Spotify Winning The Streaming Music War Test 99 cent Plan
The Wired.com published an article, “The Best Music Streaming Services to Get your Groove On,” that tells the type of experiences the top seven streaming music platforms give to their users. Spotify, currently testing a new plan offering that only cost 99 cents a month called Spotify Plus, is ranked number one for having the best music discovery algorithms and user interface. Spotify also has a free plan with ads. The new ad supported subscription offers some of the premium service features, such as on demand listening, at a lower price. The test will help Spotify learn more about users and possibly lead to more plan offerings. Read More »
Spotify
Spotify’s premium plan cost right at $10 and offers unlimited skips. The streaming platform also offer multiple user plans. The Duo plan for two users is at $13 a month, and a family of six can listen for $16 monthly. There is even a student plan for $5 a month. The new 99 cents a month plan increases library limit from 10,000 songs to unlimited numbers of songs for your personal library and 10,000 per playlist. You can social share with friends and create group sessions to stream playlist together. The Wire.com article includes in it a link to , “Tips for Getting the Most Out of Spotify”.
YouTube Music
YouTubeMusic, ranked 4th on the Wired.com list of best streaming services, now include what was once GooglePlay Music. YouTube is also testing a newer “Lite” version of their offerings that is ad free but without most of its premium features. YouTube Premium offers ad free listening, on demand playback and the price point of $10 monthly. It has over 60 million songs and suggests artist you may like. You can also keep 100,000 songs saved in your library and allows to sharing of playlists. The premium plan will continue to play on your smart phone even when the screen is off.
Google’s YouTube Music Premium is also $12 monthly but does not offer the main YouTube features. Google is also offering a YouTube Premium Lite service that its testing in Europe that cost about $7. The Lite Premium version is focused on viewing and is add free for YouTube and YouTube Kids. This may be especially beneficial when YouTube fully roll out picture in picture support. YouTube test may also lead to additional plans.
Apple Music
Wired.com ranked Apple Music number two on its list of best streaming music services because of lossless music quality. Lossless compression allows the pure sound of audio music to keep its studio quality. It is included in its $10 a month plan and is less than half the cost of the number three ranked streaming platform Tidal, who charges $20 a month. Apple music now offers around 20 million songs with lossless compression and hope to offer its catalog of over 70 million in lossless audio by the end of the year. Tidal offers 70 million songs, some at master quality. Tidal Access offers free and a premium plan at $10 a month.
Amazon Music
Amazon Music is ranked at number five. Free with Prime and over 75 million tracks, Amazon also offers Music Unlimited for $8 a month for Prime members and $10 a month without a Prime account. The complete library is in lossless audio with your Amazon Music Unlimited account. Although the international audio streaming service Deezer was included at number six, its a French service and many of its albums can’t play in America. Pandora rounds off the list at number 7. It offers free streaming, a paid subscription for $5 and Premium for $10 a month.
PC Mag Top Picks
PCMag.com published its article, “ The Best Online Music Streaming Services for 2021, which included Sirius International Radio and LiveXLive Powered By Slacker. LiveXLive is free at Google Play and was chosen as the top of the 10 Top Picks for best curated channels. It gained the ranking because of the D Js that makes it the most complete among streaming music services. SiriusXM is among the others as best satellite radio at $11 a month. It combines live radio with streaming audio services.
On PCMag.com, Spotify was number three and Tidal came in at number four. Amazon was in the number five spot with Apple Music at number six. Deezer also made this list at number seven and Qobuz at $15 a month is at number eight. YouTubeis at number nine and iHeartRadio at number ten. These list certainly offer music lovers lots to choose from. Spotify offering its new service plan for just 99 cents will probably attract the curious, just to see how it works. In addition to streaming music, Spotify also offer podcast and video services and offer content from creators all over the world.
More About Spotify
Spotify, founded in 2006, is the world’s largest streaming music provider and has over 365 million active users. In June 2021, active users included 165 million paying subscribers. You may wonder why Spotify hasn’t fell to the wayside like Napster, Rhapsody or Rdio. One reason is its free service that allows you to choose the songs you want to listen to and there are over 15 million to choose from. You actually rent rather than purchase songs and you can pick tracks instead of genres.
At FastCompany.com, Spotify is listed among the most innovative companies. The Swedish company has licensing agreements with media companies and offer exclusive content to Western Europe, Australia, Asia and the Americas, North, South and Central. Spotify reported $3 billion in revenue, a 52% increase. Spotify seems to be just as invested in the artists as the record companies. Its new 99 cents services will bring more artist to more listeners.
The Music Streaming Competition
Streaming wars include music with Spotify seated as number one. This will surely lead to better services for listeners on all streaming platforms as they try to keep up. Spotify’s advantage seems to be in its sophisticated data collection and discovery algorithms. Those using Spotify and YouTube through their free services may try the new Plus and Lite versions to see if the cost brings with them greater value.
