Spotify plan to launch a music-only subscription offering
Image credit: Cezar Sampaio
After years of diversifying their content with non-musical content, Spotify plan to offer users subscriptions that are tailored to their needs.
Spotify shook up their platform last year with the launch and expansion of Audiobooks. Now, Premium subscribers around the world can access audiobooks as part of their subscription.
This is great for those who love music and audiobooks. However, there’s a bit of a catch. Users can only listen to 15 hours of audiobooks as part of Premium in a month. So, music lovers who don’t care for audiobooks aren’t benefitting and audiobook lovers are having to pay for proper listening time anyway.
Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek has now confirmed plans to benefit both types of user. In their recent Q1 earnings call, Ek revealed Spotify’s plans to offer more “flexibility” in the shape of different subscription plans.
Ek revealed: “We want to offer as much flexibility as possible in this next stage of Spotify.” He goes on to say: “We are the size where we want to appeal to an even larger base of consumers to turn to one of our subscription offerings.”
Revealing what these new offerings might look like, Ek said: “So, that obviously means that you’ll see things like, for instance, the audiobook-only tier… you should expect to see a music-only tier as well.” This means that after years of diversifying their platform with non-musical content, they’ll offer music lovers an option to (presumably) pay less to lose access.
At the start of April, Bloomberg reported the news that Spotify would be launching a ‘basic'” subscription tier. This offering allows users to subscribe to just music and podcasts content, losing access to their free audiobook listening.
Earlier in the year, Spotify launched their Audiobooks Access tier which offers subscribers the 15 hours of audiobook listening but without ad-free music. At $9.99, the cost is only very slightly less than a Premium subscription for ad-free music. However, recent price increases for Premium space the offerings apart slightly more.