When we first reported that Spotify soft launched in the Philippines, I was more excited than surprised. This is Spotify, one of the biggest music streaming service in the world. It took them so long, but it finally landed on every Filipino’s smartphone thanks to a partnership with Globe, a local telco.
Through this partnership, Spotify is now tied to all of Globe’s postpaid and prepaid mobile subscription plans. The good thing is streaming music through Spotify will not affect any of your default data plan. I was never a fan of music streaming services, but I have to give Spotify a try because I am a Globe subscriber. Also, subscribing to Spotify would allow me to support any local musicians whom are partnering with Spotify.
I tried Globe’s lowest subscription plan – 10Php for a day of Spotify on top of the usual 10MB Globe data plan. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I was finally subscribed to the service.
However, I had a problem – I cannot stream Spotify on my mobile:
I have no use for the 10MB additional data because I was mostly looking forward to trying out the music service. I’ve got a whole day of desk work ahead of me, so what I need is to have some background music.
At first I was really worried. I browse through Twitter and it seems that everyone who subscribed to the service are doing just fine. Everyone knows that mobile data plans are slow in the Philippines, especially if you subscribed to the lowest tier plan.
I called the attention of Globe through Twitter.
From my conversation with Globe’s customer support, it seems that I need to flip a switch on my phone. This I did, and voila, free Spotify is running on mobile data!
For those who are Globe prepaid subscribers, this is how you can stream music through Spotify – just make sure your APN settings are pointing to http.globe.com.ph. On the Android, you can find it at settings > mobile networks. Globe has the details here.
True to its word, your mobile data is not touched by streaming music on Spotify. Of course, it is not actually unlimited. You can only get 200MB of data of free Spotify as seen in this table:
To find out if your data is running dry, just subtract the Spotify data with the one shown on the screen:
As you can see, I have already used around 35MB of data for Spotify. I just need to subtract that number to the total data used (39.10MB). This means I still have around 6MB of data left on my subscription plan.
As mentioned in the table above, the higher the plan you subscribed too, the better Spotify experience and bandwidth you can enjoy. Subscribing to Php299 will give me 1GB of Spotify Premium. That’s roughly $6, and you still get 700MB of mobile data on top of it. If this sounds expensive to you, think about how much people on the US are paying for Spotify’s premium version:
This is what our neighbors from Singapore are paying for a premium account at Spotify:
Clearly, Spotify made it very convenient for Filipinos to try out the service. Through its partnership with Globe, it is now ready to be downloaded by the telco’s 36 million subscribers. And the price? Really inexpensive. I recommend that you try it out for yourself.
Now that the music streaming space has just got a little more competitive with Spotify, it is now up to Smart, another telco which recently partnered with Deezer, to roll out its integration to its mobile subscribers.
Also read: Finally! Spotify ties up with Coca-Cola to launch in the Philippines
