Spotify Limits Free Songs For Non-Paying Subscribers? Policy Change To Have Taylor Swift Back?

Spotify decided to limit their free songs offer and only allowed artists to stream their full album to over 20 million paying subscribers.

The music streaming service has more than 80 million non-paying users, which will be affected by company's discussion with music executives. The decision was allegedly a testing phase and only temporary that they may not be able to listen some of the songs from their favorite artist's album.

The company wants to observe how well the  "windowed"  approach works for the app users. The Spotify free song limit allegedly might result to low number of potential premium subscribers as well as the streaming service usage metric, according to The Wall Street Journal.

This new rule has been formed in consideration for the artist's benefits and stated that "the effective average per-stream payout generated by our Premium subscribers is considerably higher," according to Ars Technica.

Taylor Swift previously removed her entire album from the music streaming app in 2014, and in this case, the company wants to change course with regard to their business approach. They want to prioritize their 20 million paying subscribers as they offer $0.006 and $0.0084 for every track played, which is allegedly enough to persuade musicians to rejoin.

Spotify's free song limit policy change isn't official yet because it is still on observation period for non-paying subscribers to be restricted on some songs. It was revealed that premium users tend to benefit artist ten times more for every songs they play using the app.

The company's representative, Jonathan Prince said,  "We are 100% committed to our model because we believe that a free, ad-supported tier combined with a more robust premium tier is the best way to deliver music to fans, create value for artists and songwriters and grow the industry," according to BBC News.