this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year's $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.

Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn't raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify's continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.

Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Tidal is $11/mo for an individual and $17 for a 6 person family plan. I recently switched because they supposedly give a better cut to artists and serve flac files.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. Never thought I'd see the day when Tidal was cheaper than crappy Spotify.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If i wasn't paying for a family play on Spotify, I would have resorted to music piracy at this point. The quality is still garbage, the service is getting worse, but the prices are only going up every half a year

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I tried sourcing my own music but man it's a lot harder than movies and shows. Especially when you like to hear random recommended music how do you get enough

[–] gravitas_deficiency 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah - credit where it’s due, Spotify did a really good job with their music recommendation engine. It’s just that recently, they’ve started to get into the sad part of the enshittification cycle. I kinda saw the writing on the wall when they started forcing Joe Rogan podcast promos fucking everywhere, without having a config anywhere to disable podcast suggestions (which I don’t use through Spotify)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm surprised you're only getting these now. My recommendations have been mostly garbage for the better part of a decade so all this praise for finding new music confuses me a little. Spotify has many feats, but the algorithm never was one for me, quite the opposite. I find it more annoying than helpful, actually.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

My beginning (about 6 years ago) was fine. Still miss the radio feature though.
They kinda brought it back but in a reverse form (former: 4 new 1 old, now: 5 old 1 new).
Playlist shuffle is atrocious but I am not picking them better any better.

[–] gravitas_deficiency 0 points 6 months ago

Oh I started getting them years ago. That’s when the first inkling of “this thing might be going downhill now” entered my mind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Feel you there. A lot of what i listen to are brand new bands, and finding sources for those is rough

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

£2 a month for a HiFi subscription if you use a Nigerian VPN.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So if you use a VPN to sign up, then disconnect the VPN, does it block you? Or do you always need to be on VPN?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

You don’t need to be connected on the VPN to use it, I find it identical to my previous UK subscription.

Only difference is that your initial recommendations are for Nigerian music 😆 Those disappear quite quickly after you start listening to music you like tho.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Do you need to stay connected to that, or just for payment setup? I've already got an account...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tidal is great but IIRC it either doesn't support Amazon Echo or the integration is poorly implemented.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago