Regardless of whether you’re paying for a premium subscription or listening to the free tier on Spotify, you will have access to the same songs as everyone else. However according to a report from Digital Music News, that could change as Spotify is rumored to be moving some content exclusively to Premium subscribers.
At the moment it is unclear as to how this will work out. There have been some suggestions, such as free listeners might only get to enjoy an album for a limited number of listens or time, or maybe just a sampling from it before they are required to pay for a premium subscription in order to listen to the rest of it.
So why the sudden change? After all Spotify’s free tier is what gives them the edge over the competition from Apple Music and Tidal. It would seem that this is because the record labels have been pressuring the company to move their users to a paid tier. Apparently the labels aren’t too pleased with ad-based tiers which are thought to devalue catalogs and generate less revenue.
It is unclear as to how this will work out, but interestingly enough it follows the EU’s recent ruling which found that Apple did not conspire with labels to end free music, so if Spotify were to start moving content to Premium status, no doubt many regulators and consumer watchdogs will have a field day with it.