this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago (6 children)

How does this compare to other music streaming services these days?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. Never thought I'd see the day when Tidal was cheaper than crappy Spotify.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Oh I started getting them years ago. That’s when the first inkling of “this thing might be going downhill now” entered my mind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Feel you there. A lot of what i listen to are brand new bands, and finding sources for those is rough

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

£2 a month for a HiFi subscription if you use a Nigerian VPN.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Do you need to stay connected to that, or just for payment setup? I've already got an account...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tidal is great but IIRC it either doesn't support Amazon Echo or the integration is poorly implemented.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They also payout about 2.5X what Spotify does to artists.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Some lyrics are now disappearing from Spotify :-(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The $6 student plan also includes Apple TV+

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

There is an official Apple Music desktop app for windows now, no need to use Cider.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Hell no...Please not based on usage :o

But I'd be fine with the option to do either

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Do you always have to have the VPN connected to get the cheaper rate?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I use YouTube Music and it's pretty good, but the best feature is no more youtube ads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I use Deezer's family plan that includes FLAC/HiFi for $15.99/month.