If you pay for Spotify Premium, get ready to pay more for the first time ever.
Spotify Premium, which gives a subscriber unlimited access to music on the streaming service, launched in the United States a whopping 12 years ago. I remember when it did. I was just out of college and it was the days of torrenting music onto your iTunes and sharing your library locally with your roommates. It was also the time when the iPhone was still ramping up and the iPod was still the dominant way to listen to music.
Heck, even the Microsoft Zune wasn’t discontinued yet! What a time. I remember still curating my iTunes library on my Macbook when I heard Spotify was coming to the United States. I was waiting for this one — I had looked into the service and decided that, as soon as it launches, I was 100% in. All of the music in the world (basically) for $9.99 per month? Sign. Me. Up.
Twelve years later, even with the introduction of plenty of other competing music streaming services like Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music, Spotify has stuck with its $9.99 per month price point for its Premium service. Until now.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Spotify plans to announce its first-ever increase in the price of Spotify Premium in the United States. According to the report, the price of the service will increase by $1 to $10.99 per month. So far, it seems that just the Individual and not the Duo or Family tiers of service are getting a price increase.
It’s not surprising to see Spotify raise its prices. Apple Music, the company’s biggest competitor, already charges $10.99 per month for its individual plan. It was only a matter of time before Spotify realized it wasn’t going to get anyone else to switch because of Apple’s price hike so it was time to make one of its own.
Despite being a huge Spotify fan from the early years on and even through the first few years of Apple Music’s existence, I’m personally an Apple Music fan now. I think the audio quality is better, the Dolby Atmos tracks sound great when they are done well, they pay artists more, and the service is already part of my Apple One subscription. Spotify still dominates when it comes to discoverability, though — there’s no denying that.
While we’ll all groan, I’m sure everyone will pay the extra pay and keep on listening. We’ve all done the same with Netflix, Apple TV+, Peacock, and every other streaming service you can think of. Maybe that’s the cost we all must pay for Spotify to finally update its Tesla app.
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