Tag: Free Tier

Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

March 23, 2022

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.”

Personalized Discovery: Listen to Music You Love with All-New Free on Spotify

April 24, 2018

Music is the great connector. It unites us across markets, ages, backgrounds, languages, preferences, political leanings and income levels. At Spotify, we believe in music for everyone—and today, we are one step closer to making that a reality as we unveil a new, improved, and more personalized way to discover music and listen to what you love on Spotify, for free.

The new ad-supported Spotify is a natural next step as Spotify continues to innovate and evolve for the needs of our users, and will be rolling out globally to all users of Spotify on iOS and Android. With a new design on mobile, Free on Spotify includes a number of new features to make the listening experience more tailored to what you need to hear, now.

“Our customers always tell us that music discovery and listening is a personal experience, and we are enhancing the free experience with this in mind,” said Babar Zafar, VP of Product Development at Spotify. “This is the beginning of an evolution for Spotify and we will continue to make improvements that mirror our customers’ needs. This is not only about giving users a more customized free experience from the day they sign up, but giving them more control over their listening experience so they can easily find and stream their favorites anytime, from anywhere.”

On-demand playlists

We want all users to have more control over the listening experience so everyone can both discover new artists and return to old favorites. Fifteen new on-demand playlists offer the ability to pick and play any track within our curated lists—without skipping tracks or waiting on shuffle to bring up the music you love. These on-demand playlists will be unique to you, based on your musical tastes, and may include Spotify-curated playlists ranging from RapCaviar and Viva Latino to Ultimate Indie and Alternative R&B as well as personalized playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mix.

More personalized

With Spotify for free, users gain easy access to favorite songs and discovering new music is made simpler—and it’s personalized for you. When you sign up, we’ll ask you about the artists you love, and we’ll deliver curated playlists that match your musical taste and personalized playlists, like Daily Mix. These new playlists are easily accessible on the new Home screen, which is always being updated based on your listening activity.

Make Spotify yours

Tell us which songs and artists you LIKE ♡ (or HIDE ⃠) as you listen. Tap the ♡ to quickly save songs to your Favorites playlist and tap the ⃠ icon to hide songs you don’t want to hear. Recommendations will improve the more you listen and denote preferences.

Create your own playlists

Playlists are the key to creating a mood, whether it’s morning workout or weekend dance party, and now it’s even easier to create and edit a playlist with Spotify. Just give your playlist a name, search and preview specific tracks, and add to your playlist. As you save songs, we’ll continue to suggest more songs that we think you will like.

Play music using less mobile data with Data Saver:

Music should be accessible to everyone, in every market—the love of a great song is what connects communities and cultures across the world. But many users of Spotify for free around the world aren’t able to enjoy music whenever they want, because of the volume of mobile data streaming typically uses. That’s why we created Data Saver, a simple toggle switch that optimizes the listening experience to use less mobile data when listening to music.

The new free experience will be available on iOS and Android and will be rolling out globally to all markets in the coming weeks.

Happy Streaming!

New Free Spotify: Press Assets