Spotify is testing a new three-tier structure for its subscriptions business: Premium Lite, Premium Standard and Premium Platinum. The test kicks off today in five countries: India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.
- Premium Lite is an entry-level Spotify subscription, removing the free tier’s ads and giving people full on-demand listening.
- Premium Standard adds higher-quality sound (but not lossless audio) and offline listening. There is also a version of this tier for students.
- Premium Platinum does have lossless audio, as well as features including AI DJ, AI playlist creation, DJ-software integrations and playlist-mixing. It also includes “two additional household seats” – it’s a three-person family plan – and 12 hours of audiobook listening in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
New subscribers in these five countries will have to choose between these three plans when signing up. For now, existing subscribers will be able to remain on their current plans, and Spotify’s free tier will remain available in all five countries too.
Pricing varies by country, but Music Ally South Asia editor Amit Gurbaxani’s report on the changes – which you can read here – breaks down how the new tiers are priced there.
Premium Lite will cost Rs139 in India, with Premium Standard costing Rs199 (or Rs99 for students) and Premium Platinum Rs299.
This compares to the existing pricing in India of Rs139 for an individual Premium subscription, Rs179 for a two-person Duo plan and Rs229 for a six-person Family plan.
The sight of Spotify shaking up its subscription tiers might have made you, like us, jump to the conclusion that this test marks the debut of the streaming service’s long-anticipated ‘superfans’ tier. That’s not the case.
Instead, it’s about expanding the subscription options to widen the on-ramp to Spotify’s paid service in high-potential markets, while also quietly nudging up the cost of a ‘standard’ subscription.
By that, we mean that users in India who currently want offline listening, higher audio quality pay Rs139 a month – with Spotify having raised that price in August from its previous Rs119. However, new subscribers who want these features will now need to pay Rs199 a month.
Meanwhile, the new Platinum tier is being pitched as “the ultimate Spotify experience… with the latest features and tools” – several of which haven’t been launched in these five countries before.
So while this isn’t the rumoured ‘Music Pro’ superfans tier, it’s nevertheless a hint at how Spotify might restructure its subscriptions elsewhere in the world as and when that launches.
Our final takeaway from today’s announcement concerns family plans. Again, we’ll use India as the example to explain it. There, a family plan for up to six people currently costs Rs229 a month, but there is no comparable plan in the new structure.
Instead, a household of more than three people wanting full access to Spotify there will need to pay for two Platinum plans, costing Rs598 a month – or one Platinum and one Standard plan for a combined cost of Rs498 a month and then make the kids fight over who doesn’t get the top tier.
Either way, it’s a significant change. We’ll be interested to see whether tightening the restrictions on group plans becomes a wider trend for Spotify and its rivals in the future, too.
Music rightsholders have been known to grumble about the current six-person family plans being too generous or cheap, so they would welcome any such shift.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com ’
