To ask about Spotify?

[Bakeofffakeoff]

I don’t have a Spotify account, no idea how it works.

I’m throwing DH a surprise 40th birthday party in a couple of weeks and thought I’d join Spotify and see if there was a 40th birthday playlist I could play on the night.

I’ve just gone onto Spotify and searched 40th birthday playlist and have been playing one…even though I don't have an account?

Is this correct? Do I not have to sign up and pay whatever a month or is that only if you want to create your own playlists?

I'm sure I had playlists before I paid for Spotify.

I have a family account with no audiobooks, and it's not the basic one.
They upgraded the accounts when they added audiobooks but then after a while gave you the option to revert to how it was before, and £2 cheaper.

Crafty sods!

Back in early summer they advertised a Basic Individual plan that was £1 per month less than Premium Individual and didn't have audiobooks. I tried to get it and they gave me the total runaround and it turns out it was never actually available. First they said I couldn't downgrade from Premium Individual to Basic Individual, I had to cancel my premium account and apply as an upgrade from the Free Basic.

When I did that they said I couldn't have it because I couldn't upgrade to it as a Free Basic member.
Basically it was all BS and never available.

Apple Music is much better but of course won’t help if you don’t have an iCloud account.

So can you still skip as often as you want, no adverts etc?
It's listed as having "6 basic accounts" but as I thought basic was the free one I'm not sure why anyone would pay for it.

Yes no adverts etc, play everything that I want and skip etc etc

Does it depend how long you've had an account maybe? So as I'd had mine a long time the type of account is not actually available any more?

I've just checked - I have Basic Family. So presumably basic means no audiobooks.

That sounds right. I've just done some very quick looking around and it seems you cannot sign up for Basic Family from the start; but that you can change to it from Premium Family. Maybe they set option up after they added audiobooks to Premium Family?
What's clear is that they don't make it clear so they are making a lot of money from people who don't want audiobooks.

@widelegenes yes that sounds right - I reckon there was an outcry when they first forcibly upgraded all the accounts to include audiobooks and put the price up too!

In what way is it better, I have Spotify and can't think of anything that I've wanted to do but can't buy happy to consider a change if I'm missing out on features

I found the opposite, Apple music was not user friendly at all - but hopefully it has improved since I last used it which admittedly has been a while.

Likewise. I’ve long since ditched Apple for Spotify.