In the sidebar, click on Available Plans and from there, you can select a new plan and switch over.

Click on your profile icon and choose Account in the drop-down menu. Open Spotify in a web browser or in the desktop app. Upgrading your Spotify plan or swapping between plans is pretty easy. Finally, I decided to make the upgrade to a premium account. I was unable to choose individual songs to play - every album, playlist or radio station must be played in shuffle mode, and you can only skip songs six times in one hour. Sticking with the free version also meant seeing display ads. Thirty-second audio ads play between songs every so often. However, those changes come at a cost: As of April 30, Spotify is raising the price of its Family Premium plan by $1, to $16 a month.įor a while, I used the free version of Spotify, but there are restrictions. Just this past month, it also launched its own podcast subscription platform, a smart music player for your car and the ability to download songs on both your phone and laptop. Over the last year or so, the music streaming platform has added Spotify Connect for more listening options and Spotify Duo, another subscription offer between Spotify Premium and Spotify Family. Spotify's flexibility and free tier give it a competitive edge over Apple Music. Since launching back in 2008, Spotify has become one of the most popular music streaming services, building on its features and expanding to more than 70 million songs and podcasts and 356 million users. My only qualm - the library song limit - was resolved earlier this year.

When I finally gave Spotify a chance, I was quickly won over by the personalization - the curated playlists, the radio stations and the fact that the app was constantly improving itself. I'd tried Pandora and Google Play Music back in the day, but never felt compelled to invest in their premium features. The app is one of the most used on my phone and laptop. At this point, I've used Spotify for several years, and can't imagine switching to any other service for my music streaming needs.

Spotify duo account setup