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2nd May 2024
04:35pm BST
Like many subscription services, Spotify are making their free tier service less enjoyable in order to entice people to sign up for premium.
Netflix introduced a crackdown on password sharing last year and doubled down on it's exclusivity by introducing price hikes for it's most-used plans.
While we're all familiar with the free version of Spotify's forced shuffled playbacks and skip limit, they're now hiding their lyrics feature behind their 'premium' paywall.
Anyone who uses Spotify Premium knows that it's a great subscription, and this latest feature Spotify has withdrawn from free-tier users makes ad-supported usage even more painful.
The lyrics feature on Spotify is really efficient and easy to use, allowing subscribers to conveniently scroll through lyrics in time with the track.
A Spotify free user shared the discovery on Reddit, with the caption 'What the heck!?"
Those in the comment section were left wondering what the user was complaining about.
One person wrote: "Free users are not allowed to complain."
Another commented: "Idk just pay????? paying for a music streaming service shouldn’t be a hassle since you get to stream every music in the world for one price. also there are students plans which are much cheaper and each country has it’s own price based on average national wage so if you don’t want to pay despite all that i don’t see the need for Spotify to keep bending to your wishes to convince you to pay."
Another argued that lyric-tracking should be a basic free feature. They wrote: "I don't see it. Are we really trying to justify price-locking lyrics? They're extremely basic features. Spotify has already blocked the playback features globally. There's personally no need to lock onto lyrics, especially when MusixMatch is trash."
Non-premium users already have to tolerate unskippable ads and are only afforded just six track sips per hour. A Spotify Premium subscription currently stands at £11.99 per month.
Could this force many current Spotify users to look elsewhere for their free music streaming needs.
Spotify's family plan, which allows up to six listeners, will cost you £19.99 per month, while it's duo option is now £16.99 per month.
Amazon Music offers a slightly cheaper option. Their individual plan is £10.99 per month, and £9.99 if you're already a Prime member.
YouTube Music also costs £10.99 a month, as do Apple Music and Tidal.
Deezer doesn't fare much better. It's £11.99 per month for their individual membership, or £8.99 per month when paid annually.
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