Spotify users, brace yourselves for a possible price hike
Spotify could be about to hike up the price of its multi-user Family plan, according to a new report.
Spotify Family lets up to six people use the music streaming service and sticks them all on a single bill. At the time of publication, it costs £14.99 per month in the UK. That's roughly £2.50 per user. Compare this to the individual Spotify Premium plan, which costs £9.99 per month.
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However, citing "people familiar with the matter", Bloomberg reports that the Stockholm-based firm is set to raise Family plan prices in Scandinavia by approximately 13%. If Spotify was to increase the price of its Family plan by 13% in the UK, customers could soon have to start paying around £17 per month.
An extra £2 per month (split between six people) might not sound like a huge amount, but this news comes at a slightly rough time for the company, which seriously upset some Android users this week by binning its much-loved Android widget. The move provoked some surprisingly strong reactions.
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Spotify's apparently impending Scandinavia price increase hasn't officially been announced yet, but Bloomberg's sources have said that the move doesn't necessarily mean that Spotify will raise prices elsewhere too. However, recent history suggests it might be wise to brace yourself for the worst.
In January, Netflix announced its biggest ever price hike for customers based in the US, raising prices by between 13% and 18%.
And in March some UK-based Netflix users spotted different prices for Netflix's three subscription tiers at different times: £6.99/£9.99/£12.99; £5.99/£8.99/£11.99; and £5.99/£7.99/£9.99.
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Shortly after, Netflix officially announced its biggest ever price hike for customers based in the UK − with the streaming service's Standard plan going up to £8.99 per month (from £7.99, representing a 12.5% increase), and its Premium plan going up to £11.99 per month (from £9.99, representing a whopping 20% increase).
