After a dozen years of keeping subscription prices stable, Spotify has issued three price hikes in 2.5 years.
Spotify informed subscribers via email today that Premium monthly subscriptions would go from $12 to $13 per month as of users’ February billing date. Spotify is already advertising the higher prices to new subscribers.
Although not explicitly mentioned in Spotify’s correspondence, other plans are getting more expensive, too. Student monthly subscriptions are going from $6 to $7. Duo monthly plans, for two accounts in the same household, are going from $17 to $19, and Family plans, for up to six users, are moving from $20 to $22.
Spotify’s Basic plan, which is only available as a downgrade for some Premium subscribers and is $11/month, is unaffected.
For years, Spotify subscribers enjoyed stable prices, but today’s announcement marks Spotify’s third price hike since July 2023. Spotify last raised prices in July 2024. Premium individual subscriptions went from $11 to $12, Duo subscriptions went from $15 to $17, and Family subscriptions increased from $17 to $20.
In 2024, Spotify blamed the higher prices on its need to “invest in and innovate on our product features.” Today, it said:
Occasional updates to pricing across our markets reflect the value that Spotify delivers, enabling us to continue offering the best possible experience and benefit artists.
The reasoning offered is vague, but some features that Spotify recently implemented include the addition of lossless audio in November, music videos in December, and new Messages features (one that lets you share your listening activity with friends and one that lets you request joint listening sessions called Jams) earlier this month. It also opened an 11,000-square-foot podcast studio in Hollywood this month.
In terms of Spotify’s claims of benefitting artists on its platform, in March the Stockholm-headquartered company put out a report that said it paid $10 billion in music royalties in 2024, which was more than it had ever paid. Spotify also added more ways for video podcasters to make money this month.
Some in the industry still criticize how much artists can make off of Spotify. In 2024, Billboard estimated that changes in how Spotify pays artists would result in musicians receiving millions less in royalties.
Spotify’s higher prices follow some periods of blowback in 2025. Some users and musicians boycotted the platform after learning that then-CEO Daniel Ek heavily invested in Germany military defense AI company Helsing. And in October, the nonprofit Indivisible urged subscribers to cancel Spotify because the streaming platform was running recruitment ads for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This month, Spotify confirmed that the ad campaign ended in late 2025. A November Rolling Stone report, citing an anonymous “industry source,” said that the Department of Homeland Security paid Spotify $74,000 to run the ads. It’s also been facing criticism for the success of AI slop on the platform.
In a quarterly earnings report released in November, Spotify reported double-digit year-over-year (YoY) growth in its number of Premium subscribers (12 percent), active monthly users with Basic subscriptions (11 percent), and its total monthly active users (11 percent). Gross profit increased 9 percent YoY to $1.56 billion (1.35 billion euros).
With financial numbers suggesting that it’s winning customers more than losing them, Spotify may feel confident in adopting more regular price hikes, like other subscription-based businesses do, to fund new business ventures, new features, and royalty payments.
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