5 Reasons Why Choosing Spotify Is A Terrible Idea
Run as a privately held company, Spotify provides users a six-month free trial period. This trial period allows users to access standard features like browsing for music through artist name, song name, album, genre, record label, or playlist. It’s not really bad but you may want to consider the following disadvantages before deciding to make Spotify your online radio of choice.
1. The ads are annoying.
Spotify employs visual and radio-style advertising. Bear in mind that these ads are already present during the six-month trial period that is purported to be a free offering. These ads can ruin the mood as you listen to your favorite music. Of course, you can get rid of these ads by paying but how are you supposed to be enticed to pay when you are already bothered by the ads during the trial period?
2. It isn’t an unlimited free service.
There are many free options for online music so why would you still want to spend money just to listen to songs you can’t own. You can tune in to the web streaming of various radio stations, for example, or go to services like Jango Radio for free online music. Among commercial online music streaming services, Spotify does not even have the most attractive subscription packages.
Compared to Pandora, for instance, Spotify’s mobile ad-free service is thrice more expensive at $9.99 per month. There is an option to use Spotify for free (with ads) but it becomes limited to 10 hours per month or 2.5 hours per week after the six-month free trial period.
3. They are accused of not properly compensating artists.
If you can spend money for Spotify, it’s probably better spending your money buying your favorite songs to support your favorite artists. Spotify has been accused of not properly compensating the artists whose music are being played on Spotify. A report by Helienne Lindvall on The Guardian mentions a number of criticisms on the artist payment scheme of Spotify. If you really have the money to spare, better spend it buying the records of the artists you like.
According to some sources, an artist has to be streamed more than 4 million times every month just to be paid around $1,160 in a month, a minimum wage rate. Many are blaming Spotify’s less-than-desirable business model for this.
4. Subscriptions are limited to those who have PayPal accounts or credit or debit cards.
So what if you finally decided to spend your money for Spotify but you are still a student and you don’t have a credit card? You could get yourself a PayPal account but you couldn’t lift the limitations off because you don’t have a credit card. This is a major hurdle in using Spotify. Many young music lovers could be interested in what it has to offer but couldn’t be qualified to pay for the subscription.
5. There’s a feature that allows users to search for specific songs but you may get disappointed not finding the song you are looking for.
This could be because the artist opted not to be available on the search function or because of label restrictions in certain regions. Some are also complaining that the songs are available in Spotify but they still need to use the “Advanced Search” function to find them.
The bottom line here is that there are better online radio or music streaming services you can find. Spotify may be good but it is certainly not the best or among the better ones. You can try the free trial period and decide for yourself, though.
Author’s Bio:
Jimmy R is a music enthusiast who also happens to be an avid Internet user. He’s a HUGE fan of Jango Radio and loves to write about anything and everything under the sun.
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