Digital music has undergone a lot of changes in recent years, people no longer want to pay for each song and album, where the services that distribute music by subscription look much more attractive. This article will focus on one of these services, on the creation from Stockholm - Spotify. What is this program, how to use it and why is it needed? The basic principles of working with Spotify and circumvention of regional restrictions will be discussed in the article.
Spotify - what is it?
Spotify is a Swedish streaming music service that provides free access to a multi-million dollar music collection. This startup was founded in 2006 by the founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lawrence. Spotify is now the largest and most popular streaming audio service of all, storing more than 35 million tracks in its database, offering personalized recommendations and cross-platform listening clients. The project also has a huge user base of more than 100 million people, about 40 of them pay premium services every month.
The service played an important role in the fight against piracy, providing users around the world with quick and convenient access to their favorite music. Supports artists (including beginners). Develops algorithms for finding suitable compositions. Developers are actively promoting their experiment in the media, and are working with music labels and music app developers. Unfortunately, CIS residents are not familiar with Spotify. What kind of miracle is this, they are not given to know due to a number of restrictions introduced by copyright holders.
Interface and main functions
Spotify is available to users in three modes:
- Spotify Web Player.
- Spotify Desktop.
- Spotify Mobile.
The first option is available without installing additional programs at www. spotify.com . The second and third are presented on the official website as full-fledged applications.
The program interface is divided into several parts, which are described in the table below.
Overview | | |
| Top charts | This section contains a list of the most popular songs in different countries. |
| Recommendations (Discover) | This section is formed based on user preferences. Albums are added to it, which, according to the service, should please the user |
| New Releases | All music news appear here, but first of all, the album and singles of artists that the user subscribed to |
Radio | | Radio stations are distributed by genre, mood, time period and so on. You can create your own stations based on artists and individual compositions |
My music | | |
| Tracks | Here are all the songs that have been added to the user's library |
| Albums | Here the media library is organized into albums |
| Performers | Here is a list of artists that the user is following. |
| Local files | This is where the audio files uploaded by the user are stored. |
Playlists | | All playlists, including user-created ones, are located here. |
Mobile applications
Like any modern digital product, Spotify has smartphone apps. They carry the same functionality, but carry a number of restrictions in free mode, such as:
- increased amount of advertising;
- the ability to listen to tracks only in random order;
- lack of the ability to save tracks to the deviceβs memory.
These and other restrictions can be removed only by signing up for a premium account.
The mobile client can be downloaded in the application stores of each platform, including the Play Market and AppStore (available only in regions where the service is fully operational).
Spotify in Russia
As mentioned above, this service is not available in the territory of the Russian Federation, therefore, to use the service, you will have to resort to replacing the country with a VPN. To do this, you need to install any VPN client, such as, for example, TunnelBear (distributed absolutely free). TunnelBear has a traffic limit of 500 megabytes, but this is enough for initial registration. After registering, Spotify Web Player and an application for computers will immediately become available to the user. Every 14 days, Spotify will check the location of the listener, and if he expires outside the country of registration, access to music will be limited. This restriction can be removed by restarting the VPN.
How to pay Premium in Russia
To remove absolutely all the restrictions and fully enjoy the work of the service, you need to purchase a premium account. The cost of paid Spotify services varies from country to country, but averages $ 7 per month. To pay for the service in Russia, you need to have an electronic PayPal wallet or choose Latvia as the country of registration, as this is the only region where Spotify accepts Russian bank cards.
Another option is to purchase prepaid cards. Spotify gift cards can be found on near-music resources, forums, and on trading floors like Amazon. After activating the card or paying the monthly tariff, the user will be able to fully, without restrictions, evaluate all the benefits of Spotify in Russia.
Alternative solutions
Now that you're a little closer acquainted and know more about Spotify: what it is, how it works and how to start using it, it's time to find out about the existing alternatives. The fact is that Spotify, whatever one may say, is very expensive for CIS residents, and not everyone wants to bother with VPN, so you should pay attention to other services available in Russia:
- Apple Music is Spotify's main rival, part-time one of the most promising products of the legendary California corporation. It has the same huge media library, its system of recommendations and exclusive rights to some albums.
- Yandex.Music is a rather modest player in the market, but it is focused on the domestic market. The music base is much more modest, the recommendation system lags behind competitors, there is no free mode.