Spotify’s latest push to upsell its free listeners to premium subscriptions has kicked off: an expansion of the free-trial period for Spotify Premium from one to three months.
The offer is only available for people who haven’t already tried the premium tier, but it rolled out yesterday for individual and student plans globally, as well as family and ‘duo’ plans.
“We know it takes time to fully experience all of the features available with Premium, so we’re giving people the time that they need to fall in love,” said chief premium business officer Alex Norström in a statement, noting that the expanded trial comes hot on the heels of improvements to Spotify’s family-plan subscription.
From a competitive perspective, meanwhile, the key news here is that Spotify’s free trial now matches Apple Music’s in length: both can be used for free for three months before listeners have to decide whether to start paying. In corporate terms, the timing is interesting too: people taking up Spotify’s offer immediately will see their three-month trial end in late November – so any ensuing boost to the number of Spotify’s paying subscribers will be reflected in its Q4 financial results.
As a reminder, Spotify’s latest guidance for analysts is that it expects to end 2019 with 120-125 million premium subscribers, having reached 108 million by the end of June.
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