Premium Subscription: Spotify Raises Prices for the USA and Other Countries

Swedish streaming service provider Spotify announced on Thursday that it will raise prices for its Premium subscription in several countries. In the USA, Estonia, and Latvia, the subscription price will increase from 11.99 to 12.99 US dollars per month. The new prices are set to take effect in February.

Affected subscribers would receive a separate notification via email, the company wrote in a press release. The price adjustments are part of efforts to "continue to offer a great user experience," explained the Swedish streaming provider. Additional revenue generated by the price adjustments would be reinvested in improving the platform and supporting creators.

„As Spotify’s revenue grows across the globe, our payouts grow as well“, Spotify told heise online. „Increasing subscribers and prices are the key ways we expand that revenue. That has been the engine driving more than a tenfold increase in music royalty payouts over the past ten years.“

Subscription prices already increased last year

As early as last August, the music streaming group had raised its subscription prices worldwide in several countries. After initial uncertainties, Spotify also informed users in Germany about price increases for their Premium subscriptions. The "Premium Individual" subscription now costs a standard 12.99 Euros per month in Germany. The prices for "Duo", "Family", and "Student" subscriptions also increased by several Euros per month.

With the price increases for Premium plans, Spotify also introduced a basic subscription model, which has already existed in the USA since mid-2024. The one-time offer was aimed at "selected existing customers" who can do without certain features and could only be booked once. Users of the basic plans pay less, but the subscription does not include audiobook listening time.

Previously, Spotify had introduced its audiobook offering in Germany in the spring of 2025. Since then, users have been able to access a wide range of audiobooks from German publishing houses and hundreds of thousands of foreign-language audiobooks. The standard Premium subscriptions include 12 hours of audiobook listening time per month.

88 percent of all songs receive no payment

Spotify has repeatedly faced criticism for years. The Swedish streaming group pays only 0.3 cents per song stream. Competitors such as Apple Music, Tidal, or Deezer pay significantly more. Spotify also distributes royalties via a pro-rata system: musicians are not paid according to actual streams, but according to their percentage share of all global streams. Each Spotify user, with their payment to the platform, thus pays all artists, even if they do not explicitly listen to them. The system favors international top artists. According to a study by the Netzwerk Digitale Kultur, over 75 percent of all German streaming revenues in 2023 went to only 0.1 percent of artists.

At the end of 2023, Spotify announced further changes to its policies, which were implemented shortly thereafter. Since April 2024, songs must achieve at least 1000 streams per year to be included in the streaming provider's royalty calculation pool. A study published yesterday by the data analysis firm Luminate now reveals the impact of the new policies. According to the study, in 2025, a total of 88 percent of songs available on Spotify were streamed less than 1000 times. All these songs were therefore completely demonetized and received no royalties.

(rah)