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Photo Credit: Thibault Penin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This insight comes from Spotify co-president and chief business officer Alex Norstr\u00f6m, who elaborated on his company\u2019s pricing strategy when speaking with the Financial Times. A few things stand out from the article, but its timing and sources should be noted off the bat.<\/p>\n
Norstr\u00f6m\u2019s remarks account for a small portion of the text, which makes good use of information disclosed during Spotify\u2019s late-July earnings call<\/a>. In other words, it might not be a coincidence that the exec just now opted to divulge details about pricing and fresh features to a business newspaper.<\/p>\n Time will, of course, tell whether a near-term release is in the cards for said features. While Spotify\u2019s superfan-tier ambitions certainly aren\u2019t new, also worth highlighting are the platform\u2019s recent direct publishing deals. Following an avalanche of pushback<\/a> against the service\u2019s bundling craze, Kobalt signed<\/a> the latest of those direct pacts earlier in August.<\/p>\n And as previously emphasized<\/a> by the National Music Publishers\u2019 Association (NMPA), compositional rightsholder approval is a mandatory stop on the road to remix and mashup features. Both offerings will reportedly factor into the superfan package.<\/p>\n (Perhaps testing the waters here, Spotify upped its playlist-mixing game<\/a> last week.)<\/p>\n The omission appears to affirm the theory \u2013 illustrated in detail by DMN Pro<\/a> \u2013 that flat subscriber numbers are prompting the company to hold steady on domestic pricing. To be sure, the aforesaid Spotify price boosts spared the U.S. and Canada, though there\u2019s nothing stopping the DSP from working to bolster monetization across its present subscriber bases.<\/p>\n Speaking of enhancing revenue from current paid users without once again raising core prices, the focus on supplemental features probably isn\u2019t a bad idea from a global perspective, either.<\/p>\n When it comes to Individual, Apple Music charges \u00a31 less per month than Spotify does in the U.K., A$3 less in Australia<\/a>, and \u20ac1.15 less in France<\/a>, to name a few examples. In short, modest churn or not, it\u2019s probably best for Spotify to avoid widening these gaps.<\/p>\n With that, it\u2019ll be worth keeping an eye out for either additional price increases hitting existing plans in tandem with new features or, likelier yet, features made available at a higher cost via standalone tiers or add-ons.<\/p>\n <\/div>\nNext, that Norstr\u00f6m didn\u2019t mention the U.S. (or even North America) is telling as well.<\/h4>\n