Spotify Premium is pricey. Should you get it?

I love Spotify.

The service works beautifully and provides access to just about all the music you need.

But the price is high for Spotify’s Premium service. At $10 per month, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

However, I would recommend it if several of these describe you:

1) You listen to a lot of music

I played ~1200 songs in the past month. That’s ~40 songs per day, and I didn’t listen while I was at work or sleeping.

It’s nice to listen to all the music you want without ads.

2) You have an iPhone / iPad / smartphone / tablet

The Spotify app is useless without Spotify Premium. With Spotify Premium, it’s really easy to listen to whatever you want, wherever you are. With an AirPlay, it’s easy to put songs on your TV or AirPlay enabled sound system.

3) You like to control what you listen to

I’ve enjoyed two years of Pandora One, the ad-free version of Pandora, but hated the skip limit and lack of control over what I listened to.

It’s hard to discover a lot of new music when you can’t skip songs you’ve already heard.

4) You like to discover new music

With Spotify, you can discover music through playlists and Spotify apps.

These Spotify apps only work on the desktop version of Spotify, but you can get Pandora-like functionality with the free SpotON radio iPhone app. The app even creates playlists automatically of the songs you hear.

5) Plus: Unlimited data

Last month, I kicked my music listening into overdrive and hit my 2 GB data limit in two weeks. If you have unlimited data, you don’t have to worry about this.

If you have a limited data plan, you can still make it work. Many of you spend most of your time at work or at home, where you can use wi-fi instead of 3G.

If you do get close to your data limit, make sure you set your favorite playlists to be available offline. This downloads songs to your device so you don’t need to use the internet.