Spotify hikes UK subscription prices for the second time in a year

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/spotify-hikes-uk-subscription-prices-5HjdFqr_2/

by tylerthe-theatre

46 comments

  1. You can get Spotify cheaper by buying a gift card valid for a year’s subscription. These go for £120 and some sites offer 5-6% cashback on them too. So effectively £9.50 a month.

  2. I’ve moved onto Apple Music (free 3 months) and it’s decent. The sound quality is much better imo but the UI, a little confusing.

  3. They pay the artists so little I don’t feel guilty at all pirating Spotify and buying the albums.

  4. I wish we’d make it so that subscriptions freeze when there is a price change, and only resume when the consumer explicitly agrees to the new price. With how much money subscription models bring in from people who’ve forgotten that they’re subscribed, companies would have to do the maths on whether a price increase is worth that lost revenue.

    Also, fuck off with that “As we continue innovating and enhancing the value we deliver..” bullshit when the innovation is AI slop.

  5. I suggest that people do a little research on which streaming platforms are better for artists…I should do some more too, tbf. Then there’s Bandcamp I guess if you want to buy. Venture off the mainstream path!

  6. I set up an account with an Indian VPN and I paid like £25 for the year lol

  7. Now I’m wondering if it’s worth cancelling Spotify and getting YouTube.

    Update: Cancelled my Spotify

  8. Tidal is pretty good tbf, I did pay a one off fee on a different website to transfer my music but the first month was free so I girl mathed it

  9. I’ve had Spotify since like 2010, this is the 3rd price increase in 15 years.

    It’s new subs who have been shafted, I paid £9.99 a month for over a decade.

  10. I moved to YouTube Premium and haven’t looked back to Spotify.

    I specifically have the family plan where sharing with 5 people, if you split the cost, you effectively pay £4 pounds a month ontop of having add free youtube. Sure Spotify may be better, but it’s not worth paying the extra cost.

  11. Big tech are turning the screws now. Competition has either been beaten into submission, or growth has stalled. Either way, the answer is to charge is more.

  12. There is a lot more choice now. Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc

    I use YouTube Music personally which comes with YouTube Premium. It’s obviously not as established as Spotify but for a music player with custom playlists it’s everything you need. Plus no ads on YouTube.

    There are services that let you transfer your playlists between platforms now too, I think Apple even does it directly, so why not shop around a bit.

  13. Switched to Apple Music which is much better (proper lossless, Dolby atmos, boiler room sets). Not looking back.

  14. I thought AI was going to make everything cheaper, but it seems pointless if everything costs more and everybody loses their job.

  15. The manner in which streaming companies are hiking their prices, its pushing me to think about cancelling and just moving back to downloading what i want to see/listen to instead, without the cost being inflated every year or twice in one year with Spotify….its getting out of hand !

  16. And unless the artist is Taylor Swift then no one is really benefiting from it at all.

    Bandcamp is amazing for supporting the artist, and there is one day a year where they get 100% of the income. Plus you get to keep it.

    I also regularly raid Discogs for older CD releases, ingest that onto my PC which automatically uploads to my NAS drive and using their free streaming app, I have access to all my music, all the time, anywhere.

    I discover new music through festivals, live gigs, and YouTube recommendations.

    None of this requires me a monthly sub and I get to support the artist, even indirectly through discogs

    Not trying to be a purist or preach – you do you. But if your favourite genre is prog-death-melo-power-symphonic-polka music then I really would suggest ditching streaming to protect what you love.

  17. Here’s a tip. Get a sub using a card that you don’t need to use again (for me it’s a revolut account I no longer use and is always empty). Then when the payment fails you’ll keep getting pop ups when you open Spotify saying premium has failed, but still get no ads and can shuffle etc.

    Had this set up for about six months now!

  18. Family plan with friends method stays unbeaten, I pay like 3 quid a month

  19. wow, 264 notes a year for the family plan, my last payment was £17.99 a month, jumping to £21.99 is mad, time to review..

  20. Leave them.

    Plenty of better and more ethical alternatives.

  21. Anyone used SoundCloud Go+ or Qobuz? Heard good things but how do they compare to Spotify? I’m totally ready to move from their BS.

  22. The crazy part is you subscribe and still get adverts.

  23. Meanwhile a standard Spotify subscription in South Africa is £3.05 per month.

  24. Switched to Tidal recently and haven’t looked back. Way better quality and they pay their artists more.

  25. You can use Spotify in the browser and in combination with Adblock, sure you can’t download playlists but you can listen uninterrupted

  26. Any one know how to move songs to other platforms for free? It seems the most popular site to do this on is paid and ran by an Israeli company so I double don’t want to pay

  27. YouTube premium is 13 quid but gives you all the songs on YouTube that don’t appear on Spotify. Plus you get no ads for YouTube.

    It’s way better.

  28. Not ideal but still good value if you like audiobooks to listen to as well

  29. I will get a Spotify account in Poland now, it costs only £4.94 a month.

  30. Spotify has truly found a way to make money via streaming when everything is free on YouTube, genuinely impressive. 

  31. I’ll just carry on using my £5pm YouTube premium sub that includes YouTube music

  32. Switched to YT ages ago, no complaints. So nice not having YT ads too.

  33. The last time they increased prices twice within 12 months I tried out Tidal and I’ve not looked back.

  34. I really should just start using YouTube Music as I already pay for Premium. I just find Spotify’s recommendation algorithm so incredibly good, everytime I’ve dabbled in YouTube Music it just doesn’t seem the same. Also it commits the cardinal sin of automatically adding any song that I like to my YouTube Liked Videos playlist (seriously WTF is the logic behind this?).

  36. Subscription services are such bad value for money. You can still buy DRM free songs for 99p each. Do most people really listen regularly to 150 new songs a year to justify the price? Admittedly I’m in my 30s now but most people I know listen to older stuff and add maybe 2 or 3 new songs a month to their playlists. These sort of forever subscriptions is why the economy is in shambles.

  37. Might have to dust off my bicorn hat, affix a wooden leg, and buy a new parrot.

  38. got to pay for someone to prompt ai to make those fake songs i guess.

  39. I switched from Spotify to YT premium around 2016/2017 (whenever YT removed free background play from the app for free users). I was looking for a way around this and had never heard of YT music until then. I already listened to a lot of music on YT because it has a better catalogue of songs, covers (like BBC live lounge), live performances etc than Spotify. Seeing the price covered YT music and removed ads from YT videos was a very good deal. Spotify has upped their price more than YT since then so the deal is even better now. I think people only stick with Spotify because it was dominant like Netflix for so long that they’re more reluctant to look for alternative streaming options.

  40. I’ve had a Spotify account for the past ~10 years, and I cancelled it a few months ago because I couldn’t see the value in it. Using the radio function gives you the same 4 artists over and over, most playlists are AI generated and don’t even match up with what you’re looking for, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find new artists without it suggesting the same shit you’ve listened to before, or user playlists because it pushes its buries them under the AI generated ones.

    Apple seems better so far from the trial, and it’s cheaper.

  41. I pay £0 use a modified ipa no jailbreak and on desktop i use adblock

  42. As the kids say “this is your sign” … to cancel Spotify. These subscription services have reached their maximum market share, where there is no more customer growth for them. So in order to increase profits year on year, their only option will be to make the service worse (cheaper to operate) or increase prices.

    The longer you stay subscribed the more it will hurt when you eventually unsubscribe and have to start building up a physical CD collection again. So do it now and save yourself some hassle.

  43. Host your music your self. It really is not that hard.

  44. P2P use is increasing dramatically. We’ve gone full circle with these fucking services.

  45. I’ve been on the family plan with 5 friends for the last 7 or so years

    £3.67 a month

  46. This is along the fact that £1 = $1.35, no longer the 1 = 1 argument.

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