In the wake of Spotify's recent IPO, you may think the company would focus mostly on their paid customers to boost revenue. However, the company has a different strategy in mind, according to Engadget.
Today, Spotify rolled out a new update for the free version of their dedicated mobile app. Specifically, the app will finally allow free users to listen to music on-demand but there is a slight catch - they can only take advantage of the new functionality if a given song is already in one of their 15 discovery playlists.
This is a pretty significant change but it likely isn't a completely random decision on Spotify's part. As Engadget notes, Spotify has previously claimed that up to 60 percent of their Premium subscribers were at one point free users who later decided to upgrade.
By improving the free experience enough to keep people hooked, Spotify could effectively convince many more users to buy into their monthly subscription. After all, the free offering still pales in comparison to what Spotify Premium brings to the table.
Naturally, Premium is ad-free but it also allows for on-demand, offline or online playback of over 40 million songs without restricting users to tracks present within their discovery playlists.