Spotify Plus is a brand new $0.99 subscription tier being piloted by the streaming service which mixes components of its present free and premium tiers. The plan nonetheless options adverts like Spotify’s free tier, but it surely doesn’t impose any limits on the variety of tracks you possibly can skip per hour. Customers are additionally free to select which particular songs they wish to take heed to, fairly than largely being restricted to shuffling inside albums and playlists. The brand new Spotify Plus tier is a tenth of the price of Spotify’s unrestricted ad-free Premium tier, which presently prices $9.99 a month.
Spotify’s free tier has existed in its present type since 2018. It doesn’t let customers skip greater than six tracks per hour, and solely lets them choose and take heed to particular tracks from 15 choose playlists, starting from editorial-selected playlists to algorithmically generated collections like “Uncover Weekly” and “Every day Combine.” Exterior of those playlists, free customers can solely take heed to shuffled tracks. The brand new Spotify Plus tier is a comparatively low cost method to scale back a few of these restrictions.
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Information of the brand new check tier was initially shared with The Verge by a reader (thanks, Gustovo!) and later confirmed by Spotify in a press release. “We’re at all times working to reinforce the Spotify expertise and we routinely conduct checks to tell our selections,” a spokesperson stated. “We’re presently conducting a check of an ad-supported subscription plan with a restricted variety of our customers.”
Nonetheless, Spotify cautioned that there’s no assure that the brand new tier will launch in its present type. “Some checks find yourself paving the best way for brand new choices or enhancements whereas others could solely present learnings. We don’t have any further data to share presently.”
Spotify has a historical past of testing new options years earlier than they really launch, in the event that they ever launch in any respect. One of the best instance of that is lossless audio streaming, which Spotify was testing as far back as 2017. Though the service officially announced its lossless “HiFi” tier earlier this 12 months, it’s nonetheless but to turn out to be obtainable. Different checks embody Snapchat-like stories for select playlists and visual quote cards for podcasts, each of which not look like seen within the app.