Spotify is hiking its prices for Irish users as the company aims to boost income after it was forced to lay off hundreds of workers earlier this year.
The company is increasing the price of its Spotify Premium Single subscription from €9.99 to €10.99 per month.
Meanwhile, Premium Duo is rising from €13.99 to €14.99.
The company’s Family and Student prices will remain unchanged at €17.99 and €5.99 respectively.
A Spotify logo displayed on a smartphone. Image: Sipa USAThe increases are being rolled out in a total of 53 countries around the world – including the US, UK and various European countries.
The company already hiked prices in 46 countries last year.
Existing customers will pay the increased prices from August onwards.
It comes after the company laid off 6% of its workforce worldwide in January – with co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek telling staff that he had been ‘too ambitious’ during the COVID pandemic.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Irish Independent Tech Editor Adrian Weckler said Spotify announced a €430m loss in its last set of accounts.
“It probably doesn’t help that Spotify is spending €18m or €19m on, let’s call them failed podcasts for Harry and Meghan – the Sussex’s,” he said.
He said Spotify is just the latest streamer to hike its prices.
“Everybody else has pretty much raised their prices as well – Apple Music did, Amazon Music did, Tidal has,” he said.
“I mean every other month it seems like Paramount of Netflix or Disney is increasing prices.
“The mobile phone services too - you know Vodafone, Three, Eir - they’re all now going up, sometimes by as much as 5% or 6% a year; they’re all going up.”
Mr Weckler said streaming is a “massively competitive” space – with TikTok recently announcing plans to add music streaming to its services.
Despite this, he said Apple Music and Spotify remain the two big ones – adding, “I wouldn’t bet against Spotify in the short term”.
