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[br][p]By now, you've probably tried a number of music streaming services in India. Nearly all these services offer a similar set of features and for most users, it comes down to the quality of the music catalogue, price, and sometimes the app's design.[br][h3][span style="text-decoration-line: underline;"]OverAll[/span][/h3][p]Spotify is the latest entrant into the crowded Indian online music streaming market. With smartphone adoption rates exploding and easy availability of affordable data plans, Spotify has entered the market at a good time, even though the company would've preferred to do it before other domestic and international players did.[p]Spotify user interface
Spotify is easy-to-use and it takes very little time to sign up and get started. Spotify has apps on both iOS and Android along with Windows and Mac. The company has a Web interface as well. However, most people will end up using mobile apps more.[p]
[br][p] In addition, Spotify also has apps on several smart TV platforms, Linux, Chromebook, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick. You can even hook up Spotify with your Amazon Alexa or Google Home smart speakers. However, not all apps are available in India just yet.
Spotify's rich black interface separates the service from its competition. [p]The black interface looks impressive with the album covers that seem to stand out against the minimal black backdrop. Spotify puts your music right at the centre of your experience. The interface is easy to get used to, even for someone who is trying a music streaming app for the very first time.[p]Navigating the interface is a breeze. Spotify makes it really easy to start following its own curated playlists. Over a period of time, the service can offer personalised recommendations based on your listening pattern thanks to its smart algorithms.[p]Spotify offers a large selection of playlists that seem to cover almost all kinds of music genres. Once you start using Spotify, you'll likely end up curating and following playlists more than usual artist albums.[p]The mobile apps offer a similar user interface on both Android and iOS. Once you open a new account and sign in for the very first time, you'll be presented with a screen where you can pick your favourite artists. This is quite similar to how most other music apps do it.[p]Once you make your selection, Spotify starts recommending relevant playlists and artists. On the mobile apps, you're almost always two taps away from playing music. Premium users can download the music for playing offline. You can follow playlists and once you get along you can save playlists, individual tracks, and albums to your library.[h2][span style="text-decoration-line: underline;"]Spotify audio quality[/span][/h2][p]Spotify lets you set the sound quality of tracks both through downloads or while streaming directly, and you can have different settings for the two. Furthermore, the sound quality is different depending on whether you're on a free or premium plan.[p]
[br][p]If you're on the latter, the quality of tracks downloaded and streamed goes up to 320kbits/s in the OGG Vorbis format, on all platforms. Free users have audio quality capped at 160kbits/s or lower, depending on the platform used. Desktop apps and Web versions have less flexible settings for quality, while mobile users can set audio quality according to their preferences.[h2]Spotify India catalogue[/h2][p]Like most other apps, Spotify has added a dash of Indian flavours to its catalogue available in the country. Spotify claims it has more than 40 million songs available in India right now. The company continuously adds more tracks over a period of time.[p]Apart from that, Spotify still has something for everyone. The company is offering content in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi. Spotify's powerful recommendation engine is probably its biggest advantage. The engine recommends relevant music you're likely to love once you keep listening and liking tracks.[p]Having said that, Spotify is also a great platform for discovering new content via its curated playlists. Spotify's team in India has already curated a large number of India-centric playlists that you can try out. Discover Weekly is a personalised curated playlist built automatically just for you using the recommendation engine's suggestions. Most of the times, it gets things just right.[p]In addition, Spotify also lets you play your locally stored audio files on the desktop app. You can simply go to [strong]Settings > Local Files[/strong] and click on 'Add A Source'. Select the folder containing your music files and you'll be able to play them from within Spotify itself. No need for a separate desktop app for those.[p][strong style="text-decoration-line: underline;"]Verdict[/strong][p]
[span style="font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline;"][br][/span]Spotify has a lot of things going for it especially curated playlists, collaborative playlists, and the ability to play locally stored music files. The company's smart recommendation engine is clearly its most unique selling point for a lot of users. The app's free and premium plans let anyone try the music catalogue before deciding if they are ready to pay for it.[p]Another key highlight of Spotify's offering is the number of apps it offers. Since users are now using a large number of devices, it makes sense to have an app for almost every possible platform and this is where Spotify wins.[p]If you're already happy with your current music streaming app, you may not have a lot of incentive to switch places. But you could still try Spotify's free plan and see if you like it. The only thing we didn't like was the Web interface which, hopefully, will get better over time. |
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发表于 2019-03-15 23:41:41
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