First price rise since 2011.
In the US, the new prices are:
Premium Individual - $10.99 Premium Duo - $14.99 Premium Family - $16.99 Premium Student - $5.99
The following countries will see price rises:
Andorra, Albania, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Croatia, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Singapore, Slovenia, Slovakia, San Marino, Thailand, Türkiye/Turkey, United States, Kosovo.
I’m actually okay with this. It’s only $1 extra, and somehow Spotify has managed to not get worse over time unlike a lot of other big media platforms these days, and continues to have some of the best inter-app/device compatibility out of any service I’ve ever used.
Yeah, me too. From a consumer perspective, music streaming (not just Spotify) has managed to remain a worthwhile offering, the kind we all said we’d be happy to pay for if it just existed back in the piracy age…
Contrast with video streaming, where you now need to have five different subscriptions just to have a hope of watching half the things you want, where the content changes all the time and geo-limitations abound.
Take my extra quid, Spotify!
I used to YouTube-mp3 a lot of music and then go through the very annoying process of renaming all of the files and moving them to itunes. After about the 6th time my favorite (or newly made favorite) site got removed by DMCA, I gave up and moved to Spotify. They had a 3 month free trial and I marked my calendar to cancel when it was over. When that day came I was like, lol, never mind. It was so much less hassle and less riddled with viruses and ads.
I recently tried to get some self hosted music going, using old CDs I had for example. It’s such a hassle moving things over, even when the automated software tags the files correctly (which only happened half the time)
TV and movies are easy enough to manage your own files for, because it’s a lot more organized and categorizable. With music it’s a mess, and not something worth doing for me.
Also I listen to so much music that it’s nice being able to let it fetch similar music for hours and hours.
Premium Duo is increasing by $2/month. The others are a $1/month increase.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/24/spotify-increases-prices-for-its-premium-subscription-plans.html
For a 12 year gap between increase. That’s a fairly small one. I don’t get the outrage. Our sugar prices have increased more than 5 times in just a span of mere months in our country in comparison. Gas prices fluctuates more than the temperature does.
For a dollar increase, you’d think the world was ending judging by the reaction of internet people.
For real. Do people expect them to keep the same price for forever?
No, but people expect wages to increase along with the cost of living, at the very least, which they aren’t for most. So when all these optional services raise prices at the same time, it’s understandable that people are upset that they’re going to lose/drop some services while their paychecks are stretched thin everywhere else. It’s like mourning the loss of something that was already barely worth it.
It’s also annoying when prices go up and 1) there is little or no increase in quality or convenience to help it feel justified, and 2) other alternatives are still cheaper or better value, for now, and 3) there are free piracy alternatives that many folks previously left behind for convenience and because of affordability.
This is exactly it. It seems like every service is raising prices with no noticeable improvement to the service itself. Hell, this would be easier to swallow if Spotify was going to pay artists more. There doesn’t seem to be any benefit to anyone other than Spotify’s bottom line, which I assure you, is doing just fine.
Shrinkflation. Make a product or service smaller or worse and charge more for it. Been happening for years now across different industries, product types, and service types.
You do realize that providing their service also costs them money? Operational costs aren’t constant either and grow with inflation as everything else does and considering the last price increase this is a reasonable increase to cocer their increased costs.
Real wages are up dramatically over the past two years. Granted that’s the first time in around 25 years, but they are up and significantly so.
By why would you expect the cost increase to mean new features when it’s such a low amount that it’s not even covering the “losses” they’ve made from inflation?
And frankly, I don’t want new features because I’m happy with the service as is. It provides me access to my music, that’s all I need out of it.
It’s the exact same thing as old people complaining that back in their day you could buy a bread for 50 cents or whatever. I think most people just struggle to wrap their heads around inflation and realize that if prices don’t increase the product gets cheaper.
The worst part of it is that regular people will allow their savings to rot away on bad interest rates without understanding how it’s losing value by just being there.
I’d imagine it’s mostly young people who haven’t lived through any natural price increases yet.
If the price increase was following inflation, it’d be up to $13.99. You’re still effectively paying less than you were in 2011.
This is the dumbest story I’ve read in ages, and it’s everywhere. OK, I’ll pay an extra buck a month. If that pisses me off, I drop the service.
Netflix showed that people will lay down and take it; expect more.
Netflix’s catalog also fluctuates wildly, while Spotify’s remains fairly static. This is their first price increase since their inception, and it’s only a dollar. We’ve never been able to listen to Spotify on more than one device at a time, this really isn’t a big deal all things considered. If it’s that big a deal for you, there are plenty of other options.
Idk, I have quite a bit of music fall off my liked playlist because of licencing. They’re not mainstream popular tracks, and sometimes it’s because they update the albums, but it gets annoying when a song I like and have listened to is removed, and if I wanna have it, I need to put a copy of it on all my devices by hand. If they had a way to sync devices with my personal tracks, and support for audiobooks, I would think it’s virtually perfect. Too bad itunes doesn’t work with Android or aupoort a Spotify plugin.
That’s on the record labels and bands.
as i said in my comment, if they had a way for me to sync my personal library to all of my devices without having to set it up manually on every single one, i would not be having these issues. that’s on spotify, not the copyright holders.
I guess Spotify could (and arguably should) add a feature to scan your device for the file, instead of you having to go add it manually. Is that what you meant? Because you comment comes across as you wanting the song to somehow be available on all of your devices despite you having it on only one…
Completely fair price increase based on the timeframe and inflation.
There’s not much benefit of Spotify premium over YouTube premium.
On paper , sure. The YouTube premium interface is enough to make it not worth it. Id rather switch to Apple Music and I’m not a fan of that apps UI either. I feel like google play music was a lot better than what we have now. I pay for yt premium but don’t use it for music if that says anything.
Rip gpm. I’m still so bitter about it going away.
YouTube Premium is also going up: https://9to5google.com/2023/07/19/youtube-premium-price-increase/
Google made $50 billion in profit last year. But sure, they need to increase the price of YouTube. 🙄
I was happy with them too until they decided that the price rate I was grandfathered in for was no longer valid.
I had been a day 1 subscriber of Google Play Music All Access. Was not happy when it switched to YouTube Music, but I wouldn’t be paying extra and it had ad-free YouTube, so I tolerated it. But then they wanted to increase the monthly amount I was paying by 50%, despite supposedly being grandfathered into the lower rate, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I miss ad-free YouTube but I switched to Spotify out of spite. Not so pleased that my Duo plan is going up to $14.99, but that’s how much I was paying for YouTube’s family plan before and is still $8 cheaper than it is now.
I’m pretty sure that YouTube still loses money, serving video isn’t cheap!
I do wish I could just have add free YouTube without paying for the music stuff etc too. It should be illegal for these big companies to bundle all this stuff without allowing individual subscriptions.
Yeah, you get YouTube music plus ad free YouTube. It makes more sense for me, for sure.
If you have android, try revanced
I prefer YouTube premium over Spotify for the same reason, but the feature that made me pay for YouTube is video downloads. I’m traveling a lot and I can spend a flight easily watching YouTube. I don’t listen to that much songs, mostly podcasts and SoundCloud, so I’ll probably pause my subscription when I’m not traveling, if they increase the prices.
Edit: Revanced looks promising, gotta check that.
Does it function like spotify? Does it play well with android auto? I’ve been using Tidal for years & I’m very happy with it but if the YouTube version offers a similar experience with no YouTube ads I’d try it out.
Edit: nvm, it’s more expensive & raising rates soon.
True, I was grandfathered in for a long time and they raised the rate from $16 to $22 so not I just use Revanced and get it for free.
you know, I got the email and I also thought “fuck. now spotify is at it too”. But it’s a dollar people. Get some perspective. That’s not even a fifth of a coffee. once. per month.
yay in poland it is still 20pln (currently 4,98usd)
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None of them. I’d recommend Spotube which combines the audio from YouTube and metadata from Spotify.
If a raise of one dollar is that big of a deal, you probably couldn’t afford spotify to begin with.
A while ago I thought they would increase the price of subscription and introduce HiFi quality, but they do this instead. While I can understand this move and it isn’t that big of a difference, it still feels like a slap in the face because there isn’t any difference in service
They didn’t raise it in my country (Romania), according to the list.
This is said for many price increases across multiple products, the issue is when it’s all happening simultaneously it’s adding up far more in tandem. It’s this, most grocery items, other bills etc when wages aren’t going up that makes it untenable in aggregate. It’s not just Spotify in a vacuum.
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Philippines is not included too even though most other ASEAN countries are on the list.
I know I’m squarely in the minority here but between what Spotify pays the artists on their platform and the incredible inconsistency of availability, features and sound quality I’ll never use it. We have it where I work and it’s awful. Customize that playlist all you want it’s still going to squeeze something in there that was never added, replace a song with some other invariably shittier version and you’ll be riding the volume control like you’re watching a Marvel movie. Remastered song? Blowing out the speakers. Original version? Quieter than a mouse fart. Some weird improperly labelled remix you never asked for? Perfectly clear and we’ll play it three times within an hour despite the playlist being four hours long.
I’ve been using Spotify for 11 years now and I cannot say that’s been my experience at all.
The only time I get bad live versions or covers is when I ask Google Home or Siri to play a song.
Honestly, I’ve been on spotift since 2015, and I have not experienced that either. It’s been rock solid for me
Did you get a Spotify subscription from Wish or something?
Sounds like smart shuffle might be enabled. I’ve never had an issue with Spotify adding songs it thinks I might like when I use the normal shuffle mode.
I don’t understand the argument about the artists’ payments - they agree to be on the platform.
And a stream will always be less value than a full CD sale - it’s also much, much less expensive for the customer.
It’s not like the artists got most of the revenue from CD sales either. Artists being scammed by record labels was so common it was almost a meme.
And yeah they agree to revenue-share because it’s much better than the alternative of piracy and no money.
I think many of the people complaining don’t remember what is used to be like when you would pay £10 per album.
My family plan increased by 3$ in the last 3 years alone, but my experience didn’t improve by 3$. If anything, I don’t think they’ve actually added anything of value since I started using Spotify regularly years ago
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USD 16,99 should be around 15.40 euro. The announcement mail told me it was going to be 18 euro, or about 20 dollar. What could cause this?
Licensing shit-fuckery and/or decision makers think you have more disposable income than an equivalent american.
These streaming services seem to forget that the only reason people use them is because they are incrementally easier than piracy, which is now safe, effective and free. Expect more articles soon about how torrenting is on the rise, piracy is killing the industry, etc. but also head over to /c/selfhosted and /c/piracy.
A VPN / seedbox and a homeserver will cost you far more than the $1 per month difference.
I have a NAS working 24/7 either way to store large data (photos, Skyrim mods etc) and backups. Might as well use it for Jellyfin, Navidrome and qBittorrent, too, instead of idling 90% of time🙃
I downgraded from Family to Duo as I didn’t know Duo existed until they put the family plan price up. Jokes on you, Spotify!
