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Spotify is raising the cost of Premium subscriptions, again (www.engadget.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 5 months ago (35 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (8 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 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 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.

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