Bad news for Spotify users that are under the Family, Duo, and Student plans. It looks like you’ll have to add a little more to your budget as the music streaming giant is set to make an announcement slightly increasing prices for these subscriptions. The price change will initially be affecting those in the U.S, U.K, and Europe but is expected to also affect other regions eventually. It is not a major price increase but consumers are always expected to not react favorably to any sort of price change.
While we don’t have an official announcement from Spotify just yet, the news is out that the price changes will take effect this Friday, April 30. Family plan subscribers will now have to pay around $15.99 from the previous $14.99 per month price. If you’re in the UK, the price change is from £14.99 to £16.99 while in Europe, it will be €14.99 to €17.99. For those who are on the Duo or Student Spotify plan in Europe and in the UK, there will also be a €1 or £1 increase, respectively.
If you’re still on a free trial, your first bill will reflect the lower price and then the month after that, you will be billed with the new price already. This will only be for those who are subscribed to any of the plans that will have a price change. This may not be much of an increase for consumers, although of course a dollar more is a dollar less for your wallet. But for Spotify’s bottom line, this may possibly have a huge impact.
We’re also expected to see the Spotify “mini player” integrated within Facebook, or at least the beta or test version of this, over the next few days. It will let Facebook users listen to their tracks shared to their feed without having to leave the app or switch to the main Spotify app. This is part of Facebook’s push for more audio content and Spotify’s goal to appear more on social media feeds.
We’ll probably get more details when Spotify does their next earnings report with investors which is scheduled on April 28, Wednesday. There are no other expected major news to come out of this report except for these reported price changes but who knows if we get a surprise or two.
