Where YouTube Music or Apple Music ask you to pick a paid plan early, Spotify by Spotify AB lets you play music and podcasts for free, with ads. Google Play lists it at over 1 billion installs and a 4.3 rating from 36.6 million ratings. The app carries a Teen content rating and was last updated on November 2, 2026. This page covers how it works and how it fits among its alternatives.
A free tier with ads, and a Premium tier behind it
Spotify works on a split model. The free version covers songs, albums, podcasts and audiobooks on a phone or tablet, with ads and in-app purchases along the way.
Premium is the paid upgrade. It lets you download music for offline listening.
The audiobook catalog includes over 300,000 newly added titles, next to more than 80 million songs and 4 million podcasts.
A typical session: lyric search, daily mixes, a saved podcast
A session usually starts with search. You can type a lyric to find a song or artist, which helps when you remember words but not the title. The home area offers daily music mixes made for you, plus new music, albums and playlists to browse.
There are over 40 category genres and moods, including Chill, Sleep, Workout, Jazz, Classical and Kids & Family. There is also a Popular Radio playlist feature, with artists such as Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Fleetwood Mac as examples.
Podcasts sit in the same app. You can subscribe to shows so you do not miss episodes, build a podcast library, and bookmark individual podcasts into playlists. Playlists can be created and shared, and the library holds over 80 million songs and 4 million podcasts.
Playback is not limited to the phone. It works on tablet, desktop, PlayStation, Chromecast, TV, Wear OS and other wearables. A Windows version also exists for the same service.
Against YouTube Music, Apple Music and the offline players
The alternatives fall into two groups. YouTube Music and Apple Music are streaming services like Spotify, so the comparison is about catalog, plans and ecosystem.
Fossify Music Player, Apollo and Music Player & MP3 are other options. Their names point to players for music already on the device, which is a different job from streaming. StarMaker is also an alternative.
What Spotify offers is scale: over 1 billion installs on Google Play, a free ad-supported tier, and podcasts and audiobooks beside music.
Spotify pros and cons
Pros
- Free tier with songs, podcasts and audiobooks, supported by ads
- Lyric search for finding a song or artist
- Premium adds offline downloads and ad-free albums and playlists
- Four Premium plans: Individual, Duo, Family and Student
- Plays on phone, tablet, desktop, TV, Chromecast, PlayStation and Wear OS
Cons
- Contains ads in the free tier
- In-app purchases are present
- Audiobooks in Premium are limited to Australia, the UK and the US
- Premium requires a paid plan
Is Spotify safe?
Spotify AB publishes the app, and its website is spotify.com. The package ID is com.spotify.music and the content rating is Teen, so it suits older kids and up. The listing also discloses ads and in-app purchases, which matter if a teen uses the account.
How to install Spotify
- Press the Google Play button on this page.
- Check the listing in the Play Store and press Install.
- Open Spotify when the install finishes. Updates arrive through Google Play.
