Spotify Has a Cheaper Membership Plan It Doesn’t Want You to Know About
Spotify has secretly launched a new membership plan for its individual users. I say covertly because, despite publishing an announcement about it, the company hardly goes out of its way to inform current subscribers about the plan changes – likely because many of them would choose to switch if they knew they had one opportunity. Moreover, new users cannot even sign up for this plan; you can only get it by joining and then “downgrading”.
The new plan is an additional individual membership option to the Premium service and is aptly named “Basic”. That’s $1 cheaper than the regular Premium plan: $10.99 versus $11.99. (I know a dollar a month isn’t much, but I’ll get there). While the plan’s name may suggest an offering similar to a “free” version of the music streaming service that shows ads while you listen, Spotify says Basic gives you all the benefits of the standard Premium plan, minus only the 15 hours of listening time audiobooks per month.
For most people, losing that benefit honestly justifies “downgrading to the Basic plan,” even if it’s only saving $12 a year. That’s why.
Streaming prices are rising across the board
Spotify is just one of many streaming services that continue to regularly increase their prices. This most recently happened earlier this month when the company increased the price of Premium from $10.99 to $11.99 and raised the price of Premium Duo and Premium Family. However, despite its steady growth, Spotify hasn’t added any new features to Premium in years.
In fact, the company even took a strange step back with its first hardware version of Car Thing, which was discontinued earlier this year , and even shut down its functionality so that even people who bought and paid for it couldn’t continue to use it. (although the company offered a refund). With that in mind, the introduction of a cheaper paid plan that doesn’t necessarily strip you of any useful features is a nice change of pace in today’s increasingly expensive, ad-stifled streaming landscape.
Most Spotify users don’t listen to audiobooks
Now you’ll notice I said “useful features”. Spotify made a big deal about supporting audiobooks when it introduced them to its services last year, and while I love audiobooks, they’re a great way to read when you don’t have time to sit down with a real book (or e-reader) – including audiobooks in your Spotify service is not something special.
Yes, there are over 250,000 titles in the catalog, but you only get 15 hours of listening per month. If you listen to books of average length (about 10 hours, depending on the number of words in the original and the reading speed of the narrator), then you will limit yourself to listening to one book per month. However, if you listen to longer books (FYI, a Game of Thrones book can be up to 47 hours long), you won’t be able to read the entire thing in one month, which isn’t that long. better user experience.
What’s more, Spotify’s own reports show that only 25 percent of Spotify subscribers engage with audiobook content at all. This means that a significant portion of you reading this, myself included, are paying for something you don’t actively use. (Note that it is unclear whether Spotify’s reported figure takes into account active monthly listeners or simply the percentage of users who have listened to audiobook content at least once.)
Basic gets you everything Premium except audiobooks.
Spotify’s new basic plan costs $10.99 and costs the same as Premium before, before the price hike earlier this month. This means that if you don’t mind sacrificing audiobooks (which, based on the numbers, you probably aren’t listening to anyway), you can effectively bypass the price increase. This also keeps Spotify’s monthly cost in line with Apple Music .
Once Spotify finally starts adding features like lossless audio, the price and feature differences between plans could widen even further. For example, I could see Spotify introducing a whole new price point for lossless audio. But this is all in the vague future. If you’re currently an active Spotify subscriber and don’t listen to audiobooks on the platform, there’s no reason not to upgrade to the basic tier—for a year, it’s like getting a month of the service for free. And a bit more.
How to Sign Up for Spotify Basic
As noted, you can’t sign up for the Basic plan directly—it’s not even listed on the site’s “View All Plans” information page . No, you must either be a current Premium member or register for Premium and then downgrade your membership.
Once this requirement is met, to upgrade to the new Basic plan, you will need to open Spotify on the web and then click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the page. Select “Account” and then click on the “Your Subscription” section at the top. Then click the Change Plan button and select Basic .
You’ll need to go through several confirmation screens, including several where Spotify will try to sell you on the idea of paying $1 more every month to continue receiving 15 hours of audiobook content. However, once confirmed, your plan will change and you will be downgraded to a cheaper option.
If you’re an Android subscriber, you can make changes directly in the app, but a Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechRadar that you’ll need to use a browser to make changes if you’re an iOS subscriber, like the Spotify iOS app. does not support this option directly in the application.
Additionally, it looks like Spotify is also offering new basic versions of its Duo and Family plans (the Family Basic plan costs $16.99, down from the usual $19.99, and Duo plan prices aren’t widely available yet). Spotify didn’t reveal either of these options in its official announcement, nor did it say that the feature is apparently also available to subscribers in the UK and Australia, at least according to what a representative told TechRadar .