Apps

Has Spotify lost its mind? Music streaming app restricts several free features in India

As humans, we love free food, music, films, and anything that can be had without paying anything. If it means listening to an ad for “30 minutes of uninterrupted music” on Spotify, then be it!

The streaming service is available for free, but with ads, it also offers a premium subscription option to give users an ad-free experience apart from other benefits like offline music and more.

Now, to encourage more and more subscribers to pay for its premium subscription, Spotify has made some changes and restricted several key features for free account holders. How dare they!

According to a report by TechCrunch, free users of Spotify in India will no longer be able to play songs in a specific order, repeat songs, or tap back to their previous songs.

These very basic and essential features will now only be available to premium users.

The free account holders can still listen to their favorite artists, albums, and playlists and get song recommendations.

The company has said that since the Indian market had “matured”, it has decided to make changes to the free tier.

Spotify has offered all these features for free since its launch in India in 2019.

Looking at it over the last year, it seems Spotify has been struggling to make ends meet. In that light, the latest decision makes sense.

Earlier in June this year, Spotify announced plans to make some structural changes by revamping its Podcast division. The company then cut 200 job roles, impacting nearly 2 percent of Spotify’s global workforce.

Sahar Elhabashi, VP and head of Spotify’s podcast business said in a blog post that “news like this is never easy” and the company promises “the utmost empathy and respect” during the process. It added that the music streaming company “will support these individuals with generous severance packages, including extended healthcare coverage and immediate access to outplacement support.”

In January this year, the company fired 600 employees owing to “macroeconomic conditions.”

Spotify wasn’t the only company to lay off people this year. Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Salesforce also announced mass layoffs.

Tecktrackr Editorial

Recent Posts

Best Video Editing Software For PC

Video editing is one of the most in-demand skills in today’s content creation era. If…

6 months ago

Samsung planning to introduce blood glucose monitoring with Galaxy Watch 7

There have been whispers about Samsung's ambition to equip their wearable gadgets with a neat trick:…

6 months ago

TSMC to lock horns with Intel with its A16 chip manufacturing tech

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) recently dropped the news that they're gearing up to kick off production…

6 months ago

Is ChatGPT accurate and should we believe what it says?

Modern chatbots like ChatGPT can churn out dozens of words per second, making them incredibly…

6 months ago

Mark Zuckerberg claims Meta is years away from making money through gen AI

The race for generative AI is in full swing, but don't count on it raking…

6 months ago

How JioCinema’s dirt cheap plans can mean trouble for Netflix, Amazon Prime

JioCinema, the famous Indian on-demand video-streaming service, unveiled a new monthly subscription plan, starting at…

6 months ago