Spotify, the largest paid music service in the world, has plans to demo a more expensive version of its music service in the Scandinavia (via Bloomberg). The company hopes that the response garnered from this test will be telling of whether or not the streaming service should increase its prices elsewhere in the world.
The company is targeting the price of its family plan and will increase it by 13%. Currently, the plan costs around $15 and lets up to five people use it; after the price hike, people in the Scandinavia should expect a price of around $16.95. However, as stated before, the test does not mean that the company will certainly increase prices elsewhere nor does it mean that the increase in the Scandinavia will be permanent.
For the first time back in February, Spotify, despite having around 108 million users and being the leading music provider across the world for a good time, announced that it had made a profit for the first time ever in its history. This signifies the overall loss that the music streaming service has incurred throughout the past years. Indeed, the average fee paid by each user to Spotify has declined in recent years.
To help remedy this and attract even more customers, the company has recently introduced its Social Listening feature and demoed its Premium Duo plan in the past months. The tentative price increase in the Scandinavia signals Spotify trying to utilize its market-leading position in boosting revenue against the competition offered by Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Price Music.