Verdict
Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming service for good reason. It leads by example when it comes to music discovery and algorithmic playlists, offers the most comprehensive free tier available, and bolsters its music catalogue with a generous podcast and audiobook library. Spotify has also recently addressed the elephant in the room by finally supporting hi-res audio – even if that still falls technically short of its rivals. Indeed, it isn’t without imperfections – a relatively high price and the absence of spatial audio may put off some – but then neither is the competition.
Free tier now is better than ever
24-bit/44.1kHz hi-res audio support
Podcast and audiobook libraries
Class-leading AI discovery and playlists
Bonus personalisation features
Pricier than Tidal and Apple Music
Interface has become a bit busy
No spatial audio support
Hi-res rivals offer 24-bit/192kHz audio quality
Squirrel Widget
Key Features
Review Price: £10/month
Library
On-demand music streaming of over 100 million songs
Apps
Apps for desktop, web and smartphone
Tiers
Individual, Family, Duo and Student plans
Sound quality
24-bit hi-res audio available
Introduction
The music streaming service landscape has never looked so lush, or so even.
On the face of it, the major players seem to all make the same promise: to give subscribers over 100 million songs, presented on attractive interfaces and in hi-res audio quality, with AI-powered engines ensuring they are never short of recommendations, and extra content beyond music as a bonus – all for just over a tenner a month.
Spotify was once the brightest and most eye-catching flower on that landscape, but in recent years the likes of Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited have blossomed and caught up.
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In 2021, they confidently leapfrogged Spotify for sound quality by offering hi-res audio at no extra cost, leaving a somewhat embarrassing gap in the green streaming giant’s offering.
Now that, as of September 2025, Spotify has finally filled that gap, while strengthening its free tier and ploughing ahead with innovative AI curation, does it regain its position at the front of the pack?
Price
- Free tier available
- Paid-for Premium subscriptions are among the priciest
Spotify has almost 700 million active users, roughly 40 per cent of whom pay for one of the service’s Premium subscriptions (not far off the number of Netflix subscribers out there!)
The rest take advantage of Spotify Free, a completely free tier that has been available since day one and allows anyone with an account to listen to millions of songs, albeit with adverts popping up between songs, playback control limitations and audio quality capped at a lowly 128kbps (web player) or 160kbps (mobile and desktop apps).
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While Deezer and YouTube Music also offer free streaming experiences upon sign-up, Spotify’s is the most comprehensive, not least since a September 2025 update loosened the shuffle-only playback strings to allow users to search for and select specific songs.
You then have the paid-for Premium tier, which does away with adverts, allows songs to be downloaded for offline listening, significantly improves audio quality (to hi-res lossless 24-bit/44.1kHz), and brings Spotify’s Connect casting feature and audiobook listening into the fold.
A standard individual Premium subscription costs £11.99 / $11.99 per month, while Students can take advantage of a heavily reduced monthly fee (£5.99 / $5.99). The more streamers, the merrier your wallet, too; the Duo plan gives two household members Premium accounts for £16.99 / $16.99 per month, and the Family plan extends that to six people for £19.99 / $19.99 per month.
Despite those multi-account discounts, Spotify is generally among the pricier services, alongside Deezer, Amazon Music Unlimited and Qobuz. Apple Music and Tidal charge £1 / $1 less per month for their Individual plans, and their Family plans also undercut Spotify’s.
Platforms
- Near-universal audio, TV and AV device support
Spotify is the most widely supported music streaming service in consumer hardware. Chances are, if your audio or AV device can stream music over the internet, it can do so from Spotify – whether that is via the Spotify app downloadable on that device, Google Cast, Apple AirPlay 2, or Spotify’s own Connect cast technology, which most networked audio devices play ball with.
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The Spotify app is naturally available for iOS (16.1 and above), Android (7.0 and above), Mac (OS X 12.0 and above) and Windows (10 64-bit and above) phones and computers, plus many smartwatches, TVs, gaming consoles and car infotainment systems (including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay). Spotify is also accessible from web browsers.
Catalogue
- 100m+ library is on par with others
- Podcast and audiobook
- No spatial audio
According to Spotify, its catalogue hosts “over 100 million tracks, nearly seven million podcast titles, and 350,000 audiobooks” – and I’m inclined to believe it rather than do a count myself. In other words, there’s more audio content available than you could feasibly listen to in a lifetime.
All of the major streaming services quote similarly extensive ‘100m+’ song libraries, but fewer offer the wealth of audio entertainment outside of that.
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Premium subscribers not only get a generous podcast selection that spans popular comedy, true crime, current affairs, sports and other genre titles, but also 15 hours of audiobook listening time. An extra Audiobooks+ add-on doubles that for £8.99 / $11.99 per month, or you can purchase 10-hour top-ups for £9.99 / $12.99 a pop.
In the ‘Search’ section, you’ll also find educational ‘Courses’ – some short and free, most longer and purchasable – categorised into topics such as ‘Music & Audio’, ‘Film & Photo’, ‘AI & Technology’ and ‘Personal Development’.
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Finally, you have a ‘Videos’ section, which isn’t as well stocked or, personally, as attractive as other aspects of the catalogue, albeit a nice ‘extra’ if you fancy bite-sized pop culture watches after having exhausted your social media feeds.
The only real gap in the catalogue is spatial audio music, immersive audio mixes offered by Amazon Music Unlimited, Tidal and Apple Music, but considering their ‘marmite’, hit-and-miss execution, personally I don’t see the omission as particularly disastrous.
User Experience
- Familiar, colourful, graphics-heavy interface
- Logically categorised and easy to navigate
- Denser than it once was
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In the 12 or so years I have been using and reviewing music streaming services, Spotify has, for most of that period, paved the way for a simple, intuitive, enjoyable user experience.
Today, competitors have somewhat caught up with its sophisticated aesthetic, layout and navigation, but Spotify’s interface remains the familiar, colourful, graphic-heavy and well categorised experience it has always been – even if it has perhaps edged into over-embellishment. Its interface is certainly less clean and significantly denser, borderline ‘shouty’, than it once was, and for that I probably just about prefer the cleaner and seemingly simpler look of Apple Music.
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The Home Screen largely serves you a content-spanning palette of recommendations based on your listening habits, but it’s logically headed up by ‘Music’, ‘Podcast’, ‘Audiobook’ and ‘Courses’ tabs so that you can easily cut through the noise to the specific content type you might want to access.
You have the traditional search bar, of course, shortcuts to ‘Your Library’ (songs you’ve liked, playlists you’ve curated, etc), and a new ‘Create’ button that encourages you to build, collaborate and share playlists and ‘jams’ with others.
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Diving into these content-specific sections does indeed focus the recommendations you’re presented with, although there are still huge amounts of them, the interface very rarely lacking in choice and, consequently, blank space.
Even on the song playback screen, Spotify manages to squeeze in relevant live events, lyrics, related videos, song credits, general artist information and available merchandise. It’s all very thorough.
Curation
- Leading AI-driven playlists and recommendations
- Unique user personalisation and playback control
- Quick-learning AI engine
One area that competitors haven’t quite caught up to Spotify’s level in is music discovery and curation. Sure, AI-driven playlists and recommendations dominate pretty much every major service nowadays, with personalised weekly new releases and continually playing artist stations on nearly every home screen out there.
But Spotify just about edges ahead with its headline ‘Daily Mixes’, ‘Release Radar’ and ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists, as well as its new AI ‘DJ’, to whom you can request types of music – and presumably without judgment. I asked for “90s indie hits” and a male voice acknowledged my wishes and duly obliged, playing Radiohead into Mazzy Star into The Cranberries into The Verve, complete with fade-out transitions.
The ‘AI Playlist’ within the aforementioned ‘Create’ section rides that same wavelength but in playlist form. Type in (rather than say) ‘songs from the noughties New York scene’ and up springs a ‘Noughties NYC Vibes’ playlist correctly featuring LCD Soundsystem, The National, The Strokes, The Walkmen and others. For the aspiring DJs among us are also new personalisation tools that give you control over, for example, song transitions and EQ balance.
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Of course, Spotify also wins points for its ‘Spotify Wrapped’ year-in-review celebration, a pop-culture phenomenon that sends Spotify subscribers into a music-sharing frenzy (and subscribers of other services into a FOMO hole) throughout December.
Having purposely started new accounts recently on multiple streaming services, I’ve found that Spotify has been quicker to catch on to my music preferences and serve up more appropriate suggestions, too.
Sound Quality
- ‘Limited’ to 24-bit/44.1kHz
- Not as insightful as others
Ever since rumours of Spotify introducing higher quality to its catalogue first appeared, and especially since Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited brought hi-res audio to subscribers for no extra cost in 2021, Spotify’s relatively low audio quality has rightfully been called into question.
The company failing to make good on its promise to deliver better audio quality before the sun set on 2021 (or even the following four years!) was one of the most discussed controversies in music streaming. Finally, in September 2025, hi-res audio arrived. Hurrah!
Spotify now offers Premium subscribers ‘Lossless’ streams, which is its umbrella term for songs up to 24-bit/44.1kHz, and the difference between them and the lower-quality 320kbps (‘Very High’) streams (which remains an option for those who want to preserve mobile data) is night and day.
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I conduct A/B testing using my Spotify-playing phone connected to the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2 over-ears, and the Lossless presentation is considerably more open. Filling that bigger and more spacious soundstage is greater clarity, detail and energy, combining for a sound that is much more captivating. You simply hear a much better representation of the recording.
A sense of atmosphere more convincingly shrouds the vocals in St Vincent’s Hell Is Near, for example, while the bassline beneath has more purposeful presence and richness. Over to Max Richter’s Richter: Path 19 (yet frailest), and the piano keys and violin duo not only bask in greater texture but also flow more aqueously together.
A comparison of several songs on Spotify and Tidal revealed the latter to have a richer and more refined delivery – slightly extra clarity too – but admittedly this was more evident (and beneficial) when I upgraded my hardware to the pricier and more sonically transparent Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 (wireless) and Grado SR80x (wired) headphones.
If your audio equipment goes beyond that sophistication, within or approaching the confines of high-end audio, just be aware that Spotify’s streaming limit is 44.1kHz, whereas other hi-res services cap out at the superior 192kHz. Therefore, those other services may well suit you and your system better when it comes to playing streams that are available with sampling rates between 44.1kHz and 192kHz.
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Should you buy it?
If you’re more into headphones and wireless speakers
If you stream music predominantly through wireless headphones, speakers or other Spotify Connect-compatible systems, for which Spotify’s 44.1kHz upper quality limit will more than suffice. You may well side with Spotify for its generous audiobook integration and/or first-rate music discovery, too. Or because you simply don’t want to miss out when the Spotify Wrapped hoo-ha comes around at the end of every year.
You’re in need of higher quality streams
If you have a high-end audio system and want the higher-quality streaming on offer at Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Qobuz. You may also prefer the iOS integration of Apple Music if you are an iPhone user, the discounted subscription of Amazon Music Unlimited if you are an Amazon Prime member, or perhaps the editor curations and hi-res download discounts of Qobuz if you fancy yourself an audiophile.
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Final Thoughts
Spotify may not be the leading choice for sound quality-prioritising audiophiles, Apple loyalists or those who are spatial audio curious, but for most music fans it will hit all the right notes, and then some.
Both its free service and paid-for subscription have never before been so generous, despite the recent price hikes of the latter, and the company’s persistence in leading the way for music curation and user personalisation also shows why it remains a dominant force in the face of increased competition.
How We Test
I tested Spotify over a period of three weeks, using it as my primary music service and comparing its streaming quality to that offered by my usual go-to service, Tidal.
For that crucial sound quality test, I roped in varying qualities of wireless and wired headphones to see at which point sound differences between ‘Very High’ and ‘Lossless’ streams, and between Spotify and Tidal streams, could be detected.
I also used other services during that time, including Amazon Music Unlimited and Apple Music, to see how Spotify compared on both features and user experience fronts.
- Tested for three weeks
- Tested with a range of wireless speakers and headphones
- Compared to other music services
FAQs
What Spotify plan includes audiobooks?
Spotify’s audiobook library can be accessed by subscribers of Premium Individual, Premium Duo or Premium Family plans. They get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month included in their plan, with the option to extend that monthly listening time via 10-hour add-ons (£9.99 / $12.99) or an Audiobook+ bolt-on tier (£8.99 / $11.99). The Premium Student and Spotify Free tier do not include audiobook listening.
Can Spotify identify songs?
If you can’t remember the name of a song you want to play, you can type the lyrics into Spotify’s search bar to bring up matches, or connect your Spotify account with Shazam, which can identify songs by ‘listening’ to them. Spotify doesn’t have Shazam-esque functionality built into its service, however.
Can you download music on Spotify?
Yes, you can download music as long as you’re a Spotify Premium subscriber. This allows you to listen to downloaded music ‘offline’, if you are outside of a mobile/wi-fi network. Simply go into the album or playlist you want to download, and press the downward arrow logo. It will then be available to access in ‘Your Library’.
Full Specs
Spotify Review
UK RRP
£12.99
USA RRP
$11.99
Manufacturer
Spotify
Release Date
2025
Catalogue Size
100 million
Offline Streaming
Yes
Audio Formats
Org Vorbis, AAC, Lossless
Resolution support
24-bit/96Hz lossless
Supported devices
iOS (16.1 and above), Android (7.0 and above), Mac (OS X 12.0 and above), Windows (10 64-bit and above) phones and computers, smartwatches, TVs, gaming consoles, car infotainment systems (including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay), web browsers.
Ad-free tier
Yes
Video
Yes
