We present you the music selection that our friends from @ShareMyPlaylist have handpicked for May. Tune in here: http://t.co/b9qoq7YQ
Two of the world’s biggest DJs, Ingrosso+ Alesso, are hosting a house party and you’re invited! Join now - http://t.co/8BQLlijB
Spotify London are standing up for REAL food with @jamieoliver's @FoodRev http://t.co/95IRjtxj Get involved May 19! #foodrevolution
Congrats to our Chief Content Officer, Ken Parks, for being one of @FastCompany's 100 Most Creative People in Business! http://t.co/5fH9ZIKZ
Happy #MusicMonday! Check out some new music recommendations from @MonaFims and tell us - what are you listening to? http://t.co/cnVcQ0uF
It's Mother's Day on Sunday and we're compiling a playlist dedicated to Mom. What songs should we add to the list? Suggest a track here!
A new Spotify Desktop Version is rolling out with some awesome new features! Check out our blog for all the details: http://t.co/rWM8Kj3g
Your taste in music is a great way to spark a conversation. Meet new people with the @Tastebuds #SpotifyApp http://t.co/gsKqoX7B
Looking for romance, or just some new friends with fantastic taste in music? Check out @Fellody's #SpotifyApp http://t.co/chpPwsXp
Do you live in the UK? #FollowFriday @SpotifyUK and stay up to date on our local music news and competitions.
Spotify’s aim from the very beginning was to make music on-demand available to all. To give you the power to listen to, discover, share and manage your music the way you want to - simpler, faster, better - while making sure the artists whose music we all love continue to see the benefits as we grow.
Making Spotify available to millions across Europe has seen the service become incredibly popular. People are listening to more music and from a wider range of artists than ever before, and are giving up on piracy, which is exactly what we hoped would happen.
So it’s vital that we continue offering an on-demand free service to you and millions more like you, but to make that possible we have to put some limits in place going forward.
Here’s how the changes will work:
The changes we’re having to make will mainly affect heavier Spotify Free and Open users, as most of you use Spotify to discover music – on average over 50 new tracks per month, even after a year. Plus, the average user won’t reach the limit on plays for 7 out of 10 tracks, after a year of using Spotify. For those of you using Spotify to find new tracks to enjoy and share with friends, these changes shouldn’t get in the way of you doing that. Rest assured that we’ll continue to bring you the biggest and most diverse music catalogue available.
For anyone who thinks they might reach these limits, we hope you’ll consider checking out our Unlimited and Premium services, neither of which will be affected, plus we have a 7-day free trial for Spotify Premium that we’d love you to try. Throughout May, we’ll also have a pretty nice 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium – more details on that in the next few days.
Above all, this means we can continue making Spotify available to all in the long-term. We’ll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better.
Thanks so much, as ever, for your unbelievable support and I hope to come back with some exciting news in the next few weeks.
Daniel
Update: Some users may have difficulty posting comments to our blog as we are experiencing higher than normal traffic volumes. Your feedback is important to us and we are working to restore full access to our website.
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So long Spotify. It was nice nowing you. Guess I'll go back to pirating music again then.
"We’ll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better." Favorite artists view "à la iTunes" ? Anyone ?
Bye bye Spotify.
I think this is a nice change. Hopefully, more people will start paying and it'll improve Spotify even further.
Stop complaining. You can't get everything for free. Just dig down and pay those 49 SEK a month it costs to get rid of the limitations and commercials. It's worth it you know.
To be fair, Spotify is well worth the monthly charge anyway. It's the best £10 I spend each month. I'd recommend it to anyone.
It would be nice if there where family accounts so kids can keep using Spotify.
This should get more paying customers. Sure a lot of users will leave to, but are non paying users really interesting?
I guess you've already realized you're going to have a shitload of haters complaining. Going back to "Youtube/Piracy" is not an option for me nowadays. Spotify is too good not to have. How can you not be willing to pay 50-100 SEK a month for UNLIMITED music? Certain things can't be free, and music is a controversial subject. Spotify needs income, as with every company. They're not bad crooks for asking you for money all of a sudden.
Great news, about time! Now how about them family accounts?
This is the right move. If you are not willing to pay 10 euros for unlimited access of music and no commercials and better bitrate, don't really understand that how things work in real world. Good luck on the effort of searching tracks all over the internet or buying it song by song somewhere. Nothing is free, accept it.
Good luck Spotify, hope this brings you the revenue you're after. To anyone saying about going back to piracy, or getting grumpy generally about this, would love to know why you don't consider paying for a service you clearly enjoy using?
during my years of trying to use spotify to find music to listen to that I didn't have already, I found four songs that I tried to learn to play on the guitar... spotify was never worth the money for me and it will never be. Nothing is free indeed, and that's not the issue here, but I'd rather pay for other services that actually provide me with the music I wish to listen to.
Spotify Premium costs the equivalent of buying a CD a month. ONE CD. And folk are complaining. Sheesh.
This is stupid. How can you say you are "...making sure the artists whose music we all love continue to see the benefits as we grow" while limiting me to 5 plays per track? You are limiting the potential revenue for an artist and limiting the use i have for Spotify. This is a bad move for your users and the artists.
I would have no problem with this if the limit was "5 listens to a track per year", but a fixed limit of 5 times for ever seems a bit harsh. There are plenty of albums that I own that I listen to on spotify - having adds interjected is the price I pay for not having to synchronise my music across all my devices. Now I won't be able to do that. I used to have a premium account, but when some of my favourite albums disappeared from Spotify I decided to go back to a free account + buying CDs. This is not a complaint, just a discussion. I'll still use Spotify, and I may purchase one of the non-premium accounts in the future, but for me the service hasn't quite found it's place yet, and I'm not sure what this change does to that.
Also everyone saying "Oh you can't expect to have it for free" nobody has ever had it for free, that's what the ads are there for. I mean, how do you think commercial radio works?
I guess the advertising model wasn't working? That's a shame. biggest threat to Spotify is youtube, which now has playslists, and you can listen to music uninterrupted for free. Which is a shame, since I like Spotify (despite the screwy UI). If I hit a limit, it's a case of searching youtube. surely Dan, you've thought of this? Are you giving up on the Ad model?
I have been a paying customer since day 1, this is a very good move by Spotify. Artists should be payed, music should not be free. Also I love having Spotify on my Android.
Bye bye spotify... Im beginning to save my lists....
It was nice while it lasted.
So long, tight people who won't cough up £10 a month for an amazing service. I can't believe, for the price of a couple of drinks, people won't pay for an account which lets them have unlimited service AND a mobile service. Weird. I look forward to continuing to use my premium account for a long time...
As a Premium user, hopefully this means we get some of those missing artists... Tool, anyone? Otherwise it's a bit of a hit and miss. Don't get me wrong, I understand where you are coming from... but still, I think some other route could've been taken. The original hook of Spotify is in reality wiped for new users... and I can see some level of abuse following, new account each 6 months? Oh, and how about family accounts as petrus764 mentioned above, or at least family payment plans? Link two accounts for example in the same household? Slight discount or something of the sort? Currently the trend is often to buy one Premium, and then give someone else in the household a Free invite.
Good - finally! I'm satisfied premium user, and I really want to see Spotify succeeding and paid accounts are the only working method for that. Music cant be free -accept it! Thumbs up.
It had to happen. The free accounts are too good & if people love the service they will (and should) help support it. Keep up the awesome work guys!
Guys stop complain I guess this is a effect of the co-op between spotify and the big record companies. So I believe that in future we are going so see a lot of those songs we missed in spotify. Think this is a good move both for spotify and for the users since we get more of the experience out of this!
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
ok, so your bad deals with record label mafia forces you to dump the load of manure on your customers? As a paying spotify subscriber, i won't have it. Goodbye. Spotify does not really work in finding new music anyway. Trust me, i've tried. artist radio is a joke. Bad one. Genres don't work, at all. Spotify is impossible to contact, or they are not really interested in replying to suggestions or feedback. I've complained about many things from the start without any replies or explanations.
I love the premium account and hey 10 euro per month for unlimited music where do you get a better deal? So great news, about time! Now how about them family accounts?
Those of you saying things like "bye bye" spotify are exactly the same morons that caused the music industry to crash in the first place. I'm not some hard capitalist by any stretch, but you have to be willing to pay for things you use, and spotify is so cheap for a brilliant service.
This smacks of pure greed. I don't think you could have found a better way to alienate your users even if you had deliberately set out to do so. There's no way I could ever consider upgrading to a premium account now. I'll just stick with my open account until I run out of free plays or further restrictions like these make it completely unusable. Thanks. It was fun while it lasted.
I loved Spotify as a social network. Now that's gone, since the majority of people will leave. I'll probably stay, though.
Please, i'm waiting for an iPad app before subscribing to your paid offer.
"We’ll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better." How about rating tracks (0-5 stars) and smart playlists. The current static playlist system is horribly unwieldy and outdated. Oh, and Spotify Radio is completely useless. You could see how Pandora does things and copy from the best.
Didn't see this coming at all. Maybe I am one of the few that like to listen to a song more than 5 times, but it's surely something that happens a lot. If these changes are preventing me from doing so then I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for your services so far, too bad you had to change the rules during the game.
I wrote a long diatribe explaining why these new limitations are ridiculous but of course I'm told to log in again and alas everything I've written is lost. To make a long story short, it's quite unreasonable to force new limitations on users, practically forcing them to pay for a product that still has its glitches and whatnot. If the billing system worked like it's supposed to, without requiring me to set up the premium account over and over again every month, and if the music selection could even come close to that of good-old-fashioned piracy, then yeah, I might cough up the moolah for this service. But as it is, I'm also going to bid you farewell Spotify, it's been a great relationship with its ups and downs, but lately you've turned into a needy manipulative b*tch and I've had it up to here.
I don't object to paying for a service like Spotify. I do, however, object to being coerced into it.
Awesome!!!.. or something.
Haters gonna hate. I think its a bold, but good move. The service is excellent, I am happy to pay for my premium account and I understand that Spotify have to make some changes to keep up the good work. People leaving because they can't deal with this was probably not future customers of the paid service anyway and that will just free up more bandwidth for Spotify, all in all it's a good thing. Looking forward to more interesting news from you guys in the future and especially your iPad app (whenever that's coming).
Give the users more opportunities to be able to pay. Instant Payment via internet banking would fit me well because I do not have MasterCard and such cards.
peber said: "but are non paying users really interesting?" I second that. If they would rather spend their time on pirate sites than paying 5/10 Pounds per month, it's their loss.
"Plus, the average user won’t reach the limit on plays for 7 out of 10 tracks, after a year of using Spotify." This actually implies that every user is always looking for new music and isn't allowed to get stuck in his old favorites, eh? Actually quite a retarded statement if you were to ask me. I love spotify, I use it daily and I probably won't be able to live without it, which is why I will probably buy the 49kr subscription: whatever the case this is probably the greediest move I've seen in a long time, and you guys just sunk, a long way down, in my eyes.
Bye spotify, one new and completely free service is waiting us, let's go to G*****shark!!
By the way, I am probably not the only one who actually appreciated/s spotify's commercials? I really like the small break, and how they tell that a band's new CD has been let out on the platform. Byebye dear commercials. </3
Bye bye Spotify
To all those saying by-bye: How cheap can you get?? "That's me back to piracy", "Fun while it lasted"...sheesh.
Bye bye Spotify.
So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight!!!!!!
Is Spotify struggling with scalability? If so it's a really clever move. They're going to lose/convert a vast majority of the non-paying user base, meaning resources can be assigned to those who pay. Therefore premium users receive a "better experience" and Spotify get more money. Revenue from advertising and Premium users can't sustain free users, so they introduce this. This is just my thesis, but some proof would be interesting.
So long Spotify, it was nice while it lasted, but it's just not remotely worth £10/month.