One of the advantages that Spotify has over rival streaming services like Apple Music is that it offers a free tier that relies on ads to generate revenue, although we imagine that Spotify would much rather if everyone were to pay its subscription. The good news for the company is that they could be inching towards their goal.
Recent figures by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (via 9to5Mac) has revealed that over in the US, Spotify Premium subscribers has grown to 38%, meaning that more than a third of Spotify users in the US are paying for a subscription. However this isn’t the interesting part. According to the CIRP, they claim that this might be due to the fact that Spotify has been cracking down on friends sharing family plans.
Last month it was reported that Spotify had started requesting for users with family plans to verify/confirm their address in an attempt to curb friends who put their friends under their family plan. This has been practiced for a while by many users as family plans are often cheaper than individual plans, and unsurprisingly the lack of verification procedures in the past has led to abuse of it.
It is unclear if the rise in subscribers has allowed Spotify to overtake Apple Music, where a report from July earlier this year suggested that Apple Music had managed to overtake Spotify in the US. While that might be debated, most can agree that Spotify and Apple Music are currently dominating the US music streaming market.
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