24 The Arts Issue 12 July 2024 The RGS Gazette Should Spotify Premium Be Free? Jai Singh (Year 10) queries if the popular platform should be free to use Music. Regardless of genre, it's something that most – if not all – of us listen to. Despite this, so many music streaming apps, like Spotify, make you waste so much money for only basic, quality of life features! Should your music really be constantly interrupted by pestering adverts? Should you really only be allowed a certain number of skips, which, when used up, means you must listen to whatever the next song is? Should you really have to pay for these features? Well, what if I told you that you didn't? Spotify is the most popular streaming service, both in Europe and worldwide. Nevertheless, even those who have Spotify Premium may not know what all the features that they offer are, so here is the brief rundown. For starters, Spotify Premium offers a higher audio quality, which immediately raises some questions. Why should people who pay be the only ones who deserve a satisfactory level of music quality? Why would people need to pay to experience better music on a service that revolves around listening to music? Furthermore, Spotify allows premium subscribers to listen to songs in any order with the “shuffle” feature. Why would you want to listen to an album over… and over… and over again in the same order? In addition, Spotify offers some more features for Premium users, such as adfree listening, being able to download songs to listen to them offline, unlimited replays and being able to listen to the same music as friends in realtime, as well as others. I'm sure it would have occurred to you at some point that all of these features seem like things that should be included in the free package, or that should be at least offered for cheaper than £11.99 a month. After all, many people wouldn’t be able to afford that on a regular basis. Yet, hopefully it’s fairly obvious that we can't just get rid of Spotify Premium, as the company has to make money somehow. This is where one unexpected option could come in – audiobooks. During the pandemic, Spotify added audiobooks to keep premium subscribers entertained,
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