Spotify - what is it? How to set up and use

Digital music has undergone a lot of changes in recent years, people no longer want to pay for every song and album, where the services that distribute music by subscription look more attractive. In this material, we will talk about one of these services, the creation of Stockholm - Spotify. What is this program, how to use it and why it is needed? The basic principles of working with Spotify and circumvention of regional restrictions will be considered in the article.

Spotify - what is it?

Spotify is a Swedish streaming music service that provides free access to a multi-million music collection. This start-up was formed in 2006 by the founders Daniel Eck and Martin Lawrence. Now Spotify is the most large-scale and popular streaming audio service from all existing ones, storing more than 35 million tracks in its database, offering personal recommendations and cross-platform clients for listening. Also, the project has a huge user base of more than 100 million people, about 40 of them monthly pay premium services.

Service played an important role in the fight against piracy, providing users around the world with fast and convenient access to their favorite music. Supports artists (including beginners). Develops algorithms for finding suitable compositions. Developers actively promote their experiment in mass media, go to cooperation with music labels and developers of music applications. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of the CIS are not familiar with Spotify. What kind of miracle is this, they are not given to know because of a number of restrictions introduced by rightholders.

Interface and basic 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.

Mobile applications

Like any modern digital product, Spotify has applications for smartphones. They carry the same functionality, but carry a number of restrictions in the free mode, such as:

• Increased amount of advertising;
• The ability to listen to tracks only in random order;
• The ability to save tracks to the device memory.

These and other restrictions can be removed only by subscribing to 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 functional).

Spotify in Russia

As mentioned above, this service is not available on the territory of the Russian Federation, therefore, to use the service, you will have to resort to a country substitution with the help of a VPN. To do this, you need to install any VPN client, such as, for example, TunnelBear (distributed absolutely free of charge). TunnelBear has a traffic limit of 500 megabytes, but this is quite enough for initial registration. After passing the registration, the user immediately becomes available Spotify Web Player and the application for computers. Every 14 days, Spotify will check the location of the listener, and if he is outside the country of registration after expiration, access to music will be limited. This restriction can be removed by running the VPN again.

How to pay Premium in Russia

To remove absolutely all restrictions and fully enjoy the service, you need to purchase a premium account. The cost of paid services Spotify varies from country to country, but an average of $ 7 per month. To pay for services in Russia, you need to create an electronic purse PayPal or choose Latvia as the country of registration, since this is the only region where Spotify accepts Russian bank cards.

Another option is the purchase of prepaid cards. Spotify gift cards can be found on near-musical resources, forums, as well as on trading platforms like Amazon. After activation of the card or payment of the monthly tariff, the user will be able to fully, without limitations, evaluate all the advantages of Spotify in Russia.

Alternative solutions

Now that you are a little closer and know more about Spotify: what it is, how it works and how to start using it, it's time to learn about existing alternatives. The matter is that Spotify, anyway, is very expensive for CIS residents, and far from everyone wants to bother with VPN, so it's worth paying attention to other services available in Russia:

• Apple Music - the main competitor Spotify, part-time one of the most promising products of the legendary Californian corporation. Has the same huge media library, its system of recommendations and exclusive rights to some albums.
• "Yandex.Music" - a fairly modest player in the market, but it is focused on the domestic market. The musical base is several times more modest, the system of recommendations lags behind competitors, there is no free regime.