The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify Premium will see a price hike by $1 later this year.
Spotify has withheld updating the price of its Premium subscription for several years now—even as competitors have gone up in price. YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music and Tidal have all seen various price increases to their services in the last 24 months. Now the WSJ reports that Spotify is ready to jump on that bandwagon for $10.99/month music streaming.
“Other price increases are likely to roll out in dozens of markets globally in the coming months,” adds the news piece. Spotify is the largest music subscription service across the globe, with analysts expecting to see more price increases across the board once Spotify increases its price.
“It breaks the dam,” says Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives about the price increase. Ives called the price hike overdue as Wall Street pressures digital streaming providers like Spotify to become profitable. Video streaming services like Peacock and Disney+ have all seen price hikes in the last few months. Spotify told investors it planned on raising prices this year—but didn’t disclose a time table for when those price hikes would occur.
Spotify Premium was introduced nearly 15 years ago at the $9.99/monthly price point. It allows a single user to listen to Spotify’s entire catalog of music ad-free and offline. Now that the pricing tier dam is about to break, will Spotify experiment with more tiers? There has been speculation that the rumored Spotify HiFi tier would create a service tier with access to hi-fidelity recordings and potentially audiobooks as Spotify looks to break into the spoken word market.
The price of Spotify’s Family Plan went up over a year ago in several markets, including the United States. Spotify has taken increased revenue from families, so it’s no surprise that Spotify single subscriptions are next on the price hike block. Warner Music Chief Executive Robert Kyncl said in May 2023 that Spotify would generate an additional $1 billion in revenue by raising the price of its U.S. subscription by $1.
