There are many examples of volatility and impermanence in nature, but perhaps even chameleons – recognized masters of transformation – will not be able to compete with Spotify. Even with your best will, you can hardly count how many times the Swedish streaming service was going to launch in Russia and then changed his mind. The first attempts to enter the Russian market date back to 2013-2014 and, it seems, continued with a break of a year and a half more times. But now, when hope almost died, Spotify finally decided to try their luck in Russia again.
Spotify in Russia may launch in a week
Spotify will launch in Russia on July 15th, Variety reports. Before that, the service was not officially available in the country, and it could only be used with a VPN, but now there will be no more such problems. Users will be able to legally download the Spotify app and pay for the subscription. The partner of the service will be the mobile operator MTS, which is likely to help popularize it by advertising Spotify among its subscribers and offering them free traffic to listen to music.
How much does a Spotify subscription cost
The price for premium access to Spotify can range from 150 to 300 rubles
While the official prices for a Spotify subscription have not been disclosed, however, a page for downloading an application has already appeared in the Russian segment of the App Store, which was not there before. There, in the section with the list of in-app purchases, you can find the estimated prices for subscriptions to access Spotify. The most affordable of them costs 299 rubles per month. This is quite a lot, considering that initially there were rumors that it would be possible to subscribe to the service for only 150 rubles a month, and Spotify's competitors charge about the same for access to music.
Spotify Free Edition Limitations
However, unlike most of its competitors, Spotify offers a free plan. It involves a number of restrictions compared to paid ones:
- Playback is interrupted from time to time for commercials;
- Tracks are switched out of order, but in mixed mode;
- You can't skip more than 6 tracks per hour;
- You cannot save songs for offline listening.
Not that big of a limitation if you think about it. However, if you're not sure if you want to pay for premium access where they don't exist, you can try a Spotify trial subscription. Its validity period is 30 days, which, most likely, will be enough to form a more or less persistent impression of the need for a paid subscription. However, I will not argue with the fact that 299 rubles a month is really expensive. For this money, for example, you can subscribe to YouTube Premium and get access to an extensive music library, as well as get rid of YouTube ads. Personally, I would have done this if I had not already subscribed to Yandex.Music.
Why Use Spotify
Spotify features Mega-cool compilations
But is there anything to love Spotify for? Of course have. The main advantage of the service, which makes it an unattainable leader for competitors, is smart personal selections. Spotify is known for super-advanced algorithms that, based on the music you listen to, form a selection of tracks that you will surely enjoy. This almost 100% eliminates the impossibility of switching tracks in order in the free version. Therefore, you can simply turn on the generated playlist and forget about everything for a few hours – the service probably has a lot of cool songs for you.
Despite the fact that Spotify is not yet officially available in Russia, there is already a fairly extensive library of songs from Russian artists. In addition to Little Big, which have long been famous all over the world, you will find there Alla Pugacheva, Lada Dance, Oksimiron and other stars of the Russian pop and underground. In general, Spotify is good not only for its versatility, but also for its responsiveness. As a rule, most of the new tracks from popular artists arrive on the site in the first hours after release.