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In April 2024, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that the service would get a new paid subscription option that only focused on music, though didn’t offer any further details at the time.
If, like me, you’ve no interest in having audiobooks in your music streaming service, the idea of a cheaper option than Spotify Premium sounded great, especially given the recent Spotify price hike in the US. But we didn’t know exactly what we’d get – but maybe we do now, thanks to this new ‘Basic’ music plan appearing then disappearing in the UK.
The good news is that the new tier isn’t as ‘basic’ as it appears – it’s pretty much just Spotify Premium without the books. You get ad-free music, which can be downloaded, with shuffle and queue organization options, and shared listening.
It also appears to be available in Individual, Duo and Family flavors. In return for going without audiobooks the price was lower: £1 cheaper for individual users and £2 for family users. In effect, it reversed the most recent Spotify price rise.
And then it vanished.
Where did Spotify Basic go?
When I logged into Spotify this morning to take another screengrab of the new plans, which were previously under Profile > Account > Subscription > Available Plans, they weren’t there – and I’ve since gone over the website with a fine-toothed comb and can’t find any reference to the new Basic plan anywhere on the UK website.
What I suspect has happened here is that Spotify didn’t want the new plan to be public quite so soon, so after it was spotted, the plug was quickly pulled to take it offline again. But the fact that it was there before suggests that it’s going to launch pretty soon, and we have to assume it’ll launch in other territories than just the UK. There’ll be an uproar if it’s not made available in the US, I’d imagine.
£1 per month isn’t a huge saving, but I suspect that a large number of Spotify Premium subscribers will welcome the opportunity to roll back the price hike to its previous level and give up the audio books. It could be a very popular option, and will bring Spotify back more in line with the other best music streaming services on price and features… except for hi-res audio, of course.
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