Spotify will offer a more expensive subscription option than the premium plan, which is now the highest. The new package will be branded “Premium” and feature high-quality music, according to reports.
The most expensive option, called “Supremium” internally, will bring in more money and satisfy investors, who have been pressuring the Swedish company to hike prices. It will also help it compete with high-quality music services like Apple Music and Amazon Music.
The new change comes after the streaming platform announced the HiFi feature, which improves the sound quality of the songs to “lossless” CD-quality music, in 2021.
Also, to add to its current premium tier, Spotify will give subscribers more access to audiobooks, either through a certain number of free hours per month or a certain number of titles, the story said.
The “Supreme” plan will be available in areas outside the US first. This is expected to happen at any time. But if things go well in other markets, the launch in the US is expected to happen in October.
The more expensive plan might not increase the number of subscribers, but it will increase the average income per user and help those who want to listen to lossless music on Spotify.
But Spotify hasn’t said anything public yet to confirm this. In pre-market trade, the company’s shares went up 0.6% to $161.
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More on Spotify’s new tier
In October, a Reddit user said that they were asked about a $19.99 per month “Platinum Tier” membership. The new level gave users access to HiFi music, a headphone tuner, and podcasts with fewer ads, as well as some extra tools for managing playlists and libraries.
“The company first said that it would offer a HiFi tier in 2021. But the start has been put off. Last year, CEO Daniel Ek suggested that licensing problems caused the launch to be delayed.
Apple, Spotify’s biggest rival, added lossless music to Apple Music for free in May 2021. Amazon has added hi-fi music to Prime Music.
Apple Music hiked its monthly charge from $9.99 to $10.99 last year. Amazon also changed its Amazon Music Unlimited personal plan this year. However, in some international areas, Spotify boosted its base subscription fee to $9.99 per month.
As the economic crisis worsened, the streaming behemoth made managerial changes and laid off some employees earlier this year. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO and co-founder, wrote that the company’s trajectory was unsustainable.
Spotify reported 195 million paid users in Q3, up from 188 million in Q2. The music streaming platform’s 2018 revenue growth rate of 36% dropped to 3.7% in 2022.
Its stock had dropped 70% by 2022. Some tech stocks are lower. According to Digital Music News, Meta also dropped to 65%, Snap to 81%, and Netflix to 53%.
Spotify reported 500 million monthly active users and 210 million premium subscriptions in its Q1 2023 earnings call.