{"id":2448878,"date":"2019-09-18T11:31:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T17:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=886502"},"modified":"2019-09-18T11:31:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T17:31:39","slug":"spotify-wont-raise-its-music-streaming-prices-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/spotify-wont-raise-its-music-streaming-prices-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify Won\u2019t Raise Its Music-Streaming Prices \u2014 Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As streaming services solidify their position as the dominant way that people listen to music, a common question swirling around \u2014 from investors and users both \u2014 has been whether subscription prices will go up. Over the past decade, Spotify<\/a> has helped set a U.S. market standard of $9.99 per month for a premium music subscription; it hasn\u2019t adjusted that figure once, even though its video-streaming counterpart Netflix has hiked its rates three times in the same time period. Discounts and multiple-user packages often take Spotity users\u2019 payments even lower<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the company remains adamant that its low price point is key to its success. Paul Vogel, Spotify\u2019s head of financial planning and analysis, treasury, and investor relations, doubled down on the stance on Tuesday when he spoke at Goldman Sachs\u2019 annual Communacopia Conference. In response to questions about whether Spotify would expand the pricing tests<\/a> that it\u2019s doing in Scandinavian countries \u2014 where it raised family-plan subscription fees by around 13% earlier this year \u2014 Vogel said that the Spotify is \u201cnot yet at a point where you have stickiness globally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Swedish streaming service is more interested in \u201cgrowing users and subscribers and bringing more and more value into the ecosystem, which is essentially lowering pricing,\u201d Vogel said, adding that while the Scandinavian tests have yielded positive results, they are not to be taken as a signal of Spotify\u2019s global plans because they reflect conditions in one particular market. \u201cThat\u2019s not to say we wouldn\u2019t test other markets, but our main focus is on growing the top of the funnel: users and subscribers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Spotify is also well aware of users taking advantage of the ultra-cheapness of its family plan, which allows six users to share a $14.99-a-month subscription (\u201cIt\u2019s shocking how many six-member families there are out there,\u201d Vogel remarked at Tuesday\u2019s conference) \u2014 but doesn\u2019t believe that those loophole discounts will cause any long-term problems. \u201cWe know it gets people into using the product, and eventually they\u2019re going to graduate away from the family plan,\u201d Vogel said, echoing the sentiment of Spotify executives\u2019 past remarks about the conversion rates<\/a> of free users to premium users.<\/p>\n

Since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2018, Spotify has faced increasing pressure to turn a profit \u2014 or at least to supply a roadmap to a point in time when it might finally be profitable. Artists and record-industry executives are also pushing for more aggressive pricing, especially amid a new round of licensing negotiations. But CEO Daniel Ek defended the service\u2019s low subscription fee in a Freakonomics podcast<\/a> in April, noting that music-streaming subscriptions have to compete with radio\u2019s accessibility and YouTube\u2019s \u201centire archive of music that you can listen to entirely for free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vogel\u2019s question-and-answer session on Tuesday also hit upon Spotify\u2019s commitment to growing its podcasting business, its desire to \u201cown music discovery,\u201d and its gradual progress toward enabling more artists to make a living off of its platform. Speaking about Amazon\u2019s foray into high-resolution music streaming<\/a> this week, Vogel said that \u201cwe haven\u2019t talked much\u201d about adding hi-fi options because \u201cif you go back and look at it, it\u2019s not really something that\u2019s been a big differentiator among the different services \u2014 we think that in terms of what consumers are looking for, it\u2019s not something that\u2019s really resonated.\u201d But, he added, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say never.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As streaming services solidify their position as the dominant way that people listen to music, a common question swirling around \u2014 from investors and users both \u2014 has been whether subscription prices will go up. Over the past decade, Spotify has helped set a U.S. market standard of $9.99 per month for a premium music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 01:14:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}