Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

Today, we are excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership with Google: a multiyear agreement that represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers.  

Users who’ve downloaded Spotify from the Google Play Store will be presented with a choice to pay with either Spotify’s payment system or with Google Play Billing. For the first time, these two options will live side by side in the app. This will give everyone the freedom to subscribe and make purchases using the payment option of their choice directly in the Spotify app. Spotify will continue to freely communicate with users about our Premium subscription service, promote discounts and promotions, and give listeners on our Free tier the ability to convert to Premium directly in the app. 

Over the coming months, Spotify will work with Google’s product and engineering teams to build this new experience, and we’ll roll out in countries around the world. Working together, the companies will test and learn, jointly exploring product innovations across the Android platform. We anticipate launching the first iteration of User Choice Billing later this year.  

Spotify has been publicly advocating for platform fairness and expanded payment options, among other things, because fair and open platforms enable better consumer experiences and allow developers to grow and thrive—when this happens everyone wins.

Alex Norström, Chief Freemium Business Officer, commented, “Spotify is on a years-long journey to ensure app developers have the freedom to innovate and compete on a level playing field. We’re excited to be partnering with Google to explore this approach to payment choice and opportunities for developers, users, and the entire internet ecosystem. We hope the work we’ll do together blazes a path that will benefit the rest of the industry.” 

“Android has always been about openness and user choice,” said Sameer Samat, Vice President, Product Management at Google. “This step is an important milestone for mobile app stores and I can’t imagine a better first partner than Spotify. They value choice as much as we do and understand the importance and continued investment in Android and Play to the health of the entire ecosystem. This is an exciting first step and we look forward to adding new partners and learning how this model could be expanded across the platform.”