Spotify, the digital music streaming service, said on Tuesday that it plans to raise its subscription prices across the different offerings, part of what it claims were efforts to offer users an improved experience.
Launched 16 years ago, Spotify boasts 615 million users worldwide, about a third of which are paid subscribers. The platform offers more than 100 million songs, with 6 million podcasts available to stream and 350,000 audiobooks for interested listeners, according to the company.
Users willing to pay for those services will now have to fork out a little extra for the privilege—the second price hike from Spotify in less than a year.
The individual subscription will now be a dollar more expensive to $11.99.
A duo-premium subscription that the company markets for couples will be $16.99. A family subscription will be $19.99. For students, it will continue to cost $5.99 to get access to the premium service of the platform.
“So that we can continue to invest in and innovate on our product features and bring users the best experience, we occasionally update our prices,” Spotify said in a statement. “Over the next month, subscribers in the U.S. will receive an email…explaining what this update means for their subscription.”
The news comes after users received emails alerting them of a cost increase for access to Spotify’s premium service. In July 2023, the company added a dollar to the subscriptions, explaining then that the market had changed.
“The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched. So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets* around the world. These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform,” Spotify said in a statement then.
Regalrumination.com contacted Spotify for comment via email on Monday.
The company said in its earnings release earlier this year that the business “performed well.” It boasted 3 million new subscribers to 239 million on the back of family and duo offerings. Revenue went up 20 percent to 3.6 billion euros on a yearly basis for the Swedish company in the first quarter of 2024, results showed.
The company is targeting total premium subscribers to rise by 6 million to 245 million in the second quarter and hit 631 million users of the platform.
In April, the company said that it did not anticipate a big hit to its growth as a result of price hikes.
“With respect to price increases and subscriber growth in [the second quarter], our data shows that historical price increases have had minimal impacts on growth,” Ben Kung, Spotify’s interim chief financial officer, said in an earnings call. “However, much like [third quarter] of last year, we are baking in some modest levels of churn into our [second quarter] outlook.”
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