Is Spotify Premium Worth It? 4 Reasons Why You Should Sign Up

Spotify Premium is a monthly paid subscription to the Spotify music streaming service that unlocks several perks not available to free users. This guide will break down the main pros and cons of signing up for Spotify Premium and help you decide whether such an upgrade is right for you.

What Is Spotify Premium?

Spotify is a popular service that lets users stream music, Spotify podcasts, and audiobooks either from its web player or via its numerous official apps on smartphones, tablets, video game consoles, and cars.

Spotify Premium is an optional, paid subscription for that removes most ads, improves the quality of the audio, unlocks 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, and enables music downloads for offline listening.

Who Should Get Spotify Premium

Premium can enhance your Spotify experience massively. You may want to upgrade to Spotify Premium if you:

• Want to download music for listening while offline.
• Don't like hearing audio ads on Spotify music.
• Listen to at least one or two audiobooks per month.
• Like to listen to music in the best possible audio quality.

Who Shouldn’t Get Spotify Premium

While Spotify Premium does offer a lot of benefits, it’s not for everyone. You may want to give a Premium subscription a pass if you:

• Don’t mind listening to ads between songs.
• Prefer to purchase audiobooks outright.
• Have a consistent internet connection in most situations.
• Don’t care too much about song and podcast audio quality.

Many people consider Spotify Premium a must-have service due to its improved audio, removal of most ads, and the ability to download music and sample 15 hours of audiobooks per month.

However, there are also users who don’t mind the ads, can’t really tell the difference between the different audio qualities, and have no interest in audiobooks. Spotify Premium isn’t right for everyone.

Why You Should Buy Spotify Premium

Spotify Premium improves the Spotify experience quite a bit by removing ads and improving audio quality, among other perks. Here are some of the main reasons why you may want to upgrade to Spotify Premium. 

You Want an Ad-Free Spotify Experience

Audio ads playing between every other song on Spotify can be annoying when just listening to music by yourself, but it’s something that absolutely needs to be dealt with if you use Spotify to play music at an event or in a work environment.

You’ll definitely want to remove ads from Spotify if you’re having some friends over or throwing a party. Nothing kills the vibe more than insurance ads playing over a speaker system.

You Want Songs to Sound Their Best

When using Spotify for free, your music playback quality is limited to 160 kilobits per second (kbit/s). This bitrate is usually fine for most people, especially if you’re just listening from your smartphone or an old speaker.

However, Spotify Premium unlocks the higher 320kbit/s option, which is noticeably deeper and more vibrant when using high-quality speaker systems or headphones. Audiophiles, in particular, will definitely be able to hear the improvement.

You Go Through a Lot of Audiobooks

Buying an audiobook on Spotify and other platforms usually costs $20 or more. Spotify Premium costs about half of that per month and includes 15 hours of audiobook content on the Spotify platform.

Even if you listen to just one audiobook every month, Spotify Premium would already pay for itself. With 15 hours available, though, you may be able to listen to two or even three shorter ones.

You Prefer to Download Songs

Spotify Premium lets you download songs to your device so that you can listen to them while offline. This feature is incredibly useful if you travel a lot and frequently find yourself without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection to stream music from.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Spotify Premium

Spotify Premium has a lot of cool features, but would you actually use them if you had them? Spotify Premium may not be for you if you relate to one or more of the following.

You Always Have a Strong Internet Connection

The reality is, if you work from home or tend to travel in central areas, you’ll likely have little need for downloading music from Spotify; you’ll always have a solid internet connection to stream with. Increasingly, more hotels and airlines are adding free Wi-Fi, so even when you’re going someplace new, it’s unlikely you’ll be offline for long.

You Don’t Have an Ear for Music

Much like tasting the nuances of different wines, some people can’t hear the subtle differences in the various audio quality settings or simply don’t find the whole debate about audio fidelity to be all that interesting. The normal audio settings available with the free version of Spotify may be all you need.

You Don’t Mind Listening to Ads

While a lot of people demand an ad-free Spotify music experience, some don’t mind the ads at all. In fact, we’ve met some people who actually enjoy the ads that Spotify places in between songs as it reminds them of the classic radio experience.

You’re Not a Fan of Audiobooks

Maybe you prefer physical paper books, or perhaps you’re not a fan of reading books at all. Either way, it’s unlikely that the monthly 15-hour audiobook listening time perk gifted to Spotify Premium subscribers will appeal to you very much.

Remember, you can always buy an audiobook to listen to if the mood ever strikes you. Spotify also isn’t the only audiobook solution out there, either.

Is Spotify Premium Duo Worth It?

The Spotify Premium Duo plan can be a good idea if you have two people who live in the same house who both want their own separate Spotify accounts with the Premium perks and want to save money.

Spotify Premium Duo costs a bit more per month than the individual plan, but it's cheaper than buying two of them separately. And both people get almost all of the Premium benefits.

Note, however, that while both accounts under the Premium Duo plan can use almost all of the Premium perks, only one of the accounts can use the 15-hour audiobook listening benefit. 

Is Spotify Premium Family Worth It?

Spotify Premium Family costs slightly more than Duo, but it covers up to six Spotify accounts. These can be either regular Premium accounts or Spotify Kids accounts with age restrictions on content. As with Premium Duo, only one account in the Premium Family plan has access to the audiobook perk.

Price-wise, Premium Family is worth it if you have at least three accounts that you want to give Premium benefits to. You might also the ability to limit what kind of songs and podcasts a junior listener can consume with the Spotify Kids feature.

Is Spotify Premium Student Worth It?

Spotify Premium Student is great value for money as it includes all of the primary Premium benefits plus a Hulu subscription for about half the price of an individual plan. Note that you will need to verify that you’re a student before you can access your Spotify Premium Student account’s perks.