Free Spotify is letting me access Premium features

Update: Spotify is no longer letting me access premium features. It seemed to only work for 27% of readers as well according to our poll. 

They say everything good in life is free, which must be why Spotify is now letting me access premium features without paying for a premium subscription. If you’re unfamiliar, you don’t actually need to pay to use Spotify. Like most other major streaming services the company has a free tier option available that lets users get the feel for the service without paying a dime. Of course, there are some caveats.

For one, you won’t be able to search for and select specific songs unless you’re on a paid plan. Or at least you shouldn’t be able to according to the company website. Free users can only select songs to listen to from certain playlists but for some reason I’ve had no problem searching for songs all day from any album I want (like my current jam Motion by Emotional Oranges). This is not something I should be able to do without paying a monthly subscription fee. As a free user I should also be served an annoying number of ads in between songs, which also hasn’t happened in the last few hours that I’ve been jamming.

On top of that, I have no limit to how many songs I can skip. A typical free user should be limited to six skips per hour on mobile, but my colleagues (Lily Katz and Sara Carbone) and I have all been able to skip songs without any warning popping up on our phones. We haven’t been able to download songs for offline listening, which is a bummer; and we’ve been prompted by sporadic pop-ups to upgrade to Spotify Premium. As long as you close them out, though, you can keep using the Spotify app almost as if you’re a Premium subscriber.

I’m not sure if something is broken at Spotify or if this is a weird promotion the company is running without telling anyone, but if you’ve been thinking of trying out Spotify now is a great time to check it out.

Next: Spotify vs TIDAL: What’s the better option for you?