Spotify has revamped its subscription products in five markets, including India, so that it now offers three versions of Premium: Lite, Standard and Platinum.
The streaming service has been teasing a higher priced ‘super-premium’ tier for ages, with Spotify’s music industry partners very keen to find ways to boost the monthly payments made by each individual subscriber. Streaming operates on a revenue share model, of course, and higher subscription prices mean there is more revenue to be shared with the music industry.
Spotify’s regular promises that a ‘super-premium’ product is in development has resulted in much speculation about what extra features might be added to justify a higher price.
It was long thought that higher quality audio would be one of those features, but then Spotify rolled that out as part of its standard premium product in many markets back in September. However, in India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, higher quality audio is now part of the new Platinum tier, which costs more than double the Lite tier.
Platinum also allows users to “mix your playlists” and “connect your DJ software”, and includes “AI playlist creation” and “your personalised AI DJ”, again all features already available as part of standard premium in many markets.
The new Platinum tier also replaces Spotify’s existing multi-user packages - Duo and Family - in these five markets. Duo allows two people to access Spotify via a subscription, while Family can be used by six people. Platinum will accommodate three users.
A lot of the conversation around ‘super-premium’ in the past has focused on persuading users in more mature markets to pay an extra five dollars or pounds a month, with superfan content and ticket pre-sale benefits touted as possible extra features to justify the higher price. These features are not part of the Platinum product being launched in these five countries.
It does make sense for Spotify to initially restructure its premium products in developing markets, however, where standard subscription prices are generally much lower than in North America and Western Europe. For many years a key objective in those developing markets was to convert free tier users into paying users. Trying to get more money from those paying users is the next logical step.
A premium subscription in India currently costs 139 rupee, about £1.19. That will be the cost of the new Lite subscription, which offers ad-free listening and audio quality of 160kbps. Premium Standard increases audio quality to 320kbps and adds offline listening, priced at 199 rupee, or £1.70. Platinum costs 299 rupee, or £2.56.
It will be interesting to see if Spotify instigates a similar rejig of its subscription packages in other markets. And - if it does - if some of the recent additions to standard premium in those countries will be shifted into Platinum, or if brand new features - like superfan content and pre-sale tickets - will be introduced.