Summary
- Spotify’s free tier is losing features like lyrics, making it less appealing for non-paying users.
- The service limits skips, hides lyrics, and forces shuffled playback for free-tier users.
- Users could consider alternatives like YouTube Music or Tidal for missing features and better audio quality, respectively.
Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming apps on Android, and like most of its competitors, it operates on a freemium model where users can create an account and get started for free, but most conveniences like sequential playback and an ad-free experience are paywalled. Spotify Premium makes for a great subscription, but the latest feature Spotify has withdrawn from free-tier users makes ad-supported usage even more painful.
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Spotify’s free tier offers great value if you’re trying to discover new music in mediocre quality without spending a dime. However, several users on Reddit recently noticed the streaming service has started hiding the lyrics unless you cough up the money for a premium subscription (via Android Authority). This means you won’t be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app. Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user’s limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time.
Spotify’s free tier is becoming like that of Apple Music – nonexistent
Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn’t willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service’s appeal.
Non-premium users have to put up with unskippable ads and the lack of lyrics. They are also afforded just six track sips per hour, and the service doesn’t let users pick the playback order either. If you swear by Spotify, so many missing features could encourage users to pay up for premium, but it also makes a strong case for jumping ship and using something like YouTube Music or Tidal instead — the former has the conveniences we’d like, and the latter is known for a vast library of lossless tracks.
Worryingly, Spotify remains focused on adding AI features and pivoting towards knowledge dispersal instead of heeding users’ long-standing pleas to add support for a bit-perfect lossless streaming quality option.
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