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Technology Articles > Entertainment > Music > Spotify's New Family Plan

If you want to listen to Spotify offline and skip as many songs as you want to, you’ll have to pay the $10 per month fee. If anyone else in your house wants to have unlimited access to Spotify, they’ll have to pay that fee too -- well, they would have before today.

Spotify has just released a “Family Plan” that makes it easier to purchase Spotify Premium for your whole family.

How Family Plan Works

Family members can now receive a 50% discount if one family member already has a premium Spotify subscription. Let’s say that you have the premium subscription. Your husband can now purchase the subscription for $5 instead of $10. The same goes for anyone else in your family, so your kids and anyone that lives with you can also get the fifty-percent off deal.

Spotify is making this deal with the help of the music industry overall. The idea here is that subscription prices have to be lowered if more people are going to sign up for premium packages (a concept that Apple originally introduced and voiced in a recent statement). Right now, $10 per month is more than most people want to pay for music, but it’s also the industry standard when it comes to streaming options.

Speaking of Apple

Rumour has it that Apple is currently trying to work with the music industry’s biggest labels in order to bring back the Beats music option the company purchased last year. Apple did buy Beats’ Streaming Service, but the streaming service never really took off. Apple execs think that the lack of interest in the Beats streaming option was due to a high price that people didn’t want to pay. Now, Apple is trying to make the Beats subscription price $5 per month for all, but that rate has gained the blessing of the music industry quite yet.

Why are streaming services lowering prices? Not only to get new subscribers, but because people really don’t spend more than $60 per month on music (through iTunes, at least), so asking people to spend $10 per month just doesn’t make any sense. Both the music industry’s biggest labels and companies like Apple and Spotify can stand to gain a lot of revenue if the prices for streaming subscriptions are lowered. Plus, these prices will mean that premium streaming services are more accessible for all music lovers, and that’s a good thing all around.

A Lack of Interest

Music sales as far as downloads go are dropping drastically, and this means that fewer people are interested in things like Spotify or other streaming services. Really, it comes down to price, so Spotify’s move to make some household subscriptions cheaper is a good one, though it’s not the best that can happen.

Hopefully, the music industry and companies that offer streaming options like Spotify and Apple can work together to lower the monthly rates that people have to pay in order to access streaming music services. Spotify’s new Family Plan is expected to roll out within the next few weeks across the globe, but it’s currently available in some areas.