Upcoming changes to Spotify Free/Open | Hacker News Reader

Upcoming changes to Spotify Free/Open

spotify.com

19 pointsyesbabyyes15 comments

I really don't understand how people can find such little value in music that they don't think it worth paying £10 or even £5 a month to listen to unlimited amounts of it on their computer and mobile.

Spotify is easily the best thing I subscribe to, it's fantastic value.

People's perceptions of price are just weird. They will pay £5 for a cocktail they can enjoy for 5 minutes, but not £5 for a whole month of music. People on the comments are complaining that it's not fair to students. Students always seem to have money for beer.

I completely agree with this, I pay for premium and £9.99 is the sweet spot, its about what I would normally spend on music a month (a lot more than in recent months).

I was a premium subscriber, but cancelled it for various reasons:

- Spotify had downtime every now and then, and it's annoying if you can't listen music during that time (except for tracks kept for offline mode).

- The sound quality for premium users is good, but not perfect. I hear the difference between lossless and lossy, or least I imagine that I do ;).

- I like to own my music, and use it across iTunes Home Sharing devices.

- I encountered artists that are absent.

So, for the time being I will buy CDs, and use the free Spotify as a discovery tool. I fully agree that the price points are fine for the casual music listener who doesn't care about the problems listed above.

Spotify isn't available in my country, Grooveshark is.

Care to guess which I use?

Care to guess which I will still use, if Spotify becomes available?

There's some heart breaking stories in the comments. A young student, supported by his lonely mother, is now forced to be a pirate again. Honest hard-working individuals now have to drink two whole beers less every month to pay for a subscription. It's a sad, sad day for cheapskates ;'(

My brother (17) has 4 accounts. There's tricks to everything.

I would wager that they are cutting bleeding so they can afford to launch in new markets. The current model would have killed them if they ever launched in the us with the number of users they would attract.

Well it was nice while it lasted!

As a heavy user who rarely clicks the ads I could never understand how they could keep the service as it was. But on the bright side at least it is still free albeit with more restrictions.

Have been expecting this for a while, and I think their paid subscriptions are good value, but I wish companries would be more honest and open with anouncements like this rather than trying to spin it as a positive change.

They probably think this change sucks, lots of their user's certainly will but the truth is ad revenue can't support free users streaming unlimited tracks. Spotify needs to be profitable to continue the service. Just tell us that.

Personally i'm a paying user because i want the mobile version and i find the ads annoying, but i'm happy to pay for it and i do think its good value. However, you can understand why people find this crappy, because they'll just take the path of least resistance, which is to pirate music again.

It sucks, but I do understand, they have to pay their bills as well. I mean, £5 a month for unlimited music without adds is not bad.

It mostly sucks for people that cannot get a premium account but have neat tricks to get free.

Living in germany, I usually head to starbucks (their access points are routed through the UK) to refresh my 2 weeks travel time on my free account every now and then. I would buy premium, because 'spotify is not available in this country'. We have Simfy, but they are far worse (especially their AIR client).

But in the end, its a hack with no benefit to spotify (I get advertisement for british social health plans) so I can understand they are cracking down on this.

so it is true - free plans never work.

The one service that euros had over us yanks and it's pulled away from them, muahahaha! Now they must look upon us with envy once again!

IMHO, a subscription for music is completely worthless.

If spotify had for example a 10 year lifespan, that's £600 I'd have spent in subscription fees (minus potential inflation) for something I can no longer use at the end of the day.

I'd rather spend £600 over the time on CDs which I can do what I like with, including ripping to whatever media device and format is currently fashionable. That's 60 good albums potentially which will last until you die.

The value proposition is just silly on the risk basis. That's why they will die.

[addendum] I use spotify to find music I want to buy - that's the sweet spot.

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