (6 months) - it's going to put
these services in a tricky situation if one of them starts offering ad-free
everywhere.

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tobiasSoftware
I think they are mainly charging for ad free playback. I've been putting up
with the ads and they tend to be very annoying. There was one for a while
where they would outright yell "Trojan Man" and talk about how thin and
pleasureable it was while making gasping noises. Another would yell "Ad-vanced
Auto Parts" at you. They are also smart enough that they pause when you mute
the volume in an attempt to force you to listen to them (I have headphones so
I just put the headphones down).

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lowglow
I don't pay for much online. But, Rdio has my money and I probably won't
switch to Spotify. When I first joined spotify they scanned and left my entire
itunes library corrupt -- it was a pain to say the least.

I see this as a swan song and it's simply unsustainable in real products, and
is probably just a ploy to get me lulled into accepting their experience --
until it's too late.

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madsushi
The killer feature of Spotify over Rdio is the ability to sync and integrate
your personal music collection. With Spotify, I can make playlists that
combine their material with my own MP3s, and it all syncs seamlessly to my
phone. Rdio locks you into their collection, while Spotify letse combine their
collection with mine.

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lowglow
I guess that's great. With Rdio I've just stopped collecting music. I'll check
out the occasional independen" artist once in a while, but usually they'll be
up on Rdio in no time.

I think Rdio was a game changer for me. It's the first time I've spent real
money on a subscription for anything.

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Taurenking
WoW, I'm an avid soundcloud user, and this may be the right time to make an
account on Spotify (since it also has beautiful smartphone apps, unlike
soundcloud)

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grudolf
Free for everyone, everywhere, except in my country. Deezer seems happy with
my money.

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patrickaljord
Do you realize that Spotify would be happy with your money if they had the
licenses from the Majors? It's not up to them. Same for Deezer by the way,
it's not available either in tons of countries such as Peru where I used to
live.

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Grue3
How about no country limits? Eh?

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paddyoloughlin
I think we can all agree that Country music should always be subject to the
strictest of limits.

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ps4fanboy
I paid for mobile ($12) instead of standard ($5) now that mobile is available
to everyone not sure why I am not just paying $5, but they removed that plan
now.

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timpattinson
Premium allows 320kbps streaming and offline storage.

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ps4fanboy
I had to disable offline storage, spotify maxes out my 50mbps uploads link if
i use it (p2p crap), with no option in the app to disable that.

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jyrki
Mobile clients don't do P2P, due to battery and bandwith concerns

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ps4fanboy
The desktop client is what I am talking about, it will try and use as much
upload bandwidth as you have if you put popular tracks in offline playlists.

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mzl
AFAIK, the Spotify desktop app throttles the amount of upload so that it
shouldn't disturb the user (or at least, it used to do that). If it used up
all my upload bandwidth, I would consider that a bug and file a report.

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ps4fanboy
I did, they dicked me around and suggested to disable offline playlists or
reduce my cache size to fix it.

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k-mcgrady
Seems like a reaction to the launch of Beats Music next week. Beats won't have
a free service so Spotify seems to bolstering there's so that free customers
have less of a reason to switch and they have more time to try to convert them
to paying subscribers.

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Goopplesoft
What does Beats have over Spotify? I just checked out the site and it seemed
they're almost identical. Only interesting thing I found is:

>Exclusively with AT&T, you can get the Beats Music Family Plan with 5
accounts across 10 devices for $14.99/month.

Although I'm fine with paying $10/person using Spotify, that is a bargain...

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k-mcgrady
Let's face it, all these services are pretty much the same. I've used Rdio,
Spotify and Google Play All Access. They all have the same music and most of
the same features - just with different UI's.

What Beats has over Spotify is marketing. This is the company that convinced a
lot of people to spend a lot of $$$ on headphones. I've already read about
Superbowl spots they have ready as well as promotion on major talk shows. If
they can convince people to spend hundreds of $ on headphones surely they can
convince them to spend $10 per month on music to listen to through those
headphones. It's also a great opportunity for a tie-in (buy the headphones and
get the music service half price for 12 months). They also have the backing of
quite a few major artists some of whom (Trent Reznor for example) supposedly
worked on the project.

The thing Spotify has over Beats is their free service. By making that even
better they are improving their biggest differentiator over their new
competitor.

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dysoco
Hm... I've been using Grooveshark because Spotify wasn't aviable on my
country, however it seems to be now... why would I switch to Spotify?

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techtalsky
Zero dollars flow to music license holders via Grooveshark. It operates in a
legal grey area. Also the file metadata is set up by uploaders and is a lower
quality than Spotify in most cases. I don't know what the Grooveshark
Android/iPhone client is like, but Spotify's is decent.

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hokkos
As a paying customer I am fed up to pay for the free leechers and their war
for customers.

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TeMPOraL
:(. And that's why we can't have nice things.

(also a paying customer, and I'm very happy if things improve for free users
while not degrading the service I pay for)

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highlander
Interesting. Does anyone know whether this applies to Spotify on Sonos?

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mrcarrot
Doesn't using Spotify on Sonos require a premium account?

If not, I'm not sure why I'm paying any more.

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iriche
That's really the only thing I wonder too now, else I will cancel directly too

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danielhonigman
I'd still pay for Rdio before Spotify. Just my two cents.

