After the much-anticipated launch of lossless streaming for paid subscribers, Spotify is upgrading its services for free users. On Monday, the company announced that free users around the world will be able to search and play songs they want, as well as play songs shared by friends and artists they follow on social media.
The company calls the new features “Pick and Play,” “Search and Play,” and “Share and Play.” Along with the former, free users can hit Play on the Spotify app and choose their favorite song and play it, or search for and play a specific song.
The “Share & Play” feature may encourage free users to open Spotify when they come across music on social media. For example, Instagram allows users to share Spotify Track with Sound and Stories, while users can share music with Instagram notes.
Previously, free users could shuffle songs that were limited to skip on their mobile devices.
According to Spotify, the new feature will roll out globally to free users, but there are still restrictions that premium users won’t face.
When contacted for clarification, the company said that when users of the free mobile experience have assigned “on-demand time” and reach daily limits, they are limited to a limited number of skips per hour. Please note that Spotify didn’t share anything about that time limit, but premium users don’t have these limits.
Spotify’s advertising business has been struggling over the past few months, with CEO Daniel Ek telling investors that the company is “moving slowly” on this front. Streamers hope that advertising revenue will compensate for 20% of their overall revenue, but as of June it only rose to 11%. By adding new free features, Spotify can increase engagement between free user bases and are then exposed to more ads.
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According to Spotify, other features such as lossless, AI playlists and mix support will remain premium-only products, extending to both free and paid experiences as before, including newly launched messages and daylists of personalized playlists available to global users.
The company’s free users now make up a large portion of its user base. Of Spotify’s 696 million monthly active users, 433 million were free ad-supported customers in the most recent quarter. Additionally, there were 276 million premium (payment) subscribers in the quarter.
More information about restrictions that will be updated after publication and affect free users.
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