Spotify Has a Cheaper Membership Plan It Doesn't Want You to Know About

Spotify has stealthily launched a new membership plan for its individual users. I say stealthily because despite posting an announcement about it, the company is hardly going out of its way to let current subscribers know about the plan changes—probably because a lot of them would choose to siwtch if they knew they had the option. What's more, new users can't even sign up for the plan; you can only get it by joining and then "downgrading."

The new plan is a spin-off of the service’s Premium Individual membership, and is aptly named “Basic.” It's $1 cheaper than the typical Premium plan, $10.99 versus $11.99. (A dollar a month is not much, I know, but I’ll get to that). While the plan’s name might suggest an offering similar to the “free” version of the music streaming service, which features ads while you listen, Spotify says Basic grants you all the benefits of a standard Premium plan, minus only the option to listen to 15 hours of audiobooks per month.

For most people, losing that privilege honestly makes “downgrading” to the Basic plan worth it, even if only to save $12 a year. Here's why.

Streaming is experiencing price creep across the board

Spotify is just one of many streaming services that has continued to raise prices regularly—with its most recent bump coming earlier this month, when the company increased the cost of Premium from $10.99 to $11.99, and raised the price of Premium Duo and Premium Family. Despite the steady increases, though, Spotify hasn’t really added any new features to Premium in years.

In fact, the company even took a strange backward step with its first hardware release, Car Thing, which was discontinued earlier this year—and even shutting down its functionality, so even people who had bought and paid for it couldn't keep using it (though the company did offer refunds). Given that, the introduction of a cheaper paid plan that won’t necessarily deprive you of any useful features is a nice change of pace in today's increasingly expensive, ad-choked streaming landscape.

Most Spotify users don't listen to audiobooks

Now, you’ll notice I said “useful features.” Spotify made a big deal out of supporting audiobooks when it brought them to its service last year, and while I do love audiobooks—they’re a great way to read when you don’t have the time to sit down with an actual book (or ebook)—Spotify’s inclusion of audiobooks in its service isn’t exactly anything to write home about.

Yes, there are more than 250,000 titles in the catalog, but you’re only granted 15 hours of listening per month. If you listen to books of average length (around 10 hours, depending on the word count of the original work and the reading speed of the narrator), then you’ll be limited to listening to one book per month. If you listen to longer books, though—for the record, a book in the Game of Thrones series can run to as long as 47 hours—you won’t be able to complete the entire thing in a single month, which isn't the best user experience.

Moreover, Spotify's own reports indicate that only 25 percent of Spotify’s subscribers are taking advantage of its audiobook content at all. That means a good chunk of you reading this—myself included—are paying for something you don’t actively use. (Note that it isn't clear if Spotify’s reported figure accounts for active monthly listeners, or just the percentage of users who listened to audiobook content at least once.)

Basic gives you everything Premium, except audiobooks

At $10.99, Spotify’s new Basic plan costs as much as Premium used to, before the price hike earlier this month. That means if you don't mind sacrificing audiobooks (which you probably aren't listening to anyway, based on the numbers), you can effectively bypass the price hike. This also keeps the monthly cost of Spotify on par with Apple Music.

Once Spotify finally starts adding features like lossless audio, the price and feature difference between the plans may expand further. I could see Spotify introducing a completely new pricing tier for lossless audio, for example. But that's all in the hazy future. If you’re an active Spotify subscriber right now and you don’t listen to audiobooks on the platform, you have no reason not to downgrade to Basic—over the course of a year, it's like getting a month of the service for free, and then some.

How to sign up for Spotify Basic

As noted, you can't choose to sign up for Basic directly—it's not even listed on the site's "View all plans" info page. No, you have to either be an existing Premium member, or sign up for Premium and then downgrade your membership.

Once that requirement has been satisfied, to downgrade to the new Basic plan, you'll need to open Spotify on the web, then click on your profile image in the top-right hand corner of the page. Select Account, and then click on the Your Subscription section at the top. Next, click the Change plan button, then select Basic.

You'll need to go through a few confirmation screens—including a few where Spotify will try to sell you on the idea of paying $1 more each month to keep getting 15 hours of audiobook content. Once confirmed, though, your plan will change and you'll be on the cheaper option. 

If you're subscribed on Android, you can make the change directly in the app, but a Spotify rep confirmed to TechRadar that you'll need to use a browser to make the change if you're subscribed on iOS, as Spotify's iOS app doesn't support the option directly in the app.

Additionally, it appears Spotify is also offering new Basic versions of its Duo and Family plans (the Family Basic plan is $16.99 versus the regular $19.99, while pricing for the Duo plan isn't widely available yet). Spotify didn't cover either of those options in its official announcement, nor did it reveal that the feature is also apparently available to U.K. and Australian subscribers, at least according to what the representative told TechRadar.