Spotify’s 3rd price hike in 2.5 years hints at potential new normal
I don't understand subscribing to music. Maybe it's just my age, but this isn't the '90s where you hear a track you like and that one song is going to run you $20 at Tower Records. I like a song, I pay $1.29 and then it's stored locally. Also cuts way down on data usage while driving. I struggle to get anywhere close to my 5GB data allowance.
After a dozen years of keeping subscription prices stable, Spotify has issued three price hikes in 2.5 years.Spotify informed subscribers via email today that Premium monthly subscriptions would go from $12 to $13 per month as of users’ February billing date. Spotify is already advertising the higher prices to new subscribers.
Although not explicitly mentioned in Spotify’s correspondence, other plans are getting more expensive, too. Student monthly subscriptions are going from $6 to $7. Duo monthly plans, for two accounts in the same household, are going from $17 to $19, and Family plans, for up to six users, are moving from $20 to $22.
Spotify’s Basic plan, which is only available as a downgrade for some Premium subscribers and is $11/month, is unaffected.
For years, Spotify subscribers enjoyed stable prices, but today’s announcement marks Spotify’s third price hike since July 2023. Spotify last raised prices in July 2024. Premium individual subscriptions went from $11 to $12, Duo subscriptions went from $15 to $17, and Family subscriptions increased from $17 to $20.
Spotify’s 3rd price hike in 2.5 years hints at potential new normal
Spotify claims the higher fees will help "benefit artists."Scharon Harding (Ars Technica)
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Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •like this
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passepartout
in reply to Steve • • •Powderhorn
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Steve
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Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •I was trying to be subtle, but that doesn't seeme to be working.
The point is, lots of people enjoy music lots of different ways, for lots of different reasons. Just because you don't use subscriptions doesn't mean they aren't valid and useful to anyone who isn't you.
In short: Don't gate keep
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Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Why does it even matter to you?
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Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Why are you taking personal offense that I said I didn't understand the behaviour of others? This is a petty hill to die on.
Look, people waste money on plenty of things, myself included. It just feels like being at the mercy of a company to listen to music is a poor choice.
Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Sometimes hypocrisy is necessary
Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Powderhorn • • •bootstrap
in reply to Steve • • •You could argue it matters because spotify has impacted the music industry negatively as a whole. Why would I want people giving their money to a company like that to make the problem worse?
Regardless of whether I personally use the service or not, other people funding it contributes to the downfall of something I like just for a bit of convenience.
I wouldnt make the same argument for every other streaming service because they all have different levels of ethics they abide by but spotify.... no good ethics I can see.
Steve
in reply to bootstrap • • •bootstrap
in reply to Steve • • •Thats correct, streaming is not the problem. Streaming is just a technology. The companies are the problem.
Record companies dont walk in to spotify HQ and say "give me this much for this artist". Spotify has a very specific payment model that fucks over small artists.
There are also many labels made by artists that are great and really support their artists so your point doesnt really work.
None of this is even touching on how spotify fills its curated playlists with slop so it doesnt have to pay as much royalties or how the only way it can make more money and appease shareholders is by constantly squeezing the consumer and charging more like this article. They have nothing innovating to offer to justify their price hikes.
I love streaming, I think it is incredibly convenient and effective for listening to music. I do not love companies that take an amazing technology and exploit it to destroy an industry that is already struggling in the name of profit.
Support your favourite artists directly or switch to other less scummy streaming services is my o
... Show more...Thats correct, streaming is not the problem. Streaming is just a technology. The companies are the problem.
Record companies dont walk in to spotify HQ and say "give me this much for this artist". Spotify has a very specific payment model that fucks over small artists.
There are also many labels made by artists that are great and really support their artists so your point doesnt really work.
None of this is even touching on how spotify fills its curated playlists with slop so it doesnt have to pay as much royalties or how the only way it can make more money and appease shareholders is by constantly squeezing the consumer and charging more like this article. They have nothing innovating to offer to justify their price hikes.
I love streaming, I think it is incredibly convenient and effective for listening to music. I do not love companies that take an amazing technology and exploit it to destroy an industry that is already struggling in the name of profit.
Support your favourite artists directly or switch to other less scummy streaming services is my opinion. Spotify is destined to fail anyway or at least mutate into a "top 40" only platform with how many artists are leaving.
elfpie
in reply to Steve • • •bluGill
in reply to Steve • • •What makes you think it is just one song? In the 1980s it was a mix tape that took the good tracks from several albums. With computers it is a playlist. Or more often it is a play random tracks from my large collection until I hit stop.
I do listen to just one song once in a while when that is all I have time for, or when some song comes to mind that I want to hear. However mostly it is a playlist that I created.
There are a few albums that are related collection and work best listened together, but most are just a bunch of songs and you can listen in any order.
Steve
in reply to bluGill • • •Powderhorn
in reply to Steve • • •Prove_your_argument
in reply to Steve • • •Sure but you can listen to whole albums on stuff like Spotify.
Some bands are truly one hit wonders though..
HobbitFoot
in reply to Steve • • •Banzai51
in reply to Steve • • •Chris Remington
in reply to Powderhorn • • •like this
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Powderhorn
in reply to Chris Remington • • •KCRW 89.9FM | Music, NPR News, Culture Los Angeles | KCRW
KCRWNaibofTabr
in reply to Chris Remington • • •SomaFM
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Appoxo
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Streaming two days for about 2-3h in Symfonium:
And Spotify is with streaming some podcasts with video. For the whole month
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bootstrap
in reply to Appoxo • • •You must be streaming flac or something from your server then?
over a whole month of playing music for roughly 8 hours a day i have 10gb of data from symfonium with 320kbps ogg transcoding.
Either that or you might have music cached on spotify but not using the cache on symfonium?
Appoxo
in reply to bootstrap • • •Yup, Flac streamed :p Some of it is cached but I listenend to new stuff.
And yes, Spotify is mostly cached. But I set the quality to high (audio) and middle (video) on cellular
I still have not been able to mostly import my library from spotify into Jellyfin so my main way of listening is still within Spotify but I have reached critical mass where I could do it.
bootstrap
in reply to Appoxo • • •Appoxo
in reply to bootstrap • • •bootstrap
in reply to Appoxo • • •Appoxo
in reply to bootstrap • • •I checked my library of what I managed to download across all my libraries (before Annas archive made Spotify change something in the authentication logic):
Size: 21GiB
Files: 3655
Directories: 3448
Structure: Artist/Album/song.mp3 (and additionally an lrc if synced liyrics were available)
So probably 2000-2500 music files in total I need to check with musicbrainz, import if not available, wait for about 7 days, rinse and repeat.
I was burned out enough after importing the "Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies HQ Project", the Disney animation collection, the Tom and Jerry animations and matching the Pokémon season 1 and 2 DVD with the localized titles (which have changed) to the TVDB order.
I really don't have the endurance to do that for long. Maybe some day but not right now :p
Powderhorn
in reply to Appoxo • • •I started my mp3 collection in 1997. Metadata was nonexistent, and online databases weren't yet a thing. (I was mostly downloading 112kbps from IRC F-servs).
It is a bitch to get your collection in order, even with a tool like MusicBrainz Picard, but worth it in the end. It took me about a week to actually complete that project. The new stuff I download already has the metadata, so it's a solved problem.
bootstrap
in reply to Powderhorn • • •I agree, I think its such a bitch because a music collection is very personal and maybe your tags dont line up with what the general public think.
I've let Lidarr do the metadata for all my tracks as I would go insane trying to do it myself with the sheer quantity.
The tools we have these days to own and manage our own collections is incredible - its a shame so many people still use spotify.
bootstrap
in reply to Appoxo • • •Yea I dont think many soundtracks would be in musicbrainz that might be a bit difficult.
Lidarr handled my 60k tracks collection like a dream though!
LemmyEntertainYou
in reply to Appoxo • • •Ethereal
in reply to Powderhorn • • •I feel like the main thing these subscription services need to do is keep it chill. The fastest way to get me to question whether a service is worth it or not is if the monthly cost keeps being thrown in my face. Grandfather in old prices for a lot longer or something to keep people hooked longer. That's probably why I'll never be a C-level exec.
Spotify's been fine but it's just obnoxious at this point and THEY are pushing me to look elsewhere at this point.
Powderhorn
in reply to Ethereal • • •like this
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Ethereal
in reply to Powderhorn • • •My millenial is showing with my username :D
We're at a spot where we've more or less switched off subscriptions with a few exceptions (some of which enable us to not have OTHER subscriptions in the first place). Spotify is in a weird place where our kids have a playlist of music they like and they're more or less the primary user of our Spotify playlist now. I've got all of my music self-hosted and my intention with this latest news is to try and bring the kids' music over too.
Powderhorn
in reply to Ethereal • • •like this
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warm
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Individual plans are a rip-off yeah, Spotify is one of the only services I subscribe to and that's because I have a family plan, so it's not so easy for me to just cancel it, when others are relying on it. It works out at €3.40/month ($3.95) per member. The value there is really good.
Spotify lets you just listen to anything, I can put a playlist on and it will keep going forever and I have discovered many tracks I would have never listened to, or even known they existed. Buying music is great, but only when you know exactly what you want, I'm not a big music person, I like listening to it, but I don't really have a dialled in taste. Spotify is great for that.
There will obviously be a tipping point though when they inevitably raise the price too far and I will abandon ship.
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Jul (they/she)
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Radio only plays a few dozen songs or only "classic" stuff, so I never get to hear new stuff. Having streaming audio was always my way to find new music. That said, Spotify has started doing the same, just playing the sponsored songs and the themes they have generally only play stuff I've heard a million times. Rarely "b-sides" or new stuff based on my actual interests.
I miss the days of the original Pandora service with its database of music elements, and it would go across genres to find things with similar elements and didn't have any influence from the recording industry sponsoring songs because they were actively destroying their own industry fighting to kill off streaming, instead. I found a bunch of new stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It totally changed my listening habits.
So with the streaming services consolidating and raising prices as a result, I likely won't stick with it anymore. My music library is too large to store locally on my phone and I like variety rather than making playlists. I'm thinking of setting up my own streaming server, but mus
... Show more...Radio only plays a few dozen songs or only "classic" stuff, so I never get to hear new stuff. Having streaming audio was always my way to find new music. That said, Spotify has started doing the same, just playing the sponsored songs and the themes they have generally only play stuff I've heard a million times. Rarely "b-sides" or new stuff based on my actual interests.
I miss the days of the original Pandora service with its database of music elements, and it would go across genres to find things with similar elements and didn't have any influence from the recording industry sponsoring songs because they were actively destroying their own industry fighting to kill off streaming, instead. I found a bunch of new stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It totally changed my listening habits.
So with the streaming services consolidating and raising prices as a result, I likely won't stick with it anymore. My music library is too large to store locally on my phone and I like variety rather than making playlists. I'm thinking of setting up my own streaming server, but music discovery is still an issue I need to solve.
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Powderhorn
in reply to Jul (they/she) • • •Jul (they/she)
in reply to Powderhorn • • •I have around 3500 liked songs on Spotify alone just from the last 5 years or so and just stuff that Spotify chooses to plat for me. I have about 9,000 tracks in my primary collection from old ripped CDs and purchased MP3s/FLACs. This is without stuff that I dont really like that much anymore or stuff that I would only listen to in specific circumstances, like Mozart or something. It's over 100GB. There is definitely some overlap there, but definitely less than 1/3 of the Spotify likes I also own. So probably I'd end up somewhere in the 125-150GB range. If phones still had SD card slots I could do it, but that's not that common anymore since they want you to buy streaming and backup services.
I could probably pare it down even more without missing out too much, but it would take a lot of time and it would be removing stuff I like to listen to. And I wouldn't have room to add new stuff.
I listen to a pretty wide variety of genres and I listen on my phone often, pretty much anytime I'm driving or on a bus/train, and I dont like hearing the same songs repeated too much un
... Show more...I have around 3500 liked songs on Spotify alone just from the last 5 years or so and just stuff that Spotify chooses to plat for me. I have about 9,000 tracks in my primary collection from old ripped CDs and purchased MP3s/FLACs. This is without stuff that I dont really like that much anymore or stuff that I would only listen to in specific circumstances, like Mozart or something. It's over 100GB. There is definitely some overlap there, but definitely less than 1/3 of the Spotify likes I also own. So probably I'd end up somewhere in the 125-150GB range. If phones still had SD card slots I could do it, but that's not that common anymore since they want you to buy streaming and backup services.
I could probably pare it down even more without missing out too much, but it would take a lot of time and it would be removing stuff I like to listen to. And I wouldn't have room to add new stuff.
I listen to a pretty wide variety of genres and I listen on my phone often, pretty much anytime I'm driving or on a bus/train, and I dont like hearing the same songs repeated too much unless I'm just getting to know the song. I've thought about writing a script that automatically randomly replaces files when I'm on my home network to take a smaller set with me, but that's a lot of work. The other alternative is creating playlists of a few hundred songs each and switching them out when I'm home, but again, lots of work.
Streaming just covers it well for my use case, if it was reasonably priced and did it's job well to help discover new music, but seems that's not what they're selling anymore. I also don't have a data cap anymore, or at least it's a soft cap and not ridiculously low, but not sure how long that will be the case either.
Powderhorn
in reply to Jul (they/she) • • •towerful
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Spotify pays Joe Rogan how much? And pays artists how little?
TIDAL does music.
I changed a few years ago, and all I miss are the integrations.
I'm lucky that I have decent speakers & dac on my desktop, and decent IEMs. So I can listen to music where I want.
But I can't buy a "tidal speaker" in the way I could buy a "Spotify speaker".
But I'm arrogantly confident enough to waste some money solving this with home assistant, some rpi/nucs, and some speakers. I feel I don't need (I actually don't want a vendor locked in) "just works" solution, and I'm happy rolling my own.
Banzai51
in reply to towerful • • •towerful
in reply to Banzai51 • • •bluGill
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Welcome to inflation. If a price isn't going up regularly someone is getting ripped off.
When my boss gives me a raise I always compare that to the yearly inflation rate - it has more than once turned what looks good into a loss for me. (I might accept it once in a while, but I'm looking for new jobs soon if they don't fix)
Powderhorn
in reply to bluGill • • •DudeImMacGyver
in reply to Powderhorn • • •m-p{3}
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smeg
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Mac
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Romkslrqusz
in reply to Powderhorn • • •$20 was the cost of a whole CD Album, I don’t remember singles selling for that much. Or maybe you’re referring to the phenomenon of having to buy a full Album just for the one song you like?
I prefer to buy Albums, and these days new Vinyl usually comes with a lossless digital download redemption code.
At the same time, I still subscribe to music streaming services. I’ve got some ambient / background music playlists that are days and even weeks long - I’m not going to allocate make local storage space to them, let alone pay $9,000
These services are amazing for music discovery. I live having an album or playlist finish and then getting “radio” of similar music to hear and discover.
Powderhorn
in reply to Romkslrqusz • • •