For years, there’s been a quick fix that at least partially makes up for the low royalties most musicians get from streaming services: raise subscription prices.
Streaming has reinvigorated the music industry, whose revenue has halved over the past few years due to illegal downloads and declining CD sales. However, more than two decades ago, in the early days of the streaming era, the U.S. subscription price was set at $9.99 per month to reflect the cost of a Blockbuster video rental subscription, and incredibly, until recent weeks, all this All have changed. In fact, the ground war for market share has become so fierce that streamers are competing with the Bell through dozens of different plans — including ad-supported, aka free-to-play, student and family plans, bundles, and more. This leaves musicians and songwriters earning less.
“It makes no sense,” Milana Lewis, CEO of distribution and payments platform Stem, said this year. “The price of everything else on earth is going up, and they all keep finding new ways to make subscriptions cheaper.” Surveys show that users can tolerate higher prices.
But that is finally changing. Apple is raising the prices of Apple TV+, Apple One and Apple Music globally. In the U.S., starting October 24, individual Apple Music subscriptions will go up $1 per month to $10.99, while Apple Music Family Plan subscriptions will go up $2 to $16.99.
YouTube also raised the price of its YouTube Premium family plan by 28%, or $5, to $22.99. This change is effective immediately for new subscribers and existing customers will receive 30 days’ notice. Deezer, a player ranks fourth or fifth globally (depending on whether you count China-only Tencent), has also raised prices internationally.
During Spotify’s third-quarter earnings call, co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said the company is considering one as well.
“When our competitors are raising their prices, that is really good for us,” he said. He also told us that Spotify has implemented more than 46 price increases in markets globally and the results of these price adjustments have been “as good as we would have hoped for, if not better, in many of these places.”
If you want to know the current price, you can refer to this article
How much is Spotify Premium and is it worth it?
Raise subscription prices in the US, by far the world’s largest music market, “is one of the things we would like to do and it’s something we will discuss with our label partners. I feel good about this upcoming year, and what it means about pricing for our service,” he said but didn’t provide further details.
During the earnings call, Ek also revealed other strategies Spotify is considering to boost SPOT’s ARPU (average revenue per user). The company has considered “a la carte” services for its products, such as offering a separate subscription tier for audiobooks or selling tickets to live concerts.
If this price increase is a burden for you, you can buy shared Spotify Family Plan at this website.
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