Spotify announces price hikes less than a year after its last ones.

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.

  • impure9435@kbin.run
    191·
    7 months ago

    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.

      • GenEcon@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        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?

        • PixelAlchemist@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          7 months ago

          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/

          • GenEcon@lemm.eeEnglish
            31·
            7 months ago

            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).

            • PixelAlchemist@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              7 months ago

              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.