Spotify confirms $18 Deluxe plan is coming
Spotify has been rumored to introduce an even more expensive plan than its Premium one for literally years at this point. This has sometimes been referred to as "supremium", a plan which would introduce higher quality streaming. We've heard about it last year, and again this April.
Now it's been officially confirmed by the company during its latest earnings call. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the company plans on offering such a plan, which is right now still in "early days". Here's how Ek describes it:
Itâs probably around a $17 or $18 price point, but sort of a deluxe version of Spotify that has all of the benefits that this normal Spotify version has, but a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board.
In other Spotify-related news, it hit 246 million paying subscribers in the second quarter of this year (April to June), which is up 12% compared to Q2 of 2023. The company added 7 million paying subscribers compared to the year-ago quarter, which was 1 million above guidance, and that resulted in Spotify shares going up 14% in pre-market trading earlier today.
The total number of monthly active users is now 626 million, 14% more than in the year-ago quarter. Ek said on the earnings call that Spotify will continue to use ad-supported free plans in developing markets, since "engagement looks different in these markets, as do the channels to acquire them and conversion to pay can be a bit slower". Spotify plans to increase its marketing efforts in those places and add more perks to the free offering.