While Spotify Premium still offers many features that are only available for paying members, one of those features is making its way to the free tier. According to What Hi-Fi?, Spotify’s free users are now able to stream music on Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which was previously reserved for Premium users. The change is part of an SDK update, which hardware manufacturers need to apply to their speakers in order for it to work.
You can read more about Connect on Spotify’s website, but the feature allows users to stream high-quality audio to a speaker over WiFi while using their phone or tablet as a remote. Before this update, free users could only depend on Bluetooth connections, but this will open up Spotify Connect to everyone with an account.
This is just the latest way that Spotify is making its free tier more appealing. In April, Spotify launched a redesigned app that included 15 playlists from which free users could choose specific tracks from up to 750 songs without having to resort to shuffling. Ads were still (and always will be) part of the free experience, but with Apple Music hot on its tail, Spotify needed to give music fans more reasons to stick with its service.
The main draw of the Premium subscription remains the same: Unlimited access to millions of songs from millions of artists on any device. Spotify Premium also features offline listening, and the company just recently increased the limit of songs that can be downloaded on a single device from 3,333 to 10,000.
