While Spotify can be used without a paid subscription on your desktop, you need to sign up to Spotify Premium at $9.99 a month to enjoy it on mobile. But that could be about to change, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Spotify is planning a new ad-supported version of its music streaming service for mobile devices.
The free version won’t be exactly like traditional Spotify as you know it, but more of a personalized radio service like Pandora or iTunes Radio. Spotify actually already offers a feature like this, but it’s baked into its existing apps, and therefore only accessible with a paid subscription on smartphones and tablets.
It’s not entirely clear at this point how the free service will differ from that, but it will certainly include adverts that you’ll be forced to listen to, and like iTunes Radio and others, there could be certain limitations — like only being able to skip so many songs at a time.
Spotify has already tied up up deals with Sony, Universal, and Warner for the free service, WSJ reports, and it could be announced as early as next week at a special event in New York.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
