Spotify To Revamp Its Free Music Service With More Premium Features

Spotify is working on wooing more customers to its free music service by making it easier to use. The rumor comes from people who claim to be familiar with the company's plans. This will be the first major change to the Spotify service since the company went public last week.

Spotify maintains that 2 million people are illegally listening to its paid music service. The free service is supported by ads, while the paid service is ad-free. The source of the rumor claims that an announcement of the revised service is expected in the next couple weeks. Exactly what the updated service will feature is unclear, but reports claim that the free mobile listeners will be able to access their playlists faster and have more control over the songs they hear on top playlists. 

Spotify needs growth now that it is a public company with investors more than it did as a private company, and the company has a goal of hitting 200 million users by the end of 2018 and to have about 96 million paid subscribers.

The free service has always been a way to nudge users of the service into the paid side of the operation (Spotify's cheapest paid plan right now is $9.99). Bloomberg reports that while paid subscribers currently comprise less than half its customer base, those paid customers generate about 90% of the 4.09 billion euros of revenue the company generated in 2017.

A rumor started circulating recently that Spotify has new hardware for cars in the works.