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 $12 monthly fee.
Spotify locks music is new to me? And for the few Podcasts I personally couldnt care less
Platform agnostic = you own the mp3/FLACC/ect file, and can play it through whatever client you want
Platform Locked = you do not own the files, and they are DRM locked to their proprietary media player (see: spotify, kindle, ect)
Of course there are ways around those locks, but it’s illegal to remove DRM protections (in the us)
You can switch to another service any time you want though.
You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it
It’s way cheaper though.
Idk if I owned as many cds as I’ve spent on music subscriptions I’d own more high fidelity music than I’d know what to do with
BS. One new CD is at least 10$. A good band collection is then a year worth of subscription fees. So, do you only listen to a few bands?
Before Spotify I pirated everything. In lossless, ofc. I had 200GB of music, it wouldn’t fit on my ipod classic, and I still was limited.
I pirated at least a lifetime worth of Spotify premium and yet when I switched to Spotify I discovered so many more artists like the ones I already liked. If I now tried to buy all the songs I’ve listened to more than once in the last 5 years, I’d go bankrupt.
Spotify is way cheaper.
(now add ease of discovering new music, listening to whatever your friends want to listen to in a car, collaborative playlists, etc etc)
Gotcha.
Thought iof it in a more of a Exclusive-To-Platform kind of way.Yea I figured, no worries
I wish we could offload podcasts and audio books. I have zero interest in them, or paying for them.
And fucking Joe asshole Rogan. We’re paying for his Neanderthal 150 million contract.
I like them but not on my music service. It’s in my way all the time. I have audible and I use a different app for podcasts. At least give me the option, but they won’t because I’m sure they get an incentive.
Already switched to Deezer and liking it way more
Wonder what it will go to in Canada. Glad I dropped Spotify for YouTube
I am the reverse. After the Google play music killing, ytm was worse. Ytm might be killed any time.
What’s “spotify”?
It’s a paid alternative to “Spot-X” and “BlockTheSpot” 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
It’s the “we have Apple Music” at home of streaming services.
Basically: more expensive, shitty UI, no lossless or high-res audio. Oh, and they pay the least to artists of all streaming services.
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.
I’m all for going sailing but if there are features you want that that can’t quite replicate, it’s also a great time to look at a VPN service with a server in Turkey… Sign up on a Turkish IP and the exchange rate puts you under $2/month USD. This works for a lot of other things too.
I believe a dude on YouTube for a very popular streamer used an IP from Argentina to get 50 subs for YouTube premium to giveaway for only a couple bucks.
I love you.
I know.
How does this compare to other music streaming services these days?
I feel they’re all fairly similar. I won’t do apple music because I don’t do iOS, and I moved from Google play music when forced to the inferior YouTube music. I wonder if tidal or any other service has comparable pricing.
I’ve been using Apple Music on Android for years, I definitely recommend it. The app is totally fine, I think it’s still better than Spotify’s crappy app. On desktop you can use the Cider app, which is much better than iTunes. It’s even available on Linux.
I switched to AM a couple years ago due to the (better) privacy policy vs YTM. The app is ‘fine’ but it’s painfully obvious that they didn’t want to bother with the android UI guidelines. But it’s a small annoyance, and the price is… palatable, I guess? I think I’d jump ship at $14, but at $12, fine. I don’t use it that much.
Actually, it’d be nice if they would charge based on usage, not flat-rate. I doubt I’m using $3 of that $12 cost.
Hell no…Please not based on usage :o
But I’d be fine with the option to do either
There is an official Apple Music desktop app for windows now, no need to use Cider.
I use YT Music because I get it cheap (VPN shenanigans), you can upload your own music (hello Nintendo soundtracks), and I mod the Android app to stop it being a mess (ReVanced Extended is the GOAT).
Do you always have to have the VPN connected to get the cheaper rate?
Nah just when I bought it. I did this a while ago so I’m not sure if it still works.
I’m gonna cling onto the quid a month rate for dear life.
I use YouTube Music and it’s pretty good, but the best feature is no more youtube ads.
Tidal is $11/mo for an individual and $17 for a 6 person family plan. I recently switched because they supposedly give a better cut to artists and serve flac files.
Tidal is great but IIRC it either doesn’t support Amazon Echo or the integration is poorly implemented.
Oh no.
Yeah. Never thought I’d see the day when Tidal was cheaper than crappy Spotify.
If i wasn’t paying for a family play on Spotify, I would have resorted to music piracy at this point. The quality is still garbage, the service is getting worse, but the prices are only going up every half a year
I tried sourcing my own music but man it’s a lot harder than movies and shows. Especially when you like to hear random recommended music how do you get enough
Feel you there. A lot of what i listen to are brand new bands, and finding sources for those is rough
Yeah - credit where it’s due, Spotify did a really good job with their music recommendation engine. It’s just that recently, they’ve started to get into the sad part of the enshittification cycle. I kinda saw the writing on the wall when they started forcing Joe Rogan podcast promos fucking everywhere, without having a config anywhere to disable podcast suggestions (which I don’t use through Spotify)
I’m surprised you’re only getting these now. My recommendations have been mostly garbage for the better part of a decade so all this praise for finding new music confuses me a little. Spotify has many feats, but the algorithm never was one for me, quite the opposite. I find it more annoying than helpful, actually.
My beginning (about 6 years ago) was fine. Still miss the radio feature though.
They kinda brought it back but in a reverse form (former: 4 new 1 old, now: 5 old 1 new).
Playlist shuffle is atrocious but I am not picking them better any better.Oh I started getting them years ago. That’s when the first inkling of “this thing might be going downhill now” entered my mind.
£2 a month for a HiFi subscription if you use a Nigerian VPN.
So if you use a VPN to sign up, then disconnect the VPN, does it block you? Or do you always need to be on VPN?
You don’t need to be connected on the VPN to use it, I find it identical to my previous UK subscription.
Only difference is that your initial recommendations are for Nigerian music 😆 Those disappear quite quickly after you start listening to music you like tho.
Apple Music only raised the price by $1 since the launch in 2015 (9 years ago). But they added cool features like lossless audio quality and Dolby Atmos. They also had lyrics like 6 years before Spotify added them. I think you can even get it for $6 dollars if you’re a student.
They also payout about 2.5X what Spotify does to artists.
How does this work? Spotify has a deal with the music publishers, where they give 70 % of all subscription income to the music companies. The music companies (Sony, Warner, etc) then split the money based on the share of streams.
How can Apple pay out 2.5x70 %, so 175 %? Are thes losing with every subscription?
Think of it not in terms of revenue percentages, but by payouts per song stream:
Service Payout/song Plays to make $1 Tidal Music $0.01284 78 Apple Music $0.008 125 Amazon Music $0.00402 249 Spotify $0.00318 314 YouTube Music $0.002 500 Pandora $0.00133 752 Deezer $0.0011 909 So song for song, Apple is paying 2.5x what Spotify is (.008/.00318), and Tidal is paying out a whopping 4x what Spotify pays.
Sauce: https://producerhive.com/music-marketing-tips/streaming-royalties-breakdown/
That whole article is BS, they even say it themselves:
Rates are rarely paid at a flat rate per stream
There is no payout per stream. Instead a fixed percentage of the subscription price is shared among each streamed song. So why does Tidal pay more then? Either their subscriber numbers are still incorrect (they have a history of publishing way higher numbers than in reality), their subscriber listen to less music (which is the main reason Apple Music pays more per stream on paper, since its often bundled) or their audience focuses more on a single artist (or a genre).
Sure. Obviously it’s more complex than that, but it helps illustrate where the math came from in the parent comment. I don’t know why Tidal pays more, but I’m hypothesizing its because most of their “co-owners” of Tidal are themselves, artists/musicians, which IMO is significantly better than the out of touch folks running Spotify.
Some lyrics are now disappearing from Spotify :-(
The $6 student plan also includes Apple TV+
I use Apple Music, primarily because I need to pay for the higher tiers iCloud storage for my wife’s photo addiction and it’s basically “free” for the family plan.
If I didn’t already have the higher tier iCloud, I would probably prefer tidal for higher quality, or Spotify for the more diverse library.
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.
SpotX works quite well.
I don’t understand why people pay for a music subscription when you can just use YouTube Music (ReVanced or FOSS YTMusic clients) for the freezies.
Do those things give you DJ and radio options? I’m too lazy to go find the songs I want. I’d rather just let the app put on tunes and learn what I like based on feedback and behavior.
SimpMusic allows you to login to your Google account, and will sync your YTMusic recommendations. It also has radios. :)
“it’s just another dollar, brah”
It is worth the extra features, like not being able to remove an unwanted podcast from your play list. Why Spotify, why!?
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.
In the early 90s I used to pay around 10 to 15 euros (20 to 30 with current inflation) for each CD release.
And still we still complain nowadays.
We got a problem with the streaming industry but it’s not the price we pay. We must be reasonable, say that the price is 15 bucks, is that really unreasonable for getting at your fingertips and everywhere most of the music even produced? I don’t.
I think the major problem with Spotify isn’t Spotify problem, but an industry problem. If I remember correctly, Spotify gets around 30%, then there’s the distributor, and it gets around 40%. Whatever’s left of the cake is divided between the label and the artist depending on the contract. The industry created something that didn’t need to exist, another intermediate, the distributor. First apple used them cause of the work they do arranging all the needed metadata and keeping it tidy. The industry created them, now it can’t get rid of them, and they “eat” the most part of the money.
Then why does tidal for the same price as spotify with way less users pay four times as much to the artists than spotify? Spotify has the largest market share and now they are trying to milk the cow as much as they can because people are too lazy to switch. Most people don’t even know that you can transfer playlists. Same with Netflix (although they at least have more exclusive content).
Then why does tidal for the same price as spotify with way less users pay four times as much to the artists than spotify?
I wonder why too. Spotify takes a 30% cut, but even if Tidal takes 0% cuts, how come it can pays 4x as much to artists? There must be more to the math to make it check out.
Royalties come out of profits.
Profits = revenue - costs.
Inflate costs (pay 3rd parties you also own) and pay less royalties.
At least that’s how the movie business works.
I don’t really like Tidal, but this is why I have stuck with Tidal instead of switching back to Spotify. At least the artists get more money, and I get my higher bitrate. Now it seems that prices are getting even closer to parity, so that’s less of a reason to switch back.
I considered trying Qobuz or Deezer, but I’m too lazy to switch right now.
