Spotify will be test marketing a more expensive monthly subscription fee in the Scandinavian countries prior to rolling out a price increase worldwide, according to reports.
Bloomberg reports that the streaming giant will experiment by raising its “family” plans by “about 13%” to see if the market will tolerate higher fees – which has long been a desire of the record labels:
Spotify has 108 million paying users but still loses money as it attempts to grow. Part of it has been selling subscriptions at a loss through long trial periods and deep discounts. More or less all of the largest players in the music industry charge about the same fee per month to users, which presents a danger for the first company to raise its subscription fees above the others.
The news also comes as Spotify is negotiating with Apple to let voice assistant Siri play tracks from Spotify rather than Apple Music. Spotify has filed an anti-trust action in the European Union against Apple with being shut out by Siri listed one of the examples of anti-competitive behavior.
