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Music United Kingdom United States

Spotify Is Raising Prices For Lots of Its Plans (theverge.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Spotify is increasing the price of many of its subscriptions this week across the UK and parts of Europe, with the US seeing a hike to Family plans. The Verge reports: Subscribers have started to receive emails informing them of the changes, and they will affect Student, Duo, and Family plans across parts of Europe and the UK, and Family subscriptions in the US from April 30th. Single Spotify Premium subscriptions are unaffected. Spotify family is increasing from $14.99 to $15.99 per month in the US. Fortunately, Duo, Premium, and Student pricing will remain the same... for now. The bigger hits to pricing will affect users in the UK and Europe.

In the UK, Spotify Student is increasing from 4.99 to 5.99 pounds per month, with a Duo subscription (for two people) moving from 12.99 to 13.99 pounds a month. Family users will also be hit with price increases, with the Spotify Family plan (up to six accounts) jumping from 14.99 to 16.99 pounds a month. Similar price increases will affect Spotify users in some European countries, too. Ireland and a handful of other European countries will see both Student and Duo increasing by a euro each per month, to 5.99 and 12.99 euros per month respectively. The Family plan in Europe is also increasing from 14.99 to 17.99 euros per month. Some countries in Asia and South America will also see similar price increases.

All existing Spotify subscribers in the US, Europe, and UK users of Spotify will have a one-month grace period before prices are automatically increased, so existing subscribers will see an increase during the June period of billing.
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Spotify Is Raising Prices For Lots of Its Plans More

Spotify Is Raising Prices For Lots of Its Plans

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    • [Tumbleweed blows past...]

    • No, see, as economics of scale increase, costs go up! /s

      As much as I dislike Spotify, monetary inflation is sufficient to explain price increases so there's no need to invoke their #getwokegobroke strategy for an explanation. Or a sudden compassion for artists.

    • Let me guess...

      Considering they posted a $580million net *LOSS* last year and gave guidance for a $78million net *LOSS* for the first quarter of this year, where do you think they are going to get the money to pay artists more? Rob a bank? Start a printing press? Sell cocaine on the black market? Maybe send hitman to kill some of the artists so they can redistribute the wealth?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        Let me guess...

        Considering they posted a $580million net *LOSS* last year and gave guidance for a $78million net *LOSS* for the first quarter of this year, where do you think they are going to get the money to pay artists more? Rob a bank? Start a printing press? Sell cocaine on the black market? Maybe send hitman to kill some of the artists so they can redistribute the wealth?

        Paying your suppliers is a basic requirement of running a business. If they can't do that then they should be shut down for dealing in stolen goods/fraud/piracy or whatever you think you would be charged with if you did the same thing.

        "Oh, but we're entrepreneurs; you can't treat us like you treat ordinary people! "

        • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

          And they are paying their suppliers. They are paying their suppliers their agreed upon and contractually obligated requirements. Can you show where Spotify is in breach of contract because I sure can't.

          So why do you feel the need to get involved oh random internet peanut gallery man?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        So you're saying they are NOT going to adopt the practices of the major labels?

  • Why is a Family one £17 in the UK and only $16 in the US? It's just a digital service.

    • Racism.

    • Spotify pays Value Added Tax in UK...
      oh wait...

    • ... have differing prices around the world.

      Because they can.

    • Because not enough people cancel their subscriptions in response to price hikes.

      • O_o

        Pretty sure raising prices is a change of contract and requires the customer's consent. As in: "You're free to go if you don't like it." As in: there's your possibility to quit. It's not like your access to Spotify is an inelastic good you can't live without.

    • different taxes, different currency values, different laws that you have to spend money following

    • Because the markets in different regions will bear different pricing.

      What's the matter? Anti-capitalism?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Two likely explanations - taxes and price discrimination.

      My guess would be taxes. Remember companies don't really pay taxes they either pass the costs of those taxes along into the product price, reduce dividends to the owners, or the business fails the government having removed an otherwise potentially viable product from the market place. Its probably more expensive due to taxation to operate in the UK.

      The other possibility is price discrimination. You segment you clients in various ways (brand it Lincol

      • Keep seeing this misunderstanding of corporate taxation. Corporate taxes are paid on profits, not on income. If youâ(TM)re not profitable (and Spotify currently is not) then you pay no corporation tax. Nada, zip, zilch. It doesnâ(TM)t matter how high or low corporation tax is, it will never cause a business to fail. In addition, people seem to have this idea that the corporate response to a raised tax rate will be to be raise prices. Economics 101: the corporation is already charging as much as t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jemmyw ( 624065 )
          what you say is completely true, and I've often seen the same mistake made. A small business owner I worked for a few years ago told me that higher taxes on his business profit would make him try to spend more on the business, lower taxes would encourage him to take the money out, so at least in his case, higher taxes = more business spending and growth.

          However, in this particular case, spotify is probably passing on the higher VAT tax to UK customers.
  • Now you know where the money to buy Arsenal is coming from.
  • Because if you're talking about spot-ify the STD delivery service, I'm thinking about canceling my plan.

  • Streaming Services Entering the Cable Realm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hipp5 ( 1635263 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @07:05AM (#61318890)

    10-15 years ago when people rebelled against the crap that was cable, the rallying cry was, "make it easy for me to watch and listen to what I want at a reasonable price and I’ll have no desire to pirate." And along comes Netflix and Spotify and the desire to pirate pretty much evaporates. But prices have been creeping up and content has become fragmented. We’re basically at the point where things are as complicated and expensive as cable TV and buying CDs was.

    I’m almost at the threshold of going back to pirating.

    • I'll admit the video market is still very fragmented, and still too expensive, but I think Spotify and other music services are doing a pretty good job creating a one stop location for a very acceptable price. $16 a month for a family plan is actually an amazing deal. Less than the cost of a couple CDs a month for just about all the music out there. There are some artists who decide to be exclusive to one platform or the other, but they are in the minority, and I think that artists like this are on the wron

      • That might be reasonable if the songs weren't being delivered over the Internet. The cost of a CD goes into the design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of the CD. What's left is like $1-2 for lawyers and artists. And at the end of the month, you don't own anything like you do with a CD. Not to mention CDs are higher quality than the streams on Spotify.

        Add that all together and I'd say $16/month is a raw deal to most people.

    • 10-15 years ago when people rebelled against the crap that was cable, the rallying cry was, "make it easy for me to watch and listen to what I want at a reasonable price and I’ll have no desire to pirate." And along comes Netflix and Spotify and the desire to pirate pretty much evaporates. But prices have been creeping up and content has become fragmented. We’re basically at the point where things are as complicated and expensive as cable TV and buying CDs was.

      I’m almost at the threshold of going back to pirating.

      A big difference is most of the streaming services don't have commercials on top of the monthly fee. Cable had this plus also pay for cable service and pay for extra channels. I think overall we are still ahead.

    • While it may seem like it, the cable realm was raising prices amidst large profits with major cable owners counted among the 1% of the world's wealthy.

      On the flip side a quadruple amputee can count on his non-existent fingers and toes the number of years Spotify has made a profit. They must be so evil losing $580million last year and daring to raise prices. How could they!

      Also content in Spotify has not become fragmented. In fact in the music streaming world content is hardly fragmented at all with basicall

    • things are as complicated and expensive as [...] buying CDs was

      Is this is a serious statement? How many CDs did you use to buy a month? 0.5?

  • 100% decrease in Spotify plans (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @07:43AM (#61318984) Homepage
    Remember all those MP3s you burned, sitting in that folder covered in dust? Roll your own server. Ampache is good but vlc over ssh is all you need.
    • Why would you need to roll your own server? Just put them all on your iPhone or Android phone. I just press a button on my iPhone to play _my_ music (nothing streamed) through my headphones, the mini speaker in the kitchen, the larger speakers in the living room, the large speakers in my study or the speakers in the TV.
    • Lots of good options for music streaming out there. Ampache is pretty nice but doesn't have a good mobile client. Jellyfin is working ok for me, and Kodi. Of course to get mobile with this you should also set up a VPN to your home network (which is nice to protect your mobile device network traffic anyway, especially if you're using Pihole etc.)

    • That is an excellent idea, if all you ever listen to are seven metal albums from the 80's, over and over. But then one wonders, what were you doing on Spotify in the first place?

      For those of us who likes to listen to new music, Spotify is still excellent value for our money. My spending on music is probably around 30-40% of what I paid before Spotify, and I get more music too.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      Why bother? I pay $16 a month for Spotify family service, 6 accounts. That is the cost roughly one cd. With this I have access to millions of songs and thousands of artist. Including artist I would never have heard about if it wasn't for Spotify. Spotify has changed my musical tastes so much over the years that I don't even listen to mainstream crap any more.

      So why do I want to set up a server in my home and dedicate gigabytes of storage space for it? Then after that, I have to constantly search o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trawg ( 308495 )

      I have VLC on my phone - any way to get it streaming to a music collection held online? I assume your suggestion for VLC over SSH is desktop but my desktop already has all my music locally so I don't need to be able to stream it, but being able to do it on my phone easily would be nice.

      • My setup is a raspi 4 with a USB hdd running Ampache and SSH server. I can play on my phone via the subsonic client, tv via a raspi zero running Kodi, laptop and workstation via browser. I play video via vlc/SSH on the phone or computers and Kodi for the tv. A VPN gets access away from home.

  • Damnit NO!. (Score:3)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @08:50AM (#61319232)
    Not another price hik... Oh its a dollar. I can handle a dollar. Meh, why was I excited about this?

  • I have multiple Spotify users in my household, so we have the Family Plan. We have to pay $1 more per month? That's just fine. Still a better deal than buying CDs anymore-- especially since we're in range of WiFi so frequently.

  • ... buy some music every so often, yeah?

    Spotify is useful - no denying it - they hooked me in good 'n proper, but I still try to make at least one music purchase a month.

    Best to seek out the artists as directly as you can, say through bandcamp or something, or direct from artists site.

    We run the risk of music of high quality becoming rarer, because artists won't be able to afford to do music full time.
    With the current pandemic and no live music, artists are struggling big time.

    For the price of a few coffee'

    • That is the boat I am in. Spotify family for all, but I personally will buy direct from some artists a few times a year. Some via bandcamp, while others setup a patreon to mitigate the loss of touring/events being cancelled.

      Spotify is still a hell of a deal. Having some playlists automatically download on my phone despite being added from home/work is great for my weekly drive through zero cell reception. Since I have music on constantly, I have to rate this as some of the cheapest media consumption per m

  • Death by a thousand clicks (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:40PM (#61320606) Journal

    I don't know, almost $200 a year seems like a lot to me to stream music.

    But that's just me, I'm sure there are a lot of people who get a lot of use out of it and feel it's a reasonable cost.

    It's when you start adding up all of these "relatively minor" subscriptions that you turn around and realize that you're spend quite a bit of money on a yearly basis, but you don't notice it because it's all done by bit by bit in small charges.

    I mean, $15 isn't a lot, even $200/year isn't so bad, but get 4 or 5 or 6 of these monthly wallet-sucking charges going and it adds up.

    But if you feel you're getting your money's worth, then have at it.

  • They increased Family price for us to €19 (+2€) in February. I'm going to stay without Premium for the whole of May to get to the same price level annually. I'll be forcing myself to Youtube Music during that month, which comes with Youtube Premium that I already have anyway. Will see if I even come back in June. Good job, greedy Spotify.

    • For me it is still much too expensive because to combine with other similar subscriptions (EDF, Telephony, water, VOD, ...) I notice that I mostly listen to the same music that I like. There, millions of titles certainly, but which do not necessarily attract me, and in any case 16 euros to be released every month.... I must not be the target of this kind of service. https://www.minimilitia.mobi/ [minimilitia.mobi] https://www.applock.ooo/ [applock.ooo]

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