Spotify Sets Plan To Limit Content For Paying Users Only

Spotify has been working on this decision for quite a while, and recently they’ve come to an agreement with record company UMG, or Universal Music Group.

The deal is mainly about a way to release music on the streaming program in a way that is more advantageous to artists and to users. So far, Spotify has provided its entire database of music to users, regardless if they paid a subscription or not. The change would be that full albums with certain artists will only be available if you pay for Spotify. Additionally, some albums could be released on Spotify exclusively for a period of two weeks, before becoming more globally available.

This agreement means that artists will be able to get more profit from streaming music, since this is by far the most popular way to listen to music these days. For example, Spotify has a paying userbase of over 50 million people. Making sure that artists get their fair share from streaming revenue has proved difficult before.

At the moment, Spotify only has a deal with UMG, but if it goes well, other companies will likely follow suit. Their agreement is effective immediately, as well, which means that if you have a free subscription to Spotify, and the artists already have agreed to this deal, you might not be able to listen to some full albums anymore. All singles will remain universally available, though.