Spotify tests 99-cent-a-month subscription with ads - New York Post

Music and podcast streaming giant Spotify is testing a new, ad-supported subscription tier for 99 cents.

The tier, dubbed Spotify Plus, allows customers to play the songs of their choice with unlimited skips, according to a report from The Verge. Currently, Spotify’s other ad-supported tier, which is free, only allows customers to play music on shuffle mode and they can only skip up to six songs per hour.

Spotify Plus would sit in between the free tier and Spotify Premium, which costs $9.99 and is ad-free with unlimited skips. A rep for the Swedish streamer said Spotify Plus is currently being tested with a “limited number of users” at a variety of price points including the 99 cent a month offering.

“We’re always working to enhance the Spotify experience and we routinely conduct tests to inform our decisions,” a Spotify rep said. “We’re currently conducting a test of an ad-supported subscription plan with a limited number of our users. Some tests end up paving the way for new offerings or enhancements while others may only provide learnings.”

Spotify has a history of testing new features that may or may not ever see the light of day. For instance, in 2017, Spotify was testing a new high-end subscription service, called Spotify HiFi for Spotify Premium users.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is known to test new features for the streaming service before launching them wide.

The service was billed as a “CD-quality, lossless audio format music,” which would cost an additional $5 to $10 a month. But the high-end audio experience, which was supposed to launch this year, still hasn’t appeared on the service.

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