Spotify is getting ready to charge more for its core product in its biggest market.
The company is reportedly preparing to raise subscription prices in the United States in the first quarter of next year, marking its first US increase since July 2024. The move comes as Spotify leans harder into a story Wall Street likes: not just growth, but sustained profitability.
Investors also seem to be on board, seeing as the stock rose about 2.4% in early trading on Tuesday and is now up more than a third so far this year, outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 14% gain over the same period.
Why the US price move matters
Spotify’s dominance in the US market is hard to overstate. The platform recently became home to the first song ever to hit 5 billion streams—The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights”—and boasts more songs in the Billions Club than any competitor. That kind of user loyalty gives the company pricing flexibility rivals don’t enjoy.
The audio streaming service has already nudged prices higher in a string of other markets over recent months, including the UK, Switzerland, and Australia. But the US is the company’s largest and most closely watched market, and analysts have treated a price hike here as a key catalyst for the company’s financial turnaround.
Deutsche Bank analysts wrote last month that “questions around the timing of the potential US pricing step-ups… have taken a toll on sentiment,” capturing the frustration of investors waiting for management to pull the trigger.
JPMorgan analysts have estimated that a $1-per-month increase in the US could add roughly $500 million to Spotify’s annual revenue, underscoring how sensitive the company’s economics are to even small shifts in pricing at scale.
Funding the Evolution Beyond Audio
The price hike also coincides with Spotify’s aggressive push into video and multimedia. In October, the company announced a landmark partnership with Netflix to bring The Ringer’s video podcasts—including true crime hits like Serial Killers and sports talk from The Bill Simmons Podcast—to the streaming giant’s platform starting early 2026.
That kind of expansion doesn’t come cheap. Spotify has been pouring resources into video production, creator partnerships, and cross-platform deals, all while covering the rising royalty costs that keep major labels happy. The US price increase may well be less about raw profitability and more about funding the next phase of Spotify’s evolution from music app to multimedia empire.
Caught between labels and inflation
Pressure isn’t just coming from investors. The world’s biggest record labels have reportedly been pushing Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services to lift prices, arguing that subscription fees have lagged inflation and look cheap when stacked against video platforms like Netflix.
In the US, a standard Spotify plan costs $11.99 a month. When the service launched in the country 14 years ago, that same subscription was $9.99. Over the same period, content costs, marketing expenses, and broader input prices have steadily climbed, while the music industry itself has seen its decade-long growth spurt slow.
Global recorded-music revenue growth roughly halved last year, according to the industry trade group IFPI, which has subsequently sharpened the focus on squeezing more value out of existing subscribers rather than relying only on adding new ones.
Reading the timing
Spotify’s leadership has been careful not to box itself in publicly on US pricing. On an earnings call earlier this month, incoming co-chief executive Alex Norström told analysts: “We will act when the time is right for each specific market, and we’ll do it at the appropriate price based on those market dynamics.”
The planned US increase may suggest that the company now believes that the moment is close, with the broader subscription economy having already absorbed multiple rounds of hikes from video streamers and other digital services.
New leadership, same pressure
The price move will likely land alongside a major leadership reshuffle. In September, CEO Daniel Ek announced he’d step into an executive chair role starting in 2026, handing day-to-day control to co-CEOs Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström. The duo inherits a business that’s finally profitable—and a market that expects those profits to grow.
How aggressively Spotify pushes pricing in the US, and how consumers respond, will be an early test of that new leadership team’s appetite for risk in a slowing but still fiercely competitive streaming landscape.
Sources: Financial Times, Music Business Worldwide, Bloomberg