As things stand now with Spotify, premium, ad-free subscriptions to the music streamer cost $9.99 a month for an individual and $14.99 for a family. On Thursday, however, the Swedish-based company announced it’s currently testing a cheaper subscription version that would be just for two people — say, a husband and wife or two roommates — who would otherwise be stuck having to buy two individual subscriptions. Assuming they didn’t, you know, share the password for a single subscription.
The new subscription Spotify is testing is called “Premium Duo,” and US subscribers can’t access it for now. Testing is only under way in five markets — Colombia, Chile, Denmark, Ireland and Poland. What the company is testing allows two people to share two separate Spotify Premium accounts on a single bill for €12.49.
That price is roughly equivalent to $14, which might seem a little confusing since that’s also close to the price of Spotify’s family plan that allows for sharing between up to six people. However, as The Verge notes in a piece today, that plan has actually caused some headaches for the company, which has cracked down on people trying to share the family subscription even when they’re not related to each other — going so far as Spotify asking those subscribers to confirm their home addresses.
In short, the idea here in terms of the pricing is to accommodate two people who would otherwise have to shell out a lot more for two individual subscriptions. Under this plan, they’d also save a dollar or so compared to the family plan price.
Premium Duo subscribers will also get a new automatically generated playlist called Duo Mix that’s similar to the company’s popular Discovery Weekly mix. The playlist is generated based on tunes both of the users who share the account will likely enjoy. There’s also an easy way under this plan to share playlists you create with the partner you share this account with.
It’s certainly welcome to see Spotify move into more granular subscription territory and away from one-size-fits-all kinds of pricing. However, there’s no word yet on when this subscription tier might move beyond the testing phase.
