Spotify Web Player (How to Use, Differences to Spotify Apps, Pros/Cons)

You can listen to Spotify directly from your web browser without downloading any software. How do you use it? What are the differences between the Spotify Web Player and their desktop and phone apps?

I’ll dive into the pros and cons of each and talk about their recent move to support Safari again, which is very welcomed for Mac users that prefer to use that browser.

What is the Web Player on Spotify

The web player is a way to listen to Spotify wherever you are, without the need to download the app. It’s essentially a website, which, once you’ve logged in, allows you to use all the features as the app has.

You can access all your liked and saved songs and playlists, listen to all the music and podcasts, and more.

How do you use the Spotify Web Player?

Spotify web player is very simple to use. You just go to open.spotify.com, login, and press the large “open web player” button in the middle of the screen. Once you’re in, you’ll see that all of the interfaces in the web player are almost identical to the app.

Some of the things are just arranged in slightly different places on the screen, but you should have no problem using it if you’ve ever used a Spotify app.

Should You Use the Spotify Web Player or Desktop app?

There is no definite answer to this question. Many of the users use both, depending on where they are and what’s available to them (as was planned by the developers).

For premium users, the sound quality can be a little bit better on the dedicated apps compared to the web player. Also, you can download music for offline listening on their apps (more about that below).

If you’re looking to listen to music on one device and you’re fairly certain that you’ll be using it regularly to listen to music on Spotify, you should definitely choose the app. Whether it’s your phone, tablet, or PC, the app gives you the best experience.

If, on the other hand, you know you’ll be listening to music on a lot of different devices, or you won’t be able to download and install the app, you’re the perfect use of the web player.

The difference in features between Spotify Web Player and Desktop App

Even though both options are very similar, you should still note that there are some big differences. First of all, the music quality is different. When you’re an app user, you’ll get up to 320 kbps bitrate, but when you use a web player, you can get 256 kbps bitrate at best for premium users.

Also, you can set up music quality in the app to your taste, allowing you to save up on the metered connection usage and stuff like that, while web player doesn’t allow those options.

The second biggest difference between these two is that you can’t download music from the web player for offline listening. Spotify app allows you to download music and podcasts to your device and listen to them when in offline mode (for premium users), but you can’t do that with a web player.

Also, there are some positives for the web players, such as portability and ease of use, which we mentioned already before.

Can you use the Spotify web player on your phone?

Yes, you can. However, we think the user experience on your phone is better when using their dedicated phone apps.

You can use a web player on your tablets and mobile devices. You should, however, check to see if your browser supports the Spotify web player.

Using Spotify on Your Computer at Work

We’ve all been in that situation when you just want to play some music at work to relax and/or cut out the noise from the background. Unfortunately, a lot of corporate computers are locked down and don’t allow for the user to install anything on them, so you can’t use a Spotify app.

Luckily, the web player doesn’t need any downloading, so you can just log in and play it normally on your computer at work.

What Spotify Apps are available?

You can download the app for Windows, Mac, Linux for your computers (please note that the Linux desktop app is not officially supported, but it is maintained by their development team, particularly because their developers wanted to listen to Spotify on their Linux dev machines!).

It works on Android and iOS for mobile devices. You can use it on smart home devices such as Alexa.

You can download it for your smart TVs, smartwatches, gaming consoles, and your cars even.

There are not many things you can’t download the Spotify app to these days!

Spotify web player on Safari

Since 2017. Spotify users on Apple platforms had an issue of web player mysteriously not working when played on Safari. But in the last couple of months, that issue was resolved and now you can use web player normally on Safari just as on any other major web browser.

Summary

Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming service, but a lot of people seem to forget how powerful its web player is. While both options are very similar in terms of the features they have, there are lots of huge differences.

Whichever option you choose, you won’t be disappointed; however, there are some things about the web player that make it superior. That’s not to say the app isn’t great because it is; it’s just that the web player has more features and is easier to use overall.