Spotify has the best music discovery algorithms and the slickest, snappiest user interface. It leads me down rabbit holes to find new artists and old favorites, based on what I’ve already liked and listened to on the app.
The free tier, with advertisements, defaults to a low-quality 96-Kbps streaming bit rate, but you can bump that up to 160 Kbps. For $12 a month (a $1 increase from the last time we updated this story in January 2024), the Premium tier ditches ads entirely and streams up to 320 Kbps, which is the standard streaming quality these days. These are bit rates for the app; the web player sticks you with 128 Kbps and 256 Kbps, respectively.
Spotify’s lossless library, announced in February of 2021, finally started rolling out in September of 2025, and it supports music up to 24-bit at 44.1KHz—although as I write this, most lossless songs are 16-bit at 44.1KHz. Not every user has access yet, but the mobile and desktop app will notify you with a splash screen when you’re invited, or you can check your audio quality settings to see if you have the option to opt in. On the desktop app, you can click the “Lossless” tag under a track while it’s playing to see the details.
Spotify lets you add an unlimited number of songs to your personal library. As a long-requested feature, the 10,000-song limit is gone, and you can now add unlimited songs to each playlist. If you turn on social sharing, you can see what your friends have been listening to and create sessions wherein a group simultaneously streams a playlist. There’s an option on each Artist page to listen to only the songs of theirs you’ve liked, which is a very welcome change from previous years.
The way Spotify groups albums, compilations, and singles in one location—with an option to separate them—is much smoother and more convenient than the old setup, which forced you to view them all separately, all of the time. Playlists and albums get their own shuffle buttons, which is a nice touch that lets you know when you’re on shuffle and when you’re listening to everything in order.
