Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.
Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn’t raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify’s continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.
Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.
I’m sure this is the last time. 😉
Surely it’s because they want to increase the amount they pay the musicians.
I pay about that already (~$14 a month), but for Napster, which afaik gives the biggest cut of any streaming service to artists. They also have really good custom playlist management, I never get intrusive popups or emails, and premium means no ads, even with hours of listening. I switched after the Joe Rogan thing happened with Spotify and never looked back honestly.
What joe Rogan Spotify thing?
Spotify spending millions to have the Joe Rogan podcast on their platform.
If you just want music, Spotify is wasting a lot of your subscription fee on unwanted features like podcasts, AI nonsense etc.
Did you use a time machine to get here from 2002?
No actually! Napster bought Rhapsody and now runs a music streaming platform.
I get the reaction though lol. That was my reaction too when a friend of mine recommended it. But I tried it and it is actually really nice, and the price hasn’t gone up in the years I have had it.
Interesting. Do you ever run into music not available on it?
Also the price is currently cheaper than $14. Do you have the family plan?
I do have the family plan actually, I forgot about that!
And I do occasionally. Certain live albums and more niche stuff can be hard to find, and one hit wonders can be tricky depending on the genre and time the song is from. The song I’m Blue by Eiffel 65 is only available in a longer club mix and not the radio edit, for example.
I will say that, in my experience, it has a slightly larger selection than Spotify for classic stuff and different versions of the same song (covers, remakes, remixes, etc). For example, my husband was very excited that they had the whole readout of How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Boris Karloff (in two parts, but still) because they used to play it on certain radio stations every year around Christmas. On Spotify I was only ever able to find the same version of the song from several different albums of Christmas mixes.
Thanks for this! I will consider my options. I remember when Spotify was $7 a month. it was easy to justify then, less so each time they hike the price.
How long have you been a Napster subscriber?
Two or three years, I think. So far the price has stayed exactly the same, they still have no ads, and they haven’t made any changes to the app to try to advertise features or anything like that. It was (and still is) a nice change from Spotify, Apple Music, and even YouTube to be honest.
Thanks for all the info!
Well considering the last price hike got us gems like the music 8-ball/magic crystal thing, I can barely wait to see what banger they’ll come up with to bloat my music player with next.
It should be audiobooks this time, if I heard correctly.
And removal of much of Spotify curated playlists…
So mad about that part >:(Every “Zusammengestellt für” playlist is a autogenerated playlist and probably not a single human touched that shit. So much less discoverability.
I HATE these ‘made for you’ playlists, just repeats of my liked songs and songs it’s always trying to shove down my throat. Some of them barely fit the genre/vibe of the playlist too.
Part of the original appeal of Spotify for me years ago was the curated playlists.
I don’t mind paying $10/mo for access to millions of songs on demand, even if the caveat is that I don’t own anything at the end of my subscription.
I understand costs have gone up, so I can accept a $1 increase in subscription. The problem is that Spotify wants to do a bunch of side projects at my expense. I have no interest in podcasts or audiobooks yet I must fork up the extra money to fund it. I have no say in what my money is being used for and I hate that.
It’s why I moved from it to Tidal and then to Apple Music (even though I’m on Android). Both have their own issues but at least they’re focused on music.
The problem is that Spotify is losing money each year. They aren’t profitable. And if they are keep focusing on music, they never will. Their deal with the music labels says that they need to give 70 % of each subscription to the music labels. So by getting more people to signup, they only marginally increase their revenue. Some goes for raising their prices.
Thats why they tried focusing on Podcasts and Audiobooks. Those are a lot more profitable, either by adding ads (Podcasts) or by charging a premium (audiobooks).
It’s amazing to think how incompetent their management must be that they’re charging more, delivering lower audio quality, and paying less to artists than competitors like Tidal, yet still aren’t profitable.
They pay less than Tidal claims it pays. So far Tidal has a really bad history of publishing correct numbers.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware that they weren’t profitable.
Funny enough, right after your comment I got recommended this video on YouTube talking about the points you mentioned: https://youtu.be/yDWgOwb8kj4
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/yDWgOwb8kj4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hang on. 70% of the subscription before any royalty / streaming costs?
So in a $10 payment, $7 is immediately removed, then another say $1 for streaming costs leaving only $2 for profits which Spotify takes 30%?
From each $10 only $1.40 goes to artists?
From the 10 Dollar, taxes will be deducted. Afterwards Apple or Google take their share (if you subscribe using the App). Of the remaining money the Music labels take 70 %, and Spotify keeps 30 %. The music labels pay a fraction of the 70 % to the artists, depending on the contract and the artist’s share of streams reported by Spotify.
There is an episode of Tech Won’t Save Us (2024-01-25) discussing how weird the podcasting play was for Spotify. There is essentially no way to monetize podcasts at scale, primarily because podcasts do not have the same degree of platform look-in as other media types.
Spotify spent the $100 million (or whatever the number was) to get Rogan exclusive, but for essentially every other podcast you can find a free RSS feed with skippable ads. Also their podcast player just outright sucks :/
Hope you like Joe Rogan and the crap he peddles because he is getting a nice chunk of Spotify money… I left because of that particular deal
Any particular reason you went from Tidal to Apple Music? I see a lot of people here recommending it, so I’d be interested to hear any negatives it has.
I was a Google Play Music person and loved it, and then they changed to YouTube. I got mad and tried Apple Music, but as a classical music lover it’s vastly less than ideal for several reasons, so I went to Spotify and realized they liked to shuffle Britney Spears into me listening to lieder, so I went back to YouTube because at least they didn’t do that. But it’s just so basic compared to the absolute perfection that was GPM, and difficult to navigate. I don’t know where to go next. I’ve been buying records on Bandcamp but I also like the streaming service to discover music with.
You could check out deezer. It’s European and they have a classical music section. Not sure how good it is. It’s like $110 for a yearly subscription and they offer hi-fi streaming. Just another option for you to check out. 🤷
Sounds good actually. I wonder if I can look at their content and see if they have what I want before subscribing? Any idea?
The app won’t let you without signing in, I don’t think, but i think the website does. Try this link or you can go to deezer.com and if you go to the hamburger menu at the bottom it has an “explore channels” option.
Edit: It’s odd they don’t let people browse I’m a more friendly way. And just so you know, once you sign up, you can search, make playlists, download for offline etc, the mostly same as spotify. When u first sign up, it also give you the option to migrate all your spotify plsylists over. Out of my thousands of songs saved, it did have 2 or 3 that didn’t transfer over due to just not having it.
Just to let you know, Tidal is not that great either.
Frequently having issues with downloaded albums, where I go into offline mode, pull up an album, and it says “can’t connect” despite being in offline mode and the album taking up storage space on my phone.
Also, the discovery and new releases sections aren’t very well made.
It doesn’t sound great. Maybe I’ll just use Bandcamp only. It’s just some classical albums are only on certain platforms.
High chance they’re all on Slsk as lossless files. That and foobar2000 and you’ll be back in control of your music listening habits. Then buy physical from the artists if you want to support them and they offer a way to obtain it.
Please speak to me like I’m dumb and explain all of this.
Maybe try Napster: https://www.napster.com/ Sounds a bit like a joke, but it’s not. It used to be Rhapsody, but was re-branded.
I was also a Google music enjoyer and also find the other streaming options pretty crappy. I’ve actually moved over to more curated options like internet radio for when I’m not in the mood for anything specific. Shout-out to NTS, I love you.
What is NTS?
nts.live internet radio from London
If you like classical music, give qobuz a try… High quality audio, large selection of classical music.
If you like to upload your own music (like Google music), iBroadcast is the tippy tops. You can still use bandcamp (with or without yt-dlp) for discovery, and then upload what you like to iBroadcast.
You should get back to apple music, they launched an app dedicated to classical music, and it’s by far the best for this type of music. Also it’s lossless 24 bits
Unfortunately due to licensing there’s a lot of stuff I want they don’t have, and some of it I can’t purchase.
Qobuz is the best for classical music, for sure - either that or piracy. I’d probably go with piracy
Bookmarking this page so I can learn modern sailing techniques. Audiophiles who sail the seven seas, please teach me your ways! My most hasn’t hit the surf in a hot minute.
Xmanager if on Android.
just PUT some magnets IntO a service
Deemix-gui + Deezer subscription or SoulSeek/Nicotine+
I use the former. How does it compare to the other two?
In theory you can go Deezer method without owning subscription. Plenty of publicly available ARL cookies.
As an audiophile it’s like, way less exhausting to just go with Tidal, over pirating good quality music. Especially if you’re like me and listen to nearly anything and everything.
Yeah, but enshittification will happen there too. It’s just a matter of time.
Fingers crossed for Tidal, since its made by a bunch of musicians, I think Jay Z is the big one. They actually pay the artists a decent amount, and lowered MOST everyone’s price and upgraded the their quality, so taking a big hit of hopium they’re good enough to not go to shit.
Are there any other music service that has a decent Wear OS app? Spotify allows me to download and listen to my music offline, and the app is not too bad.
Maybe tidal?
Tidal is basically Spotify, but cheaper, pays more to the artists and is, imo, better.
Googling for “tidal wearos” has some interesting bits, but I don’t have a smart watch so I have no idea what I’m looking atNope, I used to pay for Tidal and I liked that app but it has no Wear OS app. They do have one for Apple Watch but I dont like Apple much.
Ahoy!
No, that’s a youtube channel /s
Just canceled my family plan. I like Apple Music more anyways.
“it’s just another dollar, brah”
For anyone who hasn’t checked their Spotify subscription for a while, I recently discovered a new basic tier created underneath the premium one that is a little cheaper simply by not including the ‘free’ 15 hours of audiobooks. I’ve never used it and don’t intend to. YMMV.
Is the audio quality the same?
Yeah! It’s ‘premium’ in all ways except that audiobook offer. Prettttyyyy shitty behaviour from them.
SpotX works quite well.
Obligatory Fuck Spotify comment.
More money More crap nobody wants like audio books Still haven’t seen cd quality streaming yet
I used to happy with Spotify before the enshitificatuon happened…
What annoys me is you still have to pay for audio books.
I have used Spotify’s 15 free hours a month for shorter light novels, but beyond that, buying the rights to listen to a book, or buying more listening hours is very much not worth it through them.
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I got Tidal for a month to try it out because I had gotten some XM4s and wanted to check out the 360 Reality Audio tracks, and I was disappointed to find just how few of them there actually are. 😕
Edit: I see not that they did away with that ultra premium tier and folded those 360 Reality Audio tracks into the regular plans…they really did make it cheaper. Looks like I’m switching back to Tidal.
