Photo Credit: David Mullins
Spotify’s ‘Basic’ music-only subscription now comes with an important caveat—you can never cancel it or you’ll lose access to the tier forever. Is this Spotify’s way of sunsetting the tier — and further slashing songwriter royalties?
After Spotify integrated audiobooks into its Premium Individual, Family, and Duo plans in late 2023, it reclassified these tiers as ‘bundled subscription offerings’ under the Phonorecords IV agreement between publishers, songwriters, and digital service providers (DSPs). This move allowed Spotify to exploit a Phonorecords IV provision allowing lower mechanical royalty rates for services that combine music with non-music content like audiobooks.
Publishers and songwriters receive mechanical royalties via a formula that pro-rates bundled revenue. By stark contrast, standalone music subs like Spotify’s ‘Basic’ tier pay the full rate—often 15.35% of revenue. Meanwhile, bundled plans under Spotify’s Premium tiers slash those royalties to about 24.5% of total content cost.
Back in 2024, Spotify made ‘bundled plans’ as the default option for all of its Premium subscribers — with substantial ‘loophole’ royalty savings soon piling up.
As part of that transition, those who wanted to maintain music-only access had to seek out the ‘Basic’ plan and downgrade their subscriptions with a $1 discount. We found it difficult to find the buried ‘Basic,’ and that was probably intentional.
Now, it appears that Spotify’s Basic plan was merely a temporary option. And for those exiting the plan, some important verbiage now applies.
Photo Credit: Spotify
And for those just arriving, there’s also new language surrounding Basic.
“Basic is available for previously existing Premium subscribers,” Spotify now describes, while reaffirming the sunset. “Eligible subscribers will see basic as an available plan on their account page,” Spotify’s support document reads. “If you cancel your Basic plan, it is not possible to resubscribe to it.”
Digital Music News reached out to Spotify to ask about this language, but received no response. As it stands, DMN can confirm that canceling a Basic subscription will remove the option to re-subscribe at this tier, meaning anyone who cancels a Basic subscription will only have a Premium bundled subscription option (and a $1 additional monthly charge) going forward. This limitation essentially forces subscribers to pay for audiobook listening time they may not want or utilize.
But why did Basic exist in the first place?
Spotify appears to have set up the Basic pipeline as a steam valve for those who wanted to avoid the Premium bundled plan. Now, the plan is shifting from hidden to relatively nonexistent.
Spotify Premium plans represent 99% of total subs per DMN Pro data, highlighting just how little Spotify wants the general public to know about the ability to subscribe to a music-only plan. Instead, the Spotify Basic plan is being treated as a one-time courtesy to subscribers rather than a tier that is readily available to everyone.