Spotify to Addicted Users: “Party’s Over”

By Gilbert Falso :: 12:53 PM

Spotify, the Internet streaming music service that took the U.S. by storm this summer is about to cast a black cloud over its loyal user base. No more free music.

Starting in one week, early Spotify adopters will be informed that the days of unlimited tracks are coming to an end. A ten hour per month limit will be imposed on free accounts, and those users will also only be allowed to play an individual song five times per month.

Now to be clear, this was the plan all along. Free accounts were given a six month period of unlimited use in the hopes that users would become addicted and be more than ready to pony up the fees to move to a paid account. Plans run $4.99 per month for ad-free streaming to your desktop, and $9.99 for access to Spotify’s mobile application.

When Spotify launched in the States on July 14th, many people gravitated to the service because of the inherently social nature of the Spotify platform – users could easily share tracks, playlists and new artists with their friends on Facebook. The service was built from the ground up to integrate with social networks.

One cannot help but wonder if users will cough up the cash to keep the tunes playing, or turn to the social networks to voice their displeasure with the upcoming changes and fees to their formerly free service. It could be in this case, that the social network Spotify depends on will come back to bite them in the rear end.

Rock on.