Has Spotify Open replaced Spotify Free?

[Samir]

Hey everyone!

What is the current status on Spotify Open and Spotify Free? I know Spotify Free was the first type of account. Then came Spotify Premium, and then Spotify Open. Then came the Spotify Unlimited. Right?

I registered with Spotify by receiving an invitation in the early days of Spotify. So what does that mean then... do I have Spotify Free or Spotify Open? I know I currently have Spotify Premium because I'm paying for it each month. However, my credit card will expire this month. So what happens if I decide not to renew my Premium subscription? What type of account will I fall back on? What is my base account type? Is it Open or Free?

Also, what if someone who has never had Spotify goes to www.spotify.com and registers for a new account, will this person get a Spotify Open or a Spotify Free account?

And also, what will happen (or what has happened) to the users that already registered with Spotify Open? Will they get to keep this account type or will they be automatically transferred to Spotify Free? What I'm asking is this. Is Spotify Open depricated (no new registrations, but still active) or completely replaced by Spotify Free? Or is it the other way around?

I remember reading about Spotify Open when it launched and it was not very popular with users because of the time limitation. Was it 20 hours per week?... or per month?... something like that. That was the total number of hours you could listen to music per week. I would hate to go back to Spotify Open when my Spotify Premium subscription expires at the end of this month.

I admit that I haven't been following the development of Spotify very closely. After all, why would I? The Spotify team is very slow in implementing new features that users request, or even solving urging technical problems. They just turn a deaf ear to you if you complain about anything. I easily loose interest in projects like that. But my guess is that Spotify Open was a short lived idea. If not, tell me I'm wrong. Please fill me in. I did google it, but all I get is "how to open spotify" or "Spotify's public profile on Spotify" (1).

Edit:

I've found this...

"If you’ve had your Spotify Open account for less than six months, you’ll discover that your time cap has gone. And it’ll stay gone until your account reaches its six-month birthday. Enjoy the extra music.

If you’ve had your Spotify Open account for more than six months, you’ll still be limited by time. As you’ve been with us for a while, the chances are you also enjoyed a six-month period without time limits when you first joined."

Source: http://news.spotify.com/se/2011/09/26/good-news-for-spotify-open-users/

So what does this mean now? Is Spotify Open gone or not? Is Spotify Free still an invitation only account type?

And what about this. What if you have had Spotify Open for more than six months, you start getting the time limit, and then you subscribe for a Premium account without time limits, and then it expires and you are back on Spotify Open?... will you have Spotify Open for another six months without time limit? And then after six months you start getting the time limit again?

Is this how it works? You have to upgrade to Unlimited or Premium at least once in a six months period, so that when you get back on Spotify Open you won't have the time limits?

This all seems like a rather complicated scheme/model to me. Why not just cut the crap and offer Spotify Free to everyone (no invites needed, no time limits, but with ads), and then add Spotify Unlimited (no ads, pc/mac only) and Spotify Premium (no ads, pc/mac and mobile) on top of that? Spotify Open is crap and everyone knows it. No one wants it anyway. It's like a cancer, and you do not want that in your system. Streamline everything to Spotify Free, for all users that are not on Unlimited or Premium. Why would it matter when you registered with Spotify? Or whether you registered with Spotify Open or Spotify Free? It's all just a confusing nonsense.

[Christoffer]

Hello!

I will try to answer your questions and if i'm wrong on something someone will hopefully correct me. Spotify has now three models Spotify free (with time limit: 10 hours/month and split into 2.5 hours a week and with ads) Spotify unlimited (no ads, o time limit) and finally Spotify premium (same as unlimited but with offline listening and mobile app). If don't renew your premium subscription you will go back to Spotify free with above restrictions since your account is older than six months.

Hope this explains your questions!

[Peter__]

Spotify open and Spotify free are the same thing nowadays since invites are no longer required. 😉 

As @Christoffer mentioned above, all free accounts (outside of the US) have a time limit applied to them after they have been registered for 6 months, even if you have been on premium for that time. 

[Sam]

@Samir Hey! The current model is exactly how you suggested. Spotify Free, Unlimited, Premium. Spotify Open and Free accounts are the same. No invitations are needed.

The time limitation (10 hours a month) is in place for all Free accounts older that 6 months (except in the US), regardless of whether you've had a subscription in this time. This limitation was not something we wanted, but was entirely necessary to offer the free service at all.

Regarding the technical problems we don't fix, what would these be? If there's a bug, we always try and fix it as soon as possible. You also mention that we're slow releasing new features, what features would you like to see?

[Samir]

And what's with the restriction where you were only allowed to play a single track no more than 5 times? Does that also apply to Spotify Free accounts?

What do you mean by "outside of the US"? Are you saying that there are different restrictions that apply to the US and the rest of the world? What would that be? Are you saying that there is no time limitation on Spotify Free in the US?

Regarding the technical problems we don't fix, what would these be?

There are a lot of technical problems with Spotify. For starters, how about the fundamental ability - or should I say inability - to change the user name and to delete an account freely, at will? Without the need to call for attention from the Spotify staff and contacting them through some contact form.

I've learned by reading these forums that it's not even possible to change the user name for an account, not even if you contact Spotify and ask for help. All they can do is create a new account for you with a new user name, and then transfer your playlists and everything to the new account. This sounds like the old Spotify account is left active, or it is maybe just inactivated but not completely deleted from the system. This reminds me actually of another popular and annoying web service out there, namely Facebook. To Spotify's defense, you can at least contact them and communicate with them directly, unlike with Faceboook.

If you can fix that in the coming year or so that would be great. Then we can start discussing everything else. Not everything that's wrong about Spotify is technically a bug. Some things are just design flaws or lack of features. I'll give you two of them.

1. No distinction between artists with the same name.
I recently posted about Sandra.

2.1 No way to sort/group/organize playlists.
Like most users I like to use playlists as folders or directories to organize the music I like. I myself have over 150 playlists. I like to organize my music on a per artist basis. So I like to have all the tracks by Scooter stored in a playlist titled "Scooter". And all tracks by Europe stored in the playlist "Europe". Then on top of these, I have additional playlists titled "Party" or whatever, with mixed/various artists, just like any compilation album.

I understand that the Spotify team has been at the keyboard and trying to address this issue. It is now possible to add "New Playlist Folder". But I wouldn't say that the execution was very good. The name of this option alone is misleading. What the hell is a "playlist folder"?... A more suiting name for this would be "playlist collection" or "playlist group". I would call it "playlist collection" because this whole section is actually titled "COLLECTION".

Why is it not possible to just right click somewhere in the playlist panel/pane and pick "Sort by..." and then pick maybe "Alphabetically - ascending" or "Alphabetically - descending". I imagine this having the effect of sorting ALL playlists AND playlist folders alphabetically, AND/OR placing the playlist folders on the top of the list (just like folders are placed on top of files in Windows Explorer) sorted by alphabet, followed by playlists alone sorted by alphabet.

2.2 No way to select multiple playlists.
It's not possible to select more than one playlist or "playlist folder" at a time. You can't just hold CTRL and click on the playlists you want to select. What I have done is I have created a new playlist folder for each letter. Like...

A
B
C
D
...

And I would then drag and drop maybe ABBA under A, Boney M under B, Chris Isaak under C, and Die Fantastischen Vier under D. This gives me some sense of organization. But it's not enough. For starters, I cannot select multiple playlists. This is a BIG handicap! Imagine MANUALLY sorting over 150 playlists in alphabetical order, and you can only move ONE playlist at a time!

Imagine you have these playlists...

Armin van Buuren
Astral Projection
Avicii

You now want to move them to the playlist folder A. Instead of selecting all three playlists at once, and dragging and dropping them to A, you have to do it THREE times! Remember that they would normally not be placed under each other like that. You would more likely have something that originally looks like this...

Armin van Buuren
Duran Duran
Falco
Astral Projection
Kraftwerk
Elvis
Avicii

It was a hell of a job to manually organize 150 playlists in alphabetical order. This gives me some sense of organization. But it's not an elegant solution to the problem. You still have to sort the individual playlists within a playlist folder. Like this...

F
_Frank Sinatra
_Foreigner
_Fat Boys
_Falco

Here you have to move up Fat Boys and Falco. And even if you do that...

F
_Falco
_Fat Boys
_Foreigner
_Frank Sinatra

You still have to do this again once you add more playlists to the F folder.

I don't understand, why is it such a problem for the Spotify team to just implement a sorting option?... This is the most trivial thing for a good programmer.

Just so you know I'm refering to the desktop client here on Windows. But a lot of this applies to the mobile version of Spotify on Android as well.

This is nothing new. These are just some of the things that users have called for for years now. It's sad that the time between feature request or call for improvement in Spotify and implementation/rollout is measured in years.

[Peter__]

And what's with the restriction where you were only allowed to play a single track no more than 5 times? Does that also apply to Spotify Free accounts?

That restriction only ever existed in a few markets on Spotify Free. It has since been removed from all markets (with the UK and France being the last to have it removed). 

What do you mean by "outside of the US"? Are you saying that there are different restrictions that apply to the US and the rest of the world? What would that be? Are you saying that there is no time limitation on Spotify Free in the US?

That is correct, there is no time restriction on Spotify free accounts in the US due to unique licensing laws which apply there. The 10 hour limit applies to free accounts registered in every other Spotify launch country after 6 months.

There are a lot of technical problems with Spotify. For starters, how about the fundamental ability - or should I say inability - to change the user name and to delete an account freely, at will? Without the need to call for attention from the Spotify staff and contacting them through some contact form.

I have asked about this one many times, the answer appears to be that usernames can't be changed due to how playlists are mapped to accounts (and more interestingly, playlists you follow), although I don't have any more details than that. This is also the reason if you created your account via Facebook, there is no way to disconnect that account from Facebook (as discussed here). 

[Samir]

I have asked about this one many times, the answer appears to be that usernames can't be changed due to how playlists are mapped to accounts (and more interestingly, playlists you follow), although I don't have any more details than that.

If what you say is true, then that's a major design flaw. Now, if addressing this issue calls for some radical change to the system, and service interruption as a result of it, then so be it! Better late than never! They should have thought about that before they deployed this system, they should have thought about it already at the design and development stage.

I'm totally fine with not having access to Spotify for a few days while they work out their wrinkles in the system. But if service interruption is a concern, then they could look for some ugly workaround as a temporary solution, before they can transition to some new, well designed system. "Gör om gör rätt" as we say in Sweden... redo it until you do it right.

This is also the reason if you created your account via Facebook, there is no way to disconnect that account from Facebook (as discussed here).

Really?... I didn't know that. I wouldn't have expected something like that. That's just pathetic... have these people ever heard of quality control?

This clearly shows why one should never ever use Facebook authentication to register for new accounts on various websites. I never use Facebook authentication for this purpose, and it's for a good reason. Apparently! Whenever you have the option, you should always use the sites own registration method, and not Facebook. Why? Whenever you increase the complexity of any system, it becomes more prone to error! This is also the case with Spotify and Facebook here. You are connecting two completely separate systems that don't have very much in common. Even if it seems simple and clever... you just provide your e-mail and password for Facebook, click on that candy sweet looking green button and you're done... You can always count on trouble further down the road. And if you don't have a dedicated support/dev team to back you up, and to respond to bugs, glitches, compatibility issues and flaws, you can be stuck there with your problem for years.

I actually helped my brother yesterday to register for a new Spotify account and I told him not to register with Facebook, which is the default option when you register for a new Spotify account these days. He actually already had a Spotify account. The only reason why he registered for a new account was because he wanted to use his real name as his user name. Since we couldn't find a way to change the user name, we decided to register for a new Spotify account. He didn't have as many playlists as I do, so it will be easy for him to transition to the new account with no need to ask Spotify staff to move his old stuff (tracks, playlists) to his new account. Somtimes it's better to just start fresh.

But his old account will still remain active, I guess... even though he doesn't need it and will never use it again. As a result, it will most likely appear in the Spotify statistics (e.g. "registered users on Spotify"). How many registered users are there on Spotify? This makes it difficult to answer this type of questions. I'm sure he's not the only person who has registered for a new account as a result of not being able to change the user name. Heck, this is something that even the Spotify team would do for you if you asked them to change your user name.

The more I learn about the flaws of Spotify, the more it seems like a BETA project to me. It appears as if it's only in its early stages. But then I remind myself that it has been around for years now and that this is a billion dollar enterprise. As it is right now, I would never have approved this for release/rollout. But at the end, it's the money that counts. I think that the rush to roll this thing out worldwide could be in part responsible for the many flaws it has inherited. As opposed to steadily building up something really good with a healthy and happy user base. It all comes down to the things you value the most, and most of us can't say no to money.

[Peter__]

The issue is these are only "issues" for a small majority of users, hency why I can't see them being fixed anytime soon.

The median user will never want to change a username and Facebook authentication just works for most people nowadays.