Spotify is experimenting with a new paid tier called
Spotify Plus, which will lie between free and Premium. The good news is that it
is inexpensive; the bad news is that you will still hear ads. The
Verge was the first to report about the new Spotify Plus plan, which is
presently being tested with a small group of users.
Spotify Plus is a new low-cost subscription option
that combines features of existing free and premium tiers. The plan includes
commercials, just like Spotify's free tier, but there are no restrictions on
how many tracks you may skip every hour. Users can also choose the songs they
want to listen to instead of being restricted to shuffling through albums and
playlists.
Spotify Plus costs $0.99 per month in one test,
which is significantly less than the $9.99 per month Premium tier. Unlike the
free tier, Plus allows users to pick and choose whatever songs they want to
play and skip. Spotify Plus, like the free version, includes advertisements.
The
$0.99/month price, according to the publisher, may not be set in stone;
instead, it might be one of the price points at which Spotify is testing the
new tier to determine user demand.
Spotify confirmed the news to The
Verge, but declined to provide any other information. "We're actively
testing an ad-supported membership option with a small group of our
users," a Spotify representative told the source, underlining that Spotify
Plus may never be released.
Since 2018, Spotify's free tier has been in its
current form. Users can only skip six tracks per hour and can only select and
listen to individual music from 15 playlists, which range from editorially
selected playlists to algorithmically created collections like "Discover
Weekly" and "Daily Mix." Free users can only
listen to shuffled music outside of these playlists. The new Spotify Plus tier
is a low-cost option to get around some of those limitations.
While Apple
Music has incorporated lossless and spatial audio to its service, Spotify
has yet to do so. Spotify HiFi was launched in February and will contain songs
with lossless audio compression. However, neither the price nor the specific
date of availability were ever disclosed by the company. Apple Music, its main
competitor, began lossless audio streaming in June.
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