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Spotify quietly moves lyrics behind a paywall.
(techcrunch.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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I searched and I may have misremembered, the free version seems to have been around since the start except that the free version was initially invite and desktop only. Eventually everyone could use it but still only on desktop. The free version was even more limited back then it seems with a limit on how many hours you could listen to each month.
I could personally never use it. Because it was so incredibly limited. Not being allowed to skip tracks makes it unusable and I'm genuinely surprised anyone used it apart from trying the service.
I have a faint memory of it being announced that Spotify first got a free tier but I may be completely wrong, I was very young back then. I'm also from Sweden so we had Spotify very early compared to most countries and it got popular very quickly here.
I used it in college, I didn't have money. Honestly I didn't mind. You were allowed to skip five or six times in an hour, and I would just make custom playlists and it ended up being like a nicer radio. Fewer ads than radio, music I like, a few skips.
Honestly at that time, I don't remember anyone who paid for it. I remember the first time I heard someone say they had premium was a friend who worked at Starbucks in like .. 2017? Because Spotify premium was a job perk. At the time it was like, oh she only has premium because of Starbucks. And then somewhere along the way everyone got premium.