Spotify just made this key Premium feature available to free users

Spotify seems to be in a very generous mood lately, at least apart from it increasing subscription prices and cracking down on account sharing. Earlier this year, the streaming service made it possible to temporarily “snooze” songs for 30 days, and more recently it brought “lossless audio” to all Premium subscribers without an extra fee.

In a blog post from yesterday, Spotify announced that it’s taking things even further by expanding the features available to free users. Such features include direct playback of specific songs on demand, which previously only allowed you to listen to random “similar” songs.

Spotify is calling this “Pick & Play,” which only Premium users could do up until now. Spotify is also wrapping it together with what it calls “Search & Play” (find and instantly play the song you want) and “Share & Play” (share a track with someone, who can instantly listen to it).

All of these ways to listen to specific songs on demand are now available to free users. Spotify also wants you to know that you can create your own playlists and listen to Spotify’s expert-curated playlists for free. You can also personalize your playlist covers and find new songs curated to your musical tastes with the special Discover Weekly playlist.

All of this without any restrictions?

It isn’t clear from the blog post itself whether on-demand playback of specific songs is unlimited. Like the displaying of lyrics or skipping of unwanted songs, Spotify could limit how often you can do it per day.

A Spotify spokesperson told TechCrunch that there’s indeed a daily limit, but he didn’t elaborate on how high that limit is set. In any case, Premium users will retain a certain advantage over free users, in addition to the other Premium-only features like lossless audio.