Spotify removes remaining 10-hour monthly caps from free accounts

Among all the hoo-hah over free mobile-streaming and Led Zeppelin exclusives, Spotify actually let slip on another piece of news today.

In some parts of Europe, Spotify has thus far restricted free users to 10 hours a month once a 6-month unlimited grace period had ended. Now, however, these caps have been removed completely across all platforms – which basically means you can have completely free, unrestricted access to Spotify on desktop and mobile. It will be ad-supported, of course.

If you’re based in the US, this likely won’t mean much to you, given that caps aren’t in place there anyway. But for those in the UK – a big market for Spotify – and other countries in Europe, this will go some way towards tempting people on-board for the long-haul. Only time will tell whether it will encourage people to become a paid-subscriber and remove the ads, or soldier on with the commercially-supported incarnation.

We spoke with Miles Lennon, ‘Product Owner’ at Spotify, about the reasons behind this move. Surely if they’re trying to encourage people to become a paid subscriber, removing these limits on the free service would discourage people from doing so?

“More access means more engagement,” he says. In other words, the longer someone has access to the full (ad-supported) service, the more likely they will be to pay to remove the ads and get offline access through the premium service.