Spotify held an event in New York City today, unveiling a new version of its free music streaming tier that introduces a few new features for those users not paying for Spotify's $9.99/month main subscription plan.

The new free tier allows users to pick and choose which music they want to listen to on-demand, but only if the tracks appear within one of the 15 curated discovery playlists. These include Daily Mix, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and more. Previously, free tier users were limited to shuffling songs at random.

spotify new free tier

According to TechCrunch, "that's around 750 tracks (>40 hours of music) that Spotify is serving up to users for on-demand listening." Additionally, users on the free service will get recommendations based on their own playlists, with machine learning taking into account songs in the playlists and even the name of the playlists. Spotify calls this "assisted playlisting."

CNET reporter Joan E. Solsman also mentioned that free users will have access to podcasts and vertical videos. Curated playlists, like RapCaviar, will also "stay the same across both tiers" of free and premium users.

There is also a new low-data mode that aims to cut data consumption "by up to 75 percent." In total, Spotify head of product development, Babar Zafar, said Spotify's free tier is "becoming much more like Spotify premium" with this update. As a note, the free tier will still have advertisements between songs.

In the past, Spotify didn’t allow offline listening for free, meaning that users were somewhat tethered to wifi if they needed to conserve data.

With the new data consumption system, which caches music ahead of time to stream via 3G, users can actually listen to much more music with wireless data. Alongside utilizing 3G, Spotify is also optimizing the streaming itself as well as the app (including imagery and other UI elements) to save data and power.

As Spotify expands its free service, Apple Music still only offers new subscribers a chance to try things out for three months at no cost. Afterwards, users must pay for a subscription or cancel their plan.

When asked whether the company is worried about losing paying subscribers to the newly expanded free tier, chief product officer Gustav Söderström said that it wasn't in Spotify's plans to make a free experience feel worse in order to get them to become paid subscribers. Still, over time the streaming service hopes a more robust free tier turns users into paid subscribers. "The more you play, the more you pay," Söderström said.

Tag: Spotify

Top Rated Comments

archer75 Avatar
91 months ago
I guess I'm not sure how they keep a free tier going. Don't artists want to get paid for their music? And what argument are they giving the record companies. I would think they'd be putting the kabash on anything free.
They are getting paid. Free tier has ads which pays for it. Or most of it.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
itsmilo Avatar
91 months ago
These playlists right there are one of many reasons I stick to Spotify. Their playlists selection are yet to be beat
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Michael Scrip Avatar
91 months ago
They are getting paid. Free tier has ads which pays for it. Or most of it.
Ads don't pay for all of the free tier. Not even close. Ads don't pay for most of the free tier either.

Spotify's ad revenue is tiny compared to their premium subscriptions... so it's actually the paying customers who are subsidizing the free customers.

At least that's how I understood it when this topic has come up in the past. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: I just found some numbers. Spotify's ad revenue us just 10% of their total revenue.

Basically... 10% of their revenue comes from ads... yet their free users represent 45% of their userbase.

So yes... it appears that Spotify's paying customers are funding their free customers.

Back to the topic. Artists get paid on both tiers. Almost all of the money Spotify pays goes to the artists, labels, publishers, etc.

Spotify pays so much... that there's no money left for themselves. That's why they have always posted a loss every year since their inception.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
OldSchoolMacGuy Avatar
91 months ago
"Optimizing the streaming" means using lower quality audio.

Now that Spotify is a public company, giving away the free option isn't likely to be able to continue forever. It will have to become more and more constrained in order to push people to the paid tier. They have a responsibility to turn a return for shareholders and losing money through the free offering isn't going to be acceptable.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ArtOfWarfare Avatar
91 months ago
"Optimizing the streaming" means using lower quality audio.

Now that Spotify is a public company, giving away the free option isn't likely to be able to continue forever. It will have to become more and more constrained in order to push people to the paid tier. They have a responsibility to turn a return for shareholders and losing money through the free offering isn't going to be acceptable.
My understanding says neither of your statements is correct.

They say they're downloading content while you're on wifi before you actually listen to it. That's how it's optimized - they're just guessing which tracks you're most likely to pick to listen to, and downloading them when you're on wifi, before they're actually requested. Since you're limited to a set of their playlists and radios that only amount to ~40 hours of content if you're on the free tier, having a 75% reduction in downloads really just means they download 30 hours of content per month while you're on wifi.

Also, they've had the free tier for forever. They just expanded it a bit. Not enough for me to revert from paid to free, but probably enough to bring in several people who had been resisting so far. You'll try it on and off for a few months before they hook you and you become a paid user who's too lazy to cancel your subscription later on.

Free tier now includes full access to Discover Weekly, which is Spotify's Ace that Apple seems oblivious to.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
zooby Avatar
91 months ago
[LIST=1]
* Apple Music is gonna overtake Spotify.
* People will get triggered.
* “I’m surprised”
* “Muh recommendations”
* “DAE iTunes bad”
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
top stories 2025 03 29

Top Stories: WWDC 2025 Announced, iPhone 17 Pro and iOS 19 Rumors, and More

Saturday March 29, 2025 6:00 am PDT by
Apple's big developer event is a little over two months away, and rumors about what we can expect to see in Apple's next major operating system updates are becoming increasingly frequent. A public release of iOS 18.4 is also imminent with a number of updates and improvements, although we won't be getting the major Apple Intelligence Siri upgrades that had reportedly been planned for this...
Magic Mouse Green

What to Expect From the Magic Mouse 3

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple is reportedly working on a new Magic Mouse. Below, we recap what to expect. The two key rumors for the Magic Mouse 3 so far include a relocated charging port, along with a more ergonomic design. It was briefly rumored that the Magic Mouse 3 would also feature voice control, but that was misinterpreted information. Relocated Charging Port While the Magic Mouse switched from...
iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Expected Next Week - Here Are the Release Notes

Friday March 28, 2025 2:01 pm PDT by
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect. There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Homescreen

Six Things to Know About Apple's Upcoming Foldable iPhone

Friday March 28, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We've been hearing rumors about a foldable iPhone for almost a decade now, but it looks like we might finally see the device come to fruition in 2026. We're going to be waiting many more months for the foldable iPhone, but so far we're hearing good things. Apple wants to make it creaseless. It's taken Apple multiple years to design a foldable iPhone that it's satisfied with because Apple ...
iOS 19 visionOS UI Elements

Apple Codename Provides Clue About iOS 19's Rumored New Design

Sunday March 30, 2025 6:40 am PDT by
Multiple sources have claimed that iOS 19 will introduce a new design with more translucent buttons, menus, notification banners, and more, and there is now another clue that points towards this glass-like appearance. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today said the new design project is codenamed "Solarium" internally. A solarium is a room with glass walls that allow in plenty of sunlight, so this...
iOS 19 Mock WWDC25 Feature

iOS 19 Expected to Run on These iPhones

Monday March 31, 2025 5:28 pm PDT by
iOS 19 will not be available on the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or the iPhone XS Max, according a private account on social media site X that has accurately provided information on device compatibility in the past. The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max all have an A12 Bionic chip, so it looks like iOS 19 will discontinue support for that chip. All other iPhones that run iOS 18 are expected...