this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024

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

submitted 5 months ago by cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

322 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] archomrade@midwest.social 53 points 5 months ago (1 children)

[+] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com -6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Spotify locks music is new to me? And for the few Podcasts I personally couldnt care less

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 23 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Platform agnostic = you own the mp3/FLACC/ect file, and can play it through whatever client you want

Platform Locked = you do not own the files, and they are DRM locked to their proprietary media player (see: spotify, kindle, ect)

Of course there are ways around those locks, but it's illegal to remove DRM protections (in the us)

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Gotcha.
Thought of it in a more of a Exclusive-To-Platform kind of way.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 4 points 5 months ago

Yea I figured, no worries

[–] lud@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You can switch to another service any time you want though.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You'll own nothing and you'll like it

[–] lud@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's way cheaper though.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Idk if I owned as many cds as I've spent on music subscriptions I'd own more high fidelity music than I'd know what to do with

[–] where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

BS. One new CD is at least 10$. A good band collection is then a year worth of subscription fees. So, do you only listen to a few bands?

Before Spotify I pirated everything. In lossless, ofc. I had 200GB of music, it wouldn't fit on my ipod classic, and I still was limited.

I pirated at least a lifetime worth of Spotify premium and yet when I switched to Spotify I discovered so many more artists like the ones I already liked. If I now tried to buy all the songs I've listened to more than once in the last 5 years, I'd go bankrupt.

Spotify is way cheaper.

(now add ease of discovering new music, listening to whatever your friends want to listen to in a car, collaborative playlists, etc etc)

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Hey if you find value in paying a subscription go nuts, I won't throw shade

but i used spotify for almost 15 years. Averaged out to $8 a month that's more than $1400, and how much of that music do you think I own?

You can do what you want with your money but I'm not paying another dime to subscription streamers. For discovery there's still radio and youtube and ad-supported streamers, and I still find new artists at music festivals and local venue concerts all the time.

Spotify is a solution in search of a problem.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

There's Bandcamp, also, for discovery.

[–] Emoba@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 5 months ago

You'll own nothing and you'll like it

I won't throw shade