How do I download a Spotify playlist?

Quick answer

You need Spotify Premium. Open the playlist while you're online and tap the download arrow near the top; the songs save for offline play. On the free plan, Spotify only lets you download podcasts.

It works the same on phone, tablet and the desktop app. Downloaded playlists show up in Your Library, where you can play them with no signal. On mobile you can't download a single song, so add it to a playlist first and download that.

Spotify's limits: up to 10,000 tracks on each of up to 5 devices, and you have to go online at least once every 30 days or the downloads are removed. Premium costs $12.99 a month for an individual plan.

These downloads only play inside Spotify. They aren't MP3 files you can copy elsewhere, and Spotify's user guidelines ban ripping or transferring cached content to another device, which is why "Spotify to MP3" converters are a bad idea.

If what you want is a saved list of the songs, that's a different job. Our guide to exporting a Spotify playlist to CSV or text shows the free tools that do it.