Spotify Family Plan subscriptions confirmed

Posted on 14 Mar 2012 at 09:47, by Gareth Halfacree

Music streaming giant Spotify has confirmed plans to introduce a 'Family Plan' subscription which would drastically drop the cost of using the service for those in a shared household.

Currently, Spotify operates on three main levels: Spotify Free offers the ability to play a limited number of tracks for free and is supported by advertising; Spotify Unlimited removes the adverts and the restrictions on how many times each song can be played; Spotify Premium adds the ability to download files for offline use and supports streaming via smartphones.

With Spotify Unlimited costing £4.99 and Spotify Premium costing £9.99, neither option is likely to break the bank - but each is only available for use on a single device at any given time. There's no restriction on how many devices the account can be installed on, but if you're listening to Spotify music on your laptop it won't be available for use on your desktop or smartphone and vice-versa.

As a result, families looking to use the service are forced to shell out a monthly subscription for each family member. In larger households, this can soon add up - but a planned 'Spotify Family Plan' subscription will help to keep the costs down.

Confirmed by Spotify's chief content officer Ken Parks in an interview with The Verge at the South-by-Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) event this week, there are currently few details as to what form the plan is likely to take. Rival services offer discounted additional subscriptions up to a certain number, after which the limit of the plan is reached, but Parks hasn't detailed if Spotify's version will include similar restrictions.

With Spotify continuing to attract new customers, however, a family plan could offer a major boost to the company's subscriber base while offering customers a cheaper way to get everyone accessing the service simultaneously.