Spotify Requiring Subscribers to Pay for Repeated Listening of Songs
Spotify seems to be desperate to convert users into paying customers as it now forces users to pay to get songs repeatedly. In other words, if you want to listen to the same song again, you have to pay. A new limit has been set on how many times you can play the same song per day before you get the message “Select songs to play again tomorrow”.
Not only that, you can’t skip playing ads simply by closing the app and restarting it, and the worst part is that you already have to pay to see the lyrics of the song you want. Note that you cannot restart a song while it is playing by clicking the rewind button. In fact, there is no rewind button for free users anymore.
For Spotify users, if you’re not going to pay, it’s suddenly become the worst music app in terms of experience. The developers have made sure to force users to get a subscription that makes the minimum you can expect from any music platform. And when it comes to paying, there are two groups of users: someone who has already paid for Spotify Premium, and the rest who consider getting Apple Music or even Youtube Premium a better deal.
For Spotify users, if you don’t intend to pay, it has suddenly become the worst app for music, in terms of experience.
According to the report, Spotify is “just testing” these new features to get more users to pay. The report quoted CJ Stanley, Spotify’s head of global communications: “At Spotify, we routinely run a number of tests, some of which will eventually pave the way for our broader user experience and others which will only serve as important learning. … As per our normal practice, we are currently testing this with a limited number of users in two markets.
As for the ‘market’, the new restrictions now apply in India as well and you would have to pay to see the lyrics and play the songs.
It cannot be denied that Spotify has tried to get users to pay for new features, but nothing has worked, at least in India. Spotify’s podcasts and audiobooks haven’t really helped matters, and now it’s trying to limit the minimum user experience to get some from regular users.
