Spotify Changes Free Music Service

Last week, digital music service Spotify announced changes to the way their users get to stream free music.

The European-based service is about to set limits to free music streaming on their website. The changes, presented in detail on the Spotify blog, will come into effect on May 1^st.

The main difference from the current service is that users with a free account will only be able to listen to 10 hours of music every month, which is only half the amount of music they have access to at present. According to the their blog, this would mean around 200 songs per month.

Also, free users won't be able to listen to one individual track more than 5 times. However, new Spotify users will have the old service made available to them for the first six months. 

The modified free service has gathered a lot of criticism from users. As Spotify's declared mission is to provide everyone with a wide range of free music, their service is one to prevent people from getting their songs and albums through illegal sources. But some critics claim that, because of the changes, many of the free users on Spotify will turn to music piracy instead.

However, according to Spotify, the changes will not have that great an effect on the average user, who only listens to a moderate amount of music per month and won't reach the limits. For those users who do reach them, Spotify offers an Unlimited service, as well as a Premium service, both paid and both without advertisements.

Spotify uses advertising to pay for the music they offer for free. The underlying factor behind the changes could be the fact that this business model isn't the most profitable.  Analysts indicate that it's difficult for a free music service like Spotify to make a profit only from advertising, with the fees they have to pay to record companies. Hence, they need to make some money from other sources (their paid services). But the risk for them is that, instead of getting more paying users, they could lose some of their free ones.

Spotify is an online service offering music streaming on demand. Launched in October, 2008, the service originated in Sweden. At the moment, Spotify is only available in seven European countries, including the UK, but has over 6 million registered users, more than 5 million of which have a free account.

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