Spotify announced today a half-off subscription rate for college students. the normal $9.99/month subscription rate is dropped to $4.99 for qualified students.
A couple of strategies seem to be in play, most obviously, monetization of a population that might have neither the money for media subscriptions, nor the habit of paying for content access. Spotify’s subscription plan eliminates ads in the stream, and also enables full on-demand access to the 20-million song catalog, including downloading tracks to mobile devices for offline listening.
The announcement comes days after Pandora hiked its subscription price by 25% — to $4.99 per month. (There is a discount when you pay by the year.) Looking at prices and features, the comparison could be favorable to Spotify, whose jukebox-like interactivity and larger catalog now costs the same as listening to Pandora. That won’t matter to students who are loyal to Pandora’s Music Genome technology which powers its stations.
Both services allow free listening, which works well for anyone with a tolerance for ads.