Subscription War: Spotify, Apple Music Expand Discounts

Both Spotify and Apple Music are expanding subscriptions discounts, as the battle for new subscribers between two of the dominate players in music streaming heats up.

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Apple Music and Spotify are both offering new discounts in their increasingly competitive battle for new subscribers. 

As Spotify nears its first public stock offering, the streamer has announced one of its deepest discounts yet. Billed as a Valentine promotion, "Cozy up with free premium" offers new subscribers 60 days of Spotify Premium for free.  In recent years, the streamer's most frequent promotion has been $.99 for three months. 

Apple Music's standard free trial has consistently been 30 days longer at 90 days.

Apple is working to attract new users on another front with expanded student discounts. Yesterday, Apple Music added half price student discounts in 79 markets with 3 more going live before the end of the month.  That means that nearly every market where Apple Music is available offers discounted student memberships including the newly added countries of Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal and Taiwan.

Shaping The Subscriber Narrative

These discounts come amid reports that Apple Music is gaining paid subscribers in the US at a rate 2.5 times faster than Spotify – 5% vs. 2% – and could have more subscribers here by summer of this year. 

That's not a narrative that Spotify wants Wall Street to adopt as preps to go public.