Spotify scraps shuffle restriction for users of free tier

Spotify just announced a major upgrade to the on-demand playback controls available on the free version of its app.

The first in a trio of updates allows mobile ad-supported users to ‘pick and play‘ specific tracks in any playlist, and on any album track list.

The change, which rolls out globally today (September 15), marks a significant shift from the platform’s longstanding shuffle-only model for free users.

Following today’s update, users of the free tier will still be automatically pushed into shuffle mode within an album tracklist or playlist, but with the shuffle restriction now lifted, they can manually select and play any additional songs on demand from within that playlist. There is a limit on how many on-demand minutes a user has a day, however, and queuing remains a Premium feature.

Spotify has added two other on-demand features for free users:

• Search & Play: Free users can search for individual songs and play them on-demand.
• Share & Play: Tracks shared by friends in a message, or artists via social media, can be played on mobile immediately (previously only available on desktop or tablet).

The streaming giant hopes that a more generous free tier will increase engagement, boost ad revenues, help retain free users, and ultimately convert those ad-supported users to Premium subscribers.

The freemium enhancements arrive alongside Spotify’s recent Premium upgrades, including a playlist mixing tool and the launch of lossless audio for paid subscribers – but not as part of a rumored higher-priced “super–premium” or “Music Pro” tier as suggested in reports earlier this year.

Spotify also launched a direct message feature inside its app for both Free and Premium users last month.

These free and premium updates raise questions about what this all means for Spotify’s long-awaited ‘Super Premium’ service and whether any of these tools could one day become ‘Super Premium’ perks.

“Together with our industry partners, we still have a job to do to come up with more interesting and exciting products that we could layer on top of the current subscription landscape,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, VP of Markets and Subscriptions at Spotify, commenting on the platform’s subscription tier roadmap.

“But we have no news to share just now about what those products would be,” he added, speaking exclusively with Music Business Worldwide.

“Together with our industry partners, we still have a job to do to come up with more interesting and exciting products that we could layer on top of the current subscription landscape.”

 Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify 

The higher-priced subscription concept has been tested in China by Tencent Music Entertainment, whose Super VIP tier recently surpassed 15 million subscribers. These SVIP users generate five times the revenue of regular subscribers.

Bloomberg reported in February that Spotify was considering charging up to $5.99 more per month on top of a Premium subscription for access to a so-called ‘Music Pro’ tier, which would include various ‘superfan‘ perks.

An individual Spotify Premium subscription is currently priced at $11.99 in the US, following the most recent price rise in June 2024. This would bring the combined cost of a Premium subscription plus the Music Pro add-on to around $18 per month.

Spotify’s freemium “Glow up” (in Gyllenhammar’s words) comes as the platform faces intensified competition from platforms like YouTube and TikTok for younger audiences.

Gyllenhammar explained that the decision to give more on-demand control to free users was in part driven by Gen Z user behavior, which showed retention challenges with the existing free mobile experience.

“Young users felt like the old Spotify free experience on mobile was almost broken,” he said. “They tried to tap on things, and it didn’t work. The behavior that young users have in their media consumption models today – they really expect this to work.”

He added: “Obviously we saw retention challenges with an experience that is not living up to users’ needs.”

“Young users felt like the old Spotify free experience on mobile was almost broken.”

Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify

The Search & Play feature in particular fundamentally changes the free user experience from passive consumption to active discovery.

Users can now search for and instantly play any specific song they hear about via TikTok, word of mouth etc.

“Maybe our friend Ed Sheeran releases a new song today, and he has some new songs that you’ve heard about. You can search for the song name, and you can play that song,” said Gyllenhammar.

With the Share & Play feature, Spotify seeks to address what it says was a user frustration with the previous version of the free app.

Mobile ad-supported users weren’t able to tap and immediately play a track shared with them via a private messaging app (or Spotify’s new DM service), or through an artist’s social channels.

Spotify is keen to highlight how today’s update addresses that latter point.

“Artists who now share links on social can be reassured that everyone on Spotify, Free or Premium, will be able to listen,” the company said in a statement.

While more on-demand access is being introduced, Gyllenhammar confirmed there are still limitations on usage, though he declined to specify the exact number of daily on-demand minutes available to free users.

A spokesperson for Spotify confirmed “on-demand time is calculated as the time a user spends listening to music that has started playing due to an ‘on-demand’ action, either Pick & Play or Skipping”.

They added: “Though this update provides more control to listeners on free, there is still a limit to on-demand skips. Only Spotify Premium users have complete control to play and skip music without restrictions.” (Skipping for free users of the app was previously limited to six an hour).

The move represents a carefully calculated risk for Spotify, whose premium subscriptions generate 90% of the company’s revenue.

Gyllenhammar emphasized that 60% of premium subscribers start on the free tier, making free user engagement crucial for long-term growth.

“By opening up and widening the experience on free, we’re able to accelerate growth of our free tier, both from a number of users as well as engagement,” he said.

According to Gyllenhammar, testing across multiple emerging markets over 18 months prior to the global roll-out showed positive impacts on both free user retention and premium conversion rates.

Spotify’s global Premium Subscriber base at the close of Q2 reached 276 million paying users, which was up by +8 million net subs on the 268 million that the firm counted at the end of the prior quarter (Q1 2025).

Spotify’s total Monthly Active Users, which combine paying users and ad-supported users, grew 11% year over year to 696 million, up +18 million MAUs from the 678 million reported for the prior quarter (Q1 2025).

Gyllenhammar also highlighted the potential benefits of the new freemium functionality for the company’s ads business.

“With increased free engagement and increased free audience, as well as more time spent on platform for free users, and also more focused time spent for free users – because if you can go in and pick your songs and so on, it means that it’s a boon for our advertising business,” he said.

He added: “We can now have much higher-performing advertising units for our users. So we feel strongly that this should be something that can drive accelerated profitability and revenue generation on the free tier from advertisers. That’s another part of why this move is important for us.”

Spotify’s Ad-Supported Revenue in Q2 2025 was €453 million ($514m), up 5% YoY on a constant currency basis, reflecting growth across music and podcast advertising.

Today’s update marks the biggest adjustment to Spotify’s free tier in nearly six years.

The company rolled out more on-demand elements for ad-supported users in 2018, including the ability to select individual tracks in up to 15 different playlists such as Discover Weekly, Rap Caviar and Today’s Top Hits.

The ‘pick and play‘ addition announced today lets users of the ad-supported version of the app choose and play specific tracks in any playlist, and on any album track list.Music Business Worldwide