Spotify is making ready a revamp of its plans and costs, in line with a brand new report from Bloomberg. This can embody value hikes in just a few main markets, and there will even be a brand new plan that does not embody audiobooks.
The costs will go up by about $1 per 30 days for particular person plans to $2 per 30 days for the household plans and duo plans within the UK, Australia, Pakistan, and two different unnamed markets, the report says. Within the US, its largest market, a value hike is coming “later this yr”, in line with “individuals accustomed to the matter”.
The upper pricing will allegedly assist cowl the price of audiobooks, which Spotify has not too long ago began providing. Spotify subscribers stand up to fifteen hours of audiobook listening per 30 days. However after all the corporate must pay publishers of the audiobooks for all that listening time it is providing for ‘free’, despite the fact that to date it is solely made cash for audiobooks from listeners who exceed the aforementioned restrict.
Spotify can be apparently going to introduce a brand new plan that can provide solely music and podcasts, with out audiobooks. This can be priced the identical as its present particular person premium plan. Customers of this upcoming tier must pay for audiobooks. So principally, it goes like this: first, Spotify provides audiobooks to the prevailing premium plan, then it hikes its value up however launches a brand new plan that’s similar sans audiobooks.
All of it appears designed to hook individuals on the premium plan into audiobooks thus getting them to remain on this plan even when the value will get bumped, whereas those that do not care about audiobooks might want to bounce by the additional hoop of switching plans every time the brand new one launches.
However wait, there’s extra. A “supremium” plan (critically) is coming too, supplying you with entry to high-fidelity audio, “amongst different options” that are not detailed. This has been rumored for years, so perhaps it is lastly dropping in 2024?
Spotify has not too long ago been wanting (nearly to a determined stage, it could appear) to diversify from providing simply music, because it’s paying report labels and artists about 70% of its income. Thus, its podcast push was born just a few years in the past, and not too long ago we bought audiobooks. However this satirically has alarmed its companions within the music business, who now concern they are going to be getting much less cash from Spotify. And their response to that concern has allegedly been pushing Spotify to boost costs.
Final yr, Spotify hiked its costs for the primary time since introducing its premium tier, and the transfer appears to have had no detrimental results by any means, as its userbase grew by 113 million – the very best progress it is ever seen. On the finish of 2023, Spotify had 602 million complete customers, of which 236 million had been paying clients. The success of final yr’s value hike has given the corporate’s administration the boldness to do it once more.
