Famous audio streaming platform Spotify has announced to limit its free service in India by moving a few features behind a subscription and placing a greater emphasis on song recommendations, in a possible bid to expand its paid subscriber base in the country.
According to the official announcement, starting October 9, the free users on Spotify will not be able to play songs in any specific order within a playlist, repeat songs, go back to previous songs, or select a specific part of a song to listen to.
The company while making the announcement said that the platform initially was introduced to make the free experience more available to the users. Meanwhile, the company also said that these restrictions were introduced to make the free experience more compatible across all markets.
The move has been taken by the music platform after its rivals – Gaana and ByteDance Resso initiated to a subscription-only service over the past year. Though Spotify has restricted itself from carrying out prices in India, it has started charging for the services in the other markets like the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom.
As per sources, Smart Shuffle will now be the default listening mode for free users. They will not be given choice to disable it. On the other hand, the traditional shuffle mode will become a premium feature.
Smart Shuffle was first introduced in March 2023, which adds personalised song recommendations to playlists that ‘match the vibe or mood’ of the songs already in the playlist of the user.
Few days back, Spotify has announced the rollout of auto-generated podcast transcripts. The text transcripts will also be time-synced so listeners can visually follow along as a podcast episode progresses.
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