The long-rumored partnership between UK Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin Media and Spotify was finally announced back in July, although full details of the link-up were decidedly sketchy at the time. Now full details of how Virgin Media customers can access Spotify, and how much it will cost them, have been revealed.
It seems those who sign-up to Virgin Media’s high-speed fibre optic broadband (30Mb, 50Mb or 100Mb) will get Spotify Premium free for 6 months as part of their bundle, whilst existing customers who sign-up for another 12 months with Virgin Media will also get a 6-month Spotify subscription thrown in.
As for Virgin Media broadband customers who take out a new Virgin Mobile contract (pay monthly), they will receive 3 months’ Spotify Premium subscription. And it also seems that the offers aren’t exclusive of each other, so basically if you upgrade to one of Virgin’s fibre optic broadband packages and also take out a mobile phone contract, you could get 9-months free on Spotify.
Once the Spotify offer-period expires, users can continue to pay for Spotify Unlimited or Premium at £4.99/£9.99 respectively through their bill, otherwise their Spotify accounts will revert to the ad-supported Spotify Free service. On the surface at least, this suggests that the Spotify/Virgin tie-up is just a souped-up special promotion offering no long-term financial benefits over subscribing to Spotify through the normal channels. However,Virgin announced this little tidbit:
“As part of this unique proposition, customers taking Spotify from Virgin Media will be able to stream or download Spotify music through their Virgin Mobile without using any of their mobile data allowance, eliminating the worry of costly charges when enjoying music on the go.”
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So if you’re likely to be using Spotify on the move, and are prepared to sign-up to Virgin Mobile, you can listen to Spotify to your heart’s content without consuming any of your data allowance. But then again, all Spotify Premium members can already access their music offline on their mobile devices, so this won’t be a massive draw for everyone.
If you’re looking to access Spotify through your Virgin Media TiVo set-top box, this should be available within a couple of weeks. To access it, hit ‘Home’ on your TiVo remote, go to Apps and Games and there you’ll find Spotify.
So it seems the link-up could prove beneficial for Spotify, in terms of getting access to Virgin’s many millions of users. But in terms of actual benefits for existing Spotify customers, unless you have a real hankering to move your Spotify account over to Virgin to listen to music through your TiVo box, there doesn’t seem to be a massive benefit to be had here.
Meanwhile, Spotify has produced this little video to mark its Virgin Media partnership.
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