Spotify Review 2025: What Happened to Just Listening to Music?

The Song That Found Me

It was a Tuesday in November, around 11 PM, and I was doing dishes. Nothing about the moment was special. The kitchen light buzzed its usual hum. Water ran. And then Spotify's Discover Weekly served me a song by an artist I had never heard of -- a Brazilian jazz guitarist named Vitor Kley performing a stripped-back version of something that sounded like bossa nova had wandered into an indie folk bar. I stopped washing, dried my hands, and sat on the kitchen floor with the phone in my lap, playing it again.

That is the thing about Spotify that no spec sheet captures. The catalog has over 100 million songs. The platform reaches more than 640 million people monthly. It is available on your phone, your laptop, your fridge if you have one of those fancy Samsung models. But the reason I keep paying every month is simpler and harder to explain: it knows me. Not in the creepy surveillance way, but in the way a friend who has spent years watching your mood shifts might know that tonight, right now, you need to hear something warm and acoustic from a country you have never visited.

I have been a Spotify subscriber since 2017, when my college roommate finally wore down my resistance to paying for something I could technically find on YouTube. Seven years later, the app has become woven into the rhythm of my days -- morning playlists that gently push me awake, focus instrumentals that fill the hours between meetings, a Discover Weekly ritual every Monday that has introduced me to some of my now-favorite artists. This review comes from that place: not a two-week test drive, but years of living inside the green ecosystem, watching it grow from a music player into something much more ambitious. Whether that ambition is a gift or a burden depends on what you came here for.

How Discovery Actually Works (When It Works)

People talk about Spotify's recommendation engine like it is some singular, monolithic intelligence. The reality is messier and more interesting. There are actually three different systems running simultaneously, feeding each other data and occasionally disagreeing about what you want to hear.

The first is collaborative filtering -- essentially pattern-matching across millions of users. If people who listen to the same five artists you love also listen to a sixth artist you have never played, that artist shows up in your feed. This is the oldest trick in the recommendation book, and it works surprisingly well for mainstream tastes. The second layer is natural language processing, where Spotify's algorithms crawl blog posts, music reviews, forum threads, and social media to understand how people describe music. When a thousand people call a song "dreamy" and "melancholic," that semantic fingerprint gets attached to the track and matched against your listening patterns. The third layer -- and the one that impresses me most -- is raw audio analysis. Spotify literally listens to the acoustic properties of songs: tempo, key, energy, danceability, the timbre of instruments, even the position of the beat within the measure. This is why sometimes the algorithm surfaces a song from a genre you would never browse on purpose, and it still fits.

Discover Weekly remains the crown jewel. Every Monday morning, 30 songs arrive like a letter from a penpal who knows my taste better than I do. I keep a running tally: out of the last 20 weeks, I saved at least 3 songs from every single batch, and on my best week, I saved 11. Release Radar does something similar for new music from artists I already follow, plus a handful of new releases it thinks I should hear. Daily Mixes are the background-listening workhorses -- they cluster your taste into moods and genres, creating endless playlists that feel curated without demanding attention.

When the algorithm misses, though, it misses in a specific way. It tends to build echo chambers. Listen to a lot of melancholy indie folk for a week because you are going through something, and suddenly every recommendation assumes sadness is your permanent personality. The system is excellent at identifying what you have been listening to. It is less good at understanding why. That distinction matters more than most users realize, and it is the reason I occasionally have to "reset" my algorithm by playing something heavily different for a few days.

The AI DJ: Radio for People Who Forgot What Radio Was

I was skeptical when Spotify launched the AI DJ. A synthetic voice narrating my music? It sounded like a gimmick designed to generate press coverage. I was wrong.

The AI DJ is built on a voice model that sounds human enough to not feel uncanny but artificial enough that you never forget what it is. It introduces songs, offers brief context about artists, explains why it chose a particular track, and shifts between different moods and eras of your listening history. What makes it work is the pacing. It does not talk over transitions. It does not monologue. It drops in for 15 seconds, says something like "You haven't listened to this one in a while, but you used to have it on repeat in 2021," and then the song starts. That combination of memory and restraint makes it feel genuinely personal.

I have found myself using the AI DJ most on long drives and while cooking -- situations where I want music but do not want to make decisions. It has introduced me to artists I skipped in my regular browsing, and its willingness to pull from deep in my listening history means it surfaces forgotten favorites alongside new picks. There is something almost nostalgic about the format. It reminds me of the good parts of terrestrial radio -- the surprise, the curation, the sense that someone is steering the ship -- without the repetition or the ads.

The AI playlist feature is newer and rougher around the edges. You type a natural language prompt like "songs for cooking dinner alone on a Friday" or "nostalgic 2000s hip hop that is not too aggressive" and it generates a playlist. Results are hit-or-miss. Simple prompts work well. Anything requiring nuance or cultural context tends to produce bland, safe selections. It is impressive as a proof of concept and useful enough that I reach for it occasionally, but it has not replaced the manual playlist-building that I still enjoy.

The Podcast Creep

Here is where my feelings get complicated.

Spotify spent billions -- literally billions of dollars -- turning itself into a podcast platform. They acquired Gimlet Media, Anchor (now Spotify for Podcasters), signed exclusive deals, built a whole creator economy. The result is a podcast library with over 6 million titles, video podcast support, and a recommendation system that now tries to steer you toward spoken word content with the same persistence it uses for music.

On its own merits, the podcast experience is fine. Good, even. The search works, episode recommendations are decent, and the integration means I do not need a separate app for podcasts. Transcript search is a genuinely useful feature -- being able to search for a specific thing someone said in a two-hour episode and jump directly to that moment saves real time.

But here is the tension: I opened Spotify to listen to music, and the home screen is now populated with podcast suggestions I did not ask for. The recommendations mix music and podcasts in ways that feel like a grocery store putting candy at the checkout counter -- technically offering choice, but really just hoping you will impulse-consume something different from what you came for. I know why they are doing it. Podcasts drive engagement. Exclusive podcast content keeps people locked to the platform. The economics make sense. But the experience of a music-first user navigating a platform that increasingly wants to be an audio-everything platform is slightly worse than it was three years ago, and that is worth noting honestly.

Audiobooks: The Quiet Addition

Premium subscribers now get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, pulled from a catalog of over 300,000 titles. I have mixed feelings about this too, but for different reasons.

The 15-hour allowance is generous for casual listeners. That is roughly two full-length books per month, depending on your speed settings. The catalog includes bestsellers, classics, and a solid non-fiction selection. The listening experience is comfortable -- bookmarking works, speed controls are there, and progress syncs across devices the way everything in Spotify does.

The problem is that audiobooks are a at its core different listening mode than music or even podcasts. I listen to music while doing other things. I listen to audiobooks when I can actually pay attention. Mixing the two in one app means my "Recently Played" is now a jumble of half-finished audiobook chapters, podcast episodes, and my regular music rotation. The organizational friction is small but real. Audible, for all its flaws, exists as a separate space where audiobooks are the entire point. Spotify's audiobooks feel bolted on -- functional but not yet native to the experience.

Still, if you are curious about audiobooks and do not want to commit to Audible's credit system, Spotify's included allowance is a remarkably easy way to try them. I finished two books last month that I never would have bought separately. There is genuine value here, even if the implementation still feels like a first draft.

Living Across Devices: The Spotify Connect Trick

If I had to pick one feature that would make switching to another service painful, it would not be the playlists or the algorithm. It would be Spotify Connect.

The concept is simple: your music follows you. Start playing on your phone while walking to work, and when you open your laptop, the same song is right there, mid-verse, ready to transfer. Push it to the Sonos in the kitchen when you get home. Move it to the TV while you cook. Every Spotify-capable device in your house becomes a speaker you can control from any other device. Your phone is essentially a universal remote for your entire audio life.

Apple Music offers something similar within its own ecosystem, but it only works between Apple devices. Spotify Connect is platform-agnostic. My setup includes an Android phone, a Windows laptop, a Sonos speaker, and a Chromecast plugged into the TV. They all talk to each other through Spotify without a single hiccup. That cross-platform freedom is not just a nice technical feature. It is the reason switching costs are so high. Rebuilding that multi-device music flow on Apple Music or YouTube Music would mean losing one of the things I rely on most.

The Social Layer No One Replicated

December happens, and the entire internet turns green.

Spotify Wrapped is not a feature in the traditional sense. It is a cultural event. Every year, Spotify generates personalized summaries of your listening habits -- your top artists, your most-played songs, how many minutes you spent listening, what genres defined your year -- wrapped in colorful, shareable cards designed for Instagram Stories. And every year, millions of people post them. It dominates social media for a solid week. Apple tried to compete with Apple Music Replay. YouTube Music launched Recap. Neither has come within shouting distance of Wrapped's cultural footprint.

Why? Because Wrapped understood something fundamental: music is identity. Sharing what you listen to is a form of self-expression, and Spotify turned that impulse into a participatory event. There is something genuinely fun about comparing top artists with friends, discovering that you were apparently in the top 0.5% of listeners for a band you thought was obscure, and seeing your "listening personality" described in a way that feels weirdly accurate.

Beyond Wrapped, the social features run deeper than most people use. Collaborative playlists let friends build shared collections. Blend creates a joint playlist between two people that updates daily based on both of your tastes, complete with a "taste match" percentage. The Friends Activity sidebar on desktop shows what friends are listening to in real time. I have discovered more music through that sidebar than through any formal recommendation feature -- there is something about seeing a friend listen to something unexpected that makes you curious in a way an algorithm prompt does not.

Sound Quality: The Long Wait for Lossless

For years, the biggest hole in Spotify's offering was the lack of lossless audio. Apple Music added it in 2021 at no extra cost. Tidal built its entire brand around high-fidelity sound. Spotify teased a "HiFi" tier and then went quiet for so long that it became a running joke in audiophile communities.

As of early 2025, lossless is finally rolling out to Premium subscribers. CD-quality streaming at 1,411 kbps and high-resolution audio up to 24-bit/192kHz for supported tracks. The rollout has been gradual -- not all markets have it yet -- but for those who do, the gap is closed.

Here is my honest assessment, though: most people will not hear the difference. The existing "Very High" quality at 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis is excellent. Unless you own high-end headphones or a dedicated DAC and are listening in a quiet environment, the jump to lossless is more psychological than audible. I tested it with my Sennheiser HD 650s in a quiet room, and yes, there is a difference -- a slightly wider soundstage, a touch more detail in the upper frequencies. Through AirPods on the subway? Absolutely nothing perceptible.

Lossless matters more as a competitive checkbox than as a practical feature for most subscribers. But for the audiophiles who care, its arrival removes the last technical reason to choose Tidal or Apple Music over Spotify.

The Streaming Landscape in 2025

Spotify does not exist in a vacuum. Understanding it means understanding what you would be choosing instead.

Apple Music is the closest direct competitor. Its catalog is comparable at 100 million-plus songs. The integration with iPhones, HomePods, and Apple Watches is tighter than Spotify's. Lyrics are better -- Apple's time-synced, karaoke-style lyrics are genuinely best-in-class. And Apple Music pays artists roughly double what Spotify does per stream, which matters if you care about the economics of the industry. But Apple Music's recommendations are not as sharp. Wrapped does not exist. Cross-platform support is limited. And the app just feels less alive, less social, less like a place where music is a shared experience.

YouTube Music has a unique advantage: music videos, live performances, concert recordings, and user-uploaded content that simply does not exist on other platforms. That acoustic version a small artist posted on YouTube five years ago? Only YouTube Music has it. The $13.99 premium subscription also includes ad-free YouTube, which is a significant value add. But the app itself is clunky, the separation between official tracks and user uploads is confusing, and the social features are almost nonexistent.

Tidal is for the audiophile who wants to support artists more directly. Higher royalties, lossless audio from day one, Dolby Atmos support. The sound quality story is compelling. But the catalog has occasional gaps, the recommendation engine is noticeably behind Spotify's, and the user base is too small for social features to have any network effect. It is a principled choice more than a practical one.

What You Pay and What You Get

Spotify's pricing has climbed since the original $9.99 days, and while the increases are not dramatic, they accumulate. Here is where things stand right now:

The free tier still gives you the entire catalog with ads, but on mobile, you are stuck with shuffle play and cannot pick specific songs on demand. It is good enough for background listening and genuinely useful for people who want music but do not want a bill. For anything beyond casual use, though, the limitations push you toward paying.

Premium Individual is $11.99 per month. Ad-free, offline downloads, on-demand playback, 15 hours of audiobooks, and all the AI features. This is the plan most people are on, and it remains the baseline against which every other streaming service is measured.

Premium Duo at $16.99 splits between two people living at the same address. You each get your own account and a shared Duo Mix playlist. If you are splitting with a partner, it works out to about $8.50 each -- decent savings over two individual plans.

The Family plan is the best per-person value at $19.99 for up to six accounts. That is $3.33 per person when fully loaded. It includes parental controls and a Family Mix playlist. For households with teenagers or extended family, this is the obvious choice.

Student pricing at $5.99 is the cheapest path to Premium, available with a valid student ID. If you are in school, there is no reason not to use this.

Compared to competitors, the pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. Apple Music is $10.99 individual. YouTube Music Premium is $13.99 but includes YouTube. Amazon Music Unlimited is $10.99 for Prime members. The real question is not which is cheapest -- they are all within a few dollars of each other -- but which delivers the most value relative to how you actually listen.

Pros and Cons

The Artist Problem

I cannot write honestly about Spotify without addressing the elephant in the room. Spotify pays artists somewhere between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. A song needs roughly 250 plays to earn a single dollar. For top-tier artists with billions of streams, this generates substantial income. For the vast middle class of working musicians -- the ones playing local venues, teaching lessons, releasing albums every few years -- streaming royalties often do not cover the cost of production.

This is not uniquely a Spotify problem. The entire streaming model is built on a per-stream payment structure that naturally favors high-volume artists over niche ones. Apple Music pays roughly double per stream, which is better but still not enough for most independent artists to live on. Tidal's direct payment option is the most artist-friendly model, but its smaller user base limits the total revenue pool.

As a listener, I feel this tension every time I discover a small artist through Discover Weekly. The platform that introduced me to their music is the same platform paying them almost nothing for the listen. There is no easy resolution here, but pretending the issue does not exist would make this review dishonest.

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