Spotify and live radio — what it carries, and what it does not
Claims about Spotify checked on . Sources are linked at the bottom.
This is the one comparison on this site where the honest answer is that the two products are not substitutes. Spotify is a music subscription. We are a directory of live radio stations. If you want to pick a song and hear it now, Spotify is the answer and we are not — nothing below changes that.
The reason the page exists is that people do search for live radio on Spotify, and the answer is not obvious from either product.
What Spotify says it sells
On 11 September 2026, Spotify’s Swedish Premium page describes playing songs in any order, lossless audio, listening together in real time, and monthly audiobook hours. The words “radiostation” and “direktsänd” — radio station and live broadcast — do not appear on that page at all. Their newsroom puts the catalogue at 100 million tracks and 7 million podcast titles, for 777 million users across 184 markets.
Spotify does use the word “radio” inside the app, for a mix built from a song or artist you pick. We could not verify how that feature currently behaves from Spotify’s public pages — their support articles for it return a not-found page — so this comparison stays with what their product pages state.
What a live station is instead
A radio station is programmed by someone else, right now, for everybody listening at once. You do not choose the next track; that is the point of it. A local breakfast show, a national news bulletin on the hour, a station in a city you used to live in — none of that is a playlist, and none of it is in a music catalogue. That is the part we cover: roughly 62,000 stations from more than 177 countries, free, in the browser, with no account.
Side by side
| Spotify | OnlineRadio | |
|---|---|---|
| What it actually is | An on-demand music and audiobook subscription | A directory of live radio broadcasts |
| Price in Sweden | Individual 129 kr/month, Duo 189 kr, Family 219 kr, Student 70 kr | Free. Premium $4.99/month or $49.99/year |
| Catalogue | 100 million tracks, 7 million podcast titles | About 62,000 live stations, 177+ countries |
| Choose what plays next | Yes — any song, any order | No. A station is programmed by someone else, live |
| Live broadcast radio stations | Not mentioned anywhere on their Premium page | The entire product |
What Spotify does better
- Spotify is an enormously larger product than ours, and it is not close. 100 million tracks against our 62,000 stations, 777 million users, 184 markets. Almost any question about music that is not "what is on the radio right now" has a better answer there.
- On-demand is the whole thing we cannot do. Choosing a song, replaying it, building a playlist, listening offline, lossless audio — none of that is what a live broadcast is, and none of it is coming here.
- Spotify has plans for two people and for six, and a student discount. We have one personal plan and a family plan, and no student pricing.
- If you are deciding between the two, the honest framing is that most people who use us also use something like Spotify. They answer different questions.