To those of you who are still living high off the freemium hog known as Spotify Free, your days may soon be numbered. No, you aren’t dying, but the streaming service is seriously considering putting heavy limitations on its entire freemium model. According to Digital Music News, the service will soon severely limit the functionality of its free feature, trying to leverage Spotify users who don’t pay into subscribing. Competitors Apple Music and Tidal are premium only.
Examples of the limitations: While premium users can listen to any song on an album as many times as they’d like, free users would only be able to listen to one or two songs or would only be able to listen to an album for a very limited time. Also, new album releases could even be delayed for those users as well.
It’s all a part of a strategy to get the “the free users to feel like they’re missing something, not just forced to listen to ads,” a source told Digital Music News.
Interestingly enough, the Swedish company is attempting to renew its deal with the big three labels (Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group) before the current contract runs out at the end of September. That is approximately right when Apple Music’s free trial will end for many of its 11 million subscribers. While purely speculative, maybe Spotify feels they can catch users at a crossroads where they can choose to pay with Spotify or Apple Music. (Yes, we left out Tidal.)
Either way, nearly three quarters of Spotify users are Free users. By the time fall rolls around, they may be in for a rude awakening.
(Via Digital Music News)
