Hold onto your headphones, free Spotify users, because something amazing has just happened! Spotify has finally answered our collective prayers. It is rolling out a massive upgrade to its free tier globally. This fundamentally changes how free version users can experience the app.
Major Update
For the first time, you can now “pick and play” any song in any playlist and any album tracklist as a free user. This is a big change from the frustrating shuffle-only model. It has defined the free experience for so long. While you’ll still be dropped into shuffle mode initially, the power to manually choose the next song is now in your hands. There is still a limit on how many on-demand minutes free users have.
This is the first of three big changes to Spotify. They’ve also given free users two other on-demand features. Search & Play allows you to search for a specific song and play it instantly. No more passive consumption. Moreover, they also added Share & Play, which means shared tracks from friends or artists’ social media can now be played immediately on mobile. According to Gustav Gyllenhammar, VP of Marketing and Subscriptions, the upgrades to the free tier are a strategy for a more profitable ad business.
Premium
Of course, a few things remain exclusively for Premium users—queuing tracks and unlimited skipping, for example. But these new features are a carefully calculated gift from the streaming giant. They’re hoping that giving free users a taste of this enhanced control will get us more hooked on the app. This could boost their ad business and, ultimately, convince more of us to upgrade to a paid subscription.
This “glow up,” as Spotify’s Gustav Gyllenhammar calls it, is a clear response to a younger generation of users. They expect this kind of seamless control. As Gyllenhammar put it, “They really expect this to work.” It’s a huge move for the company. They haven’t made a change this big to its free tier in nearly six years.
All these new tools also make you wonder what’s next. We’ve heard whispers of a super-premium “Music Pro” tier that could cost more, but it has not been fully confirmed yet. Moreover, Spotify is thinking of increasing the premium cost an additional $5 in the future. This means the premium account and the Music Pro add-on may cost $18 a month. These generous new free features seem to be part of a bigger master plan. Could some of these new features become perks for that exclusive new tier down the road? Only time will tell. For now, we’ll take this amazing free update and get back to listening to our favorite songs—on our own terms.
Premium Upgrades
Of course, the premium version also saw its own upgrades. Now, premium accounts have a playlist mixing tool and added lossless audio. Moreover, paid and free users got a direct message feature last month. All these upgrades have been a direct response to the market shift, as newer generations gear towards YouTube and TikTok. After all, premium accounts generate 90% of the app’s revenue, and 60% of premium users start on the free tier.