Spotify's Free Music Streaming Tier Gets A Major Upgrade, Is It Still Worth Paying?

Spotify is upgrading its services— just after finally adding lossless streaming for Premium users earlier this month, thankfully without a price bump, they're also removing a key shackle from Spotify's free tier. Now, Spotify's free users can also listen to playlists and albums in their intended order, and pick-and-choose individual songs without being forced to shuffle through songs they don't like. Skips are still limited and there are, of course, still advertisements, but now free tier users will be able to curate their listening experience to about the same extent as Premium users, barring the occasional ad break.

To some, though, this does beg a few questions. Why would Spotify make this major change to its model after so long, and is it still worth paying for Spotify Premium when its biggest selling point is now available to Free users?

Regarding whether or not Premium is still worth the asking price, I'd reckon that it is— particularly if you have a high-end set of headphones or speakers and want to make use of lossless music streaming. Spotify's lossless audio isn't as high-fidelity as options from some other lossless streaming services, but it's still a marked improvement over all the previous sound quality options, and bundled into a music player with arguably the best social service integration of them all.

The introduction of lossless audio to Premium is also a likely factor to why Spotify finally decided to let free tier users actually pick what they want to listen to, limiting ad revenue and track plays to what users are actually picking. We wouldn't be surprised if this move actually benefits Spotify's bottom line.

In face of Spotify's long-time problem with pirates, though, it's nice to see it start treating its free users a little better. And let's be realistic: with YouTube and YouTube Music existing for as long as they have, it's about time Spotify's free tier users got to actually listen to music without forced shuffling. Now, Spotify's  free users can actually engage with the platform and its playlist sharing features more seamlessly, and we reckon a carrot is better than a stick when you're trying to encourage customer loyalty.

Image Credit: Spotify