Spotify is testing out a new low-cost subscription tier called Spotify Plus, which is basically Spotify Premium but with ads. The pilot is being rolled out to a limited number of users to see if price-sensitive customers would be willing to pay USD$0.99 (~RM4.18) a month just for unlimited track skipping and on-demand listening.
Unlike the free tier, the Plus package doesn’t limit the number of songs users can skip and they can choose specific songs to listen to instead of shuffling within albums and playlists. The free tier only allows six skips per hour and with only 15 select playlists to choose from, the restrictions are certainly frustrating enough for a person to cough up for Premium even if they don’t mind the ads.
Spotify currently costs RM14.90 per month in Malaysia while in the US where the pilot is being run, it costs USD$9.99 (~RM42) per month. We can see Plus’ appeal for US users at 1/10th the cost, but at only 1/3rd the price for Malaysians while still having to deal with ad interruptions, they might need to decrease the price even further if they ever roll it out here.
“We’re always working to enhance the Spotify experience and we routinely conduct tests to inform our decisions,” a Spotify spokesperson said to The Verge. “We’re currently conducting a test of an ad-supported subscription plan with a limited number of our users.” They also added that if this feature ever does launch, it might not be in this current form.
Spotify does have a history of taking years to test new features before finalising them. For example, they had been working on lossless streaming since 2017 but they only announced recently that its HiFi tier will be coming out sometime this year. It also took them over a year of testing to release the couple-centred Duo plan. Spotify Plus seems to be another move the streaming platform is adding to its increasingly modular subscription plans, such as the Family plan, Duo, and the new Mini Daily and Weekly subscriptions to meet the specific needs of individual users.
(Source: The Verge)
