Spotify launches new free tier that lets you listen to songs on-demand, as many times as you like

Victoria Woollaston April 24, 2018

Earlier this month, a report suggested Spotify was on the verge of launching a new tier for Spotify Free users, and the company has now confirmed the news.

Spotify launches new free tier that lets you listen to songs on-demand, as many times as you like

Speaking at New York’s Gramercy Theater, Spotify’s Gustav Söderström has unveiled a new, free version of the Spotify app that takes advantage of machine learning and AI.

Currently, Spotify offers two tiers – an ad-free tier that costs £9.99 per month, that lets you listen to the full Spotify library, create your own playlists and download songs to listen to offline, and a free, ad-funded tier that restricts how many songs you can access. On the current free service, you can only listen to songs on popular playlists, and only on shuffle.

Under the new Spotify Free tier, you’ll be able to listen to any song on one of 15 personalised Discovery playlists, on-demand and as many times as you like. That’s said to include around 750 tracks, or 40 hours of music. These songs will be based on previous listening habits and popular playlists.

The on-demand playlists will be unique to you, based on your tastes, and Spotify gave examples including RapCaviar and Viva Latino, Ultimate Indie and Alternative R&B. The service will also make more of the Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mix playlists. Over time, these personalisations will improve and users will be able to tell Spotify which songs and artists they like, or “hide”, those they don’t. You can add songs to your Favourites playlist by tapping the Like button.

Additionally, Spotify has created a “low-data mode” called Data Saver to reduce how much data you use when streaming over Spotify by up to 75%. This will be available to both free and paid-for members, however, people who pay for Spotify can already save data by downloading songs to listen to offline, so the new mode is likely aimed more towards free users.

The Data Saver mode will be accesible in the Settings menu, and can be turned on and off, and the new free tier will go live on iOS and Android globally “in the coming weeks.”