I’ve received notice of rate increase

[DrRogan]

I’ve received notice of a $2 rate increase on my Premium Duo account. The email message I’ve received states,  “We’re increasing the price of Premium Duo so that we can continue to invest in and innovate on our product offerings and features, and bring you the best experience.”

what exactly does this mean?  What specifically will Spotify be doing to “invest in and innovate” on your product offerings in order to bring me the best experience?  Naturally, whether I keep my account fully depends upon the specifics. Please provide details. 

[DrRogan]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the feedback here in the Community.

For more info on what price changes mean for your account, head to Spotify.com or our FAQ page.  We also outlined why we're making these changes over on For the Record."

If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you. 

[anon1435]

Increase prices while still not having hifi? bye spotify.

[vaajy]

If you Listen your Music on computer exclusively.

There is an option. YouTube everyone knows, they have Lite option selling 6,99 which allows making playlists and listening them at around 160K sound quality on computer ad free and paying for the artist. Rate may be less than Spotify.

On phone you can use Spotify Free with ads (if you use it at a times only).

Lookout at local shops for Spotify gift cards, in my country they still sell at old prices €10 mo.

You can have 18 months of Premium redeemed using these cards into account.

[reasonable_criticism]

just chiming in here to say that you (spotify) can add one additional person (to your survey or quarterly investigation or whatever you present at the shareholder meetings that are indirectly killing your UX) to the statistic of customers that are extremely dissatisfied with nearly every update pushed to spotify. i do not recall the last time i opened spotify to a new update and wasn't immediately met with headaches and workaround hassles. here's a non-exhaustive list of the downgrades i recall seeing you push over the years, maybe something you can use that extra money on fixing:

• the metro-fication overhaul of the UI around 2014 making the app look like a windows phone
• when you removed the "apps" section of the desktop client which had, among other things, superior lyrics functionality compared to the one you have integrated now, which we can't even contribute basic stuff like timing to
• the confusing mess when you changed "starred" into "liked" and then suddenly every single track from every album we had "added to our library" was automatically marked as a track we specifically liked
• when you removed the perfectly functional QR-esque code that party guests could easily scan to join your group session (and replaced it with a link that you have to manually copy-paste into a different messaging app)
• when you consistently make it harder with every update to find the "local files" section of your interface
• when your founder invests in AI military technology
• your playstation and apple tv apps sound significantly worse than the desktop and mobile clients, and you give us no option of increasing the quality
• your "discover weekly" and "release radar" (especially the latter) AI-curated playlists are CONSTANTLY filled with <1000-total-stream "artists" exploiting your system to spread their own music through established artists' names. this has happened with SOPHIE (who passed away in 2021 and whose name was immediately being exploited by these fraudulent "artists" on your playlists), Rustie, and many more

how is it that you guys close these things out? something like Let us know what you think! We love hearing from you.

(also sorry to the unpaid intern who has to read this and eventually give a copy-pasted answer forwarding me to a feedback portal that never gets looked at. please know that i am mad at the yuppies in charge of Spotify, not you, and know you're just trying to do your job. hope you make it to a company with morals in the future)

[Bateman1482]

Since you’re going up on the premium members price how about y’all look into getting more of the artists music like Anita Baker, the SOS Band, Milira and other music that cannot be found that listeners like me are searching for. Also other songs by artist that cannot be played that’s restricted or whatever the case may be. Can you please work on those things?!

[ruip]

I received the email with the new price! I've had the subscription for a few years now, and I've never seen a significant evolution of the application, an evolution of +-17%, I think this increase is absurd, and in times of crisis we cut the superfluous! goodbye spotfy! I just feel sorry that not all customers have this attitude! off! because only in this way would we combat the speculative greed of IT. rip spotfy, never!

[YbMoe]

I frequently will play from a genre or artist radio. After listening for 1 hour, the same songs are being played. Why isn't there much more variety? This is VERY dissapointing and it seems Spotify is getting stale. Now with a price increase......

[cmerb]

I think the most insulting part of this, is that Spotify has yet to introduce higher quality streaming. Lossless is all they have mentioned in the past, and it is the bare minimum at this point. There is speculation that when/if lossless ever does come it will come at an additional increase to monthly subscription. Truth is competitors like Apple have had lossless audio, Dolby Atmos, and spatial audio for a long time now. I have been resisting leaving Spotify simply because of all of my playlists, and I prefer the interface. But I think Spotify is making it a clear choice. I dont want to pay more to get less. Im tired of waiting for Spotify to actually deliver a better experience. And all we are getting is a rate hike for the same lower quality garbage. Thanks Spotify.

[o-_qlc6esw2y]

• In 2016 I've taken the Premium Family package with the promise that the price would be €14,99 forever and ever.

Now Spotify is raising prices and I guess that's not really fair.... 

More people that recognize this?

[Samppa3]

You can claim inflation and say that you need continue to innovate and invest in the product offerings and features.

Those are the obligatory things in order to get business and app running, but you have been making the app worse within the last 2-5 years or so.

Im willing to be that this 10% price hike was only the cost of wasting millions of dollars worth of money to Rogan and other podcasts. Then when you finally give people what they want (Hifi, lossless) you launch Supremium and it costs even more.

[johan-rocha]

Price hikes should be accompanied by plans to improve services. These should address improvements in user experience. The plans should be made public.

[OscarDC]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the feedback here in the Community.

For more info on what price changes mean for your account, head to Spotify.com or our FAQ page.  We also outlined why we're making these changes over on For the Record."

If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you. 

[user-removed]

In order to attract new customers and, retain them long term, Spotify could reduce pricing and actually achieve a goal of getting 1 billion actual customers. It is possible by announcing a "$7.99 a month plan" or, a "$90 annual plan (paid upfront)".

Actually do that and watch how fast the information surges throughout the internet and how fast you get new customers, the lowered price will attract more customers and retain more customers, as compared with a price raise, which will negatively affect Spotify in the log term. The lower prices will get you more revenue long term, than a $1 prise raise, short term.

Also, why does Spotify believe they do not have to reward long term customers, with a cheaper rate? That is a guaranteed means of retention, every year a customer renews, they get an annual deal rate that is cheaper, if it is paid upfront.

Instead, Spotify chooses to plod along with outdated and false models of data, such as announcing the upcoming price change which, is a guaranteed way to fail, as you will lose me as a customer. Economies globally are failing, not improving, annual pay is going down, not up, and you believe that "permanent quarterly growth on our P & L sheet" is still valid?

Delude yourself all you want with the noise of contrived data, when the price change goes up, you will lose customers, not gain more, definitely not "1 billion customers by 2030", to include losing this customer on Aug, 1, 2023.

There are ways to succeed and you're going to demonstrate to everyone the way to fail.  

[Fayne1]

Not all students are individual persons holding an individual Spotify premium account. It is appreciated that Spotify even offers a student discount to begin with, however, I’d appreciate the inclusivity if this student discount (or part of it) could be extended for accounts that hold a duo plan. It may be a mom (or other persons) who’s using a duo account for themselves and dependent who decided to go back to school. Which is (with the most recent price increase) ~$15/month.  In order to get the student discount you’d have to discontinue the duo plan, sign up for 2 individual plans to apply the discount to one of them, bringing it to the exact same price point and makes no sense. 

It’s understandable that the discount may not be as generous as it is for the individual accounts, but some student discount tho those accounts to provide more inclusiveness would be appreciated. 

thank you. 

[electricwizard]

They actively make the app worse while charging us more to use it. It's pure greed.

[RattlinRooster]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

[Slicksloth]

The same thing with me, ive paid 9.99 for my subscription for 6+ years and they wanna do this bs. They keep saying the**bleep**. Actually considering finding something new due to this.

[Slicksloth]

Like how i cant watch a podcast while connected to my car bluetooth. Its sad how much the company profits and still wants more from us. 

[Slicksloth]

Okay but what have they added?? They've only continued to take things away!

[BrittWolf]

This economy is already going through massive unnecessary inflation due to corporate greed and other things. Why does Spotify want it's listeners who pay for it to stop and go back to the old days of burning cds and downloading music the old ways? 😐 

Makes zero since. I'd thought they'd be better then Apple but apparently not.

[Samppa3]

They're simply testing brand loyalty here. How far can they stretch the price, because no matter what, even if some or plenty of older users leave the service they simply have more customers coming and so they've now atleast got secured spot leading the market.

Even without Hifi..Spotify has many pros (plus cons of course), but the competition is getting tougher.

Im not sure whether to leave or stay as Im still eligible for Premium Student for 2 more years.

I probably could pay more for Hifi/lossless but also if I could get some artists/bands music to Spotify as they still haven't got it.
Literally Im missing Joanna Newsom's music, but it seems very unlikely as in an interview with Los Angeles times she said that:

“Spotify is the banana of the music industry,” she said, sitting at a patio table at a restaurant in the shadow of Scientology’s massive East Hollywood campus. “It just gives off a fume. You can just smell that something’s wrong with it.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-joanna-newsom-spotify-villainous-cabal-ga...

So for Joanna's albums I need to spin my lp or cd..or perhaps change to some other competitive service instead.