Digital radios: Spotify: listen to free streamed music online How to listen to free music online with Spotify
Spotify is an online music streaming service, which is both legal and free, as the artists are paid royalties for the music you choose to listen to.
Major record labels have signed up to allow Spotify to distribute their catalogues, including Universal, EMI, Warner Music and AMG, and the site holds over 8m songs.
How does Spotify work?
The system works by streaming music to your computer over a broadband internet connection, so, unlike iTunes and similar music download services, no music files are downloaded to or stored on your computer.
Spotifys website recommends a minimum speed of 256 kbit/ and advises that you should have plenty of free hard disk space to enable more file caching, so that streaming is uninterrupted.
There are three levels of Spotify account available that you can sign up to - a free 'Open' service and two monthly subscription services: 'Unlimited' and 'Premium'.
You can listen to playlists put together on Spotify by other people, upload your own music and download or buy playlists to play on other devices. The amount of music you can listen to and the devices you can access it from depends on the service you've signed up to - the subscription services offer more options than the free service.
Find out more about other music download services and MP3 players in our reviews of music download services and MP3 and MP4 players. We also have tips and tricks for using Spotify's competitors in the online music arena such as iTunes.
Internet connection required
You have to be connected to the internet in order to listen to your chosen music through Spotify. But on the plus side, your music is always available instantaneously, without downloading MP3 or WMA files that fill up your hard drive.
Upgrading to the £9.99-per-month Spotify Premium service gives you the option to use 'Offline mode' so your playlists can be available to listen even without an internet connection and use Spotify on mobile phones with compatible operating systems - such as Mac iOS and Android.
Spotify's sound quality is acceptably high – Spotify streams music at approximately 160kb/s, using the Ogg Vorbis q5 codec. This compares favourably with many MP3 download sites which offer music in either 128kb/s or 192kb/s.
Spotify also bridges the gap between music websites and social networking websites by allowing you to share songs and playlists with friends, family and colleagues.
For more on this and other things you can do online, see our book Internet Made Easy for the Over 50s.
