Is It Legal to Download Spotify Songs? Copyright Basics

Getting an MP3 of a song takes seconds. Whether you’re allowed to, and what you may do with the file, is a different question. This plain-language guide covers the basics. It is general information, not legal advice, and the rules differ between countries.

Who owns a song

Every recording has at least two layers of rights:

• the composition (melody and lyrics), owned by the songwriters and their publishers;
• the sound recording, usually owned by the record label.

Spotify has licences to stream that music to its users. Those licences don’t pass on to you: a song being on Spotify means you may listen to it there, not that you may copy it.

What Spotify’s terms say

Spotify’s Terms of Use don’t allow copying or “ripping” content from the Spotify service. Spot Downloader doesn’t do that: it never records or decrypts Spotify’s streams. It reads the song details from Spotify’s public catalogue and a conversion service finds a matching recording elsewhere. The copyright in the music still applies to that file.

Downloading for private listening

Whether making a private copy of music is legal depends on where you live:

• Some countries allow private copying of music you have lawful access to, often in exchange for a levy on blank media and devices.
• Others, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have no general private-copying exception for downloads.

Rights holders rarely pursue individuals for private listening, but that doesn’t make it legal everywhere. If you want to be certain, buy the song or use Spotify Premium’s offline mode.

What is clearly not allowed

Almost everywhere, you need permission from the rights holders before you:

• share downloaded songs with others or upload them anywhere;
• use them in videos, podcasts, streams or adverts, even short clips;
• play them in public in a shop, gym, café or event without a public-performance licence;
• sell or redistribute them in any form.

Social media apps have their own licensed music libraries for videos; use those instead of downloaded songs.

Supporting artists

Streaming pays artists a fraction of a cent per play. If you love an artist, the best support is to buy their music and merchandise, go to their shows and keep streaming them. Downloads for offline listening are no replacement for that.

If you are a rights holder

To have a song, album, playlist or artist blocked from Spot Downloader, follow our DMCA & Copyright Policy. To have content removed from Spotify itself, use Spotify’s own copyright policy.

The short version

• Keep downloads for your own private listening, and check the rules in your country.
• Never share, upload, sell or publicly play downloaded songs.
• Buy music and support the artists you listen to most.