Spotify has discontinued its Premium Lite subscription tier across all five markets where it launched the product in November 2025.
The move does not just affect India (where the change was reported earlier) but has also taken effect in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the UAE.
In each market, Spotify has cut the price of its Premium Standard tier to the level previously charged for Premium Lite – effectively giving subscribers the full Standard feature set for what they were previously paying for a stripped-back product.
The changes represent an abandonment of the feature-gated pricing model Spotify introduced with fanfare just six months ago, when it rolled out a three-tier Premium structure – Lite, Standard, and Platinum – in these five emerging streaming markets.
The Lite tier offered ad-free listening and on-demand playback but withheld offline downloads and higher audio quality (capping streams at 160 kbps).
It has now been removed from Spotify‘s website and app in all five territories.
A Spotify spokesperson told local media in India: “We occasionally adapt the plans we offer, based on market opportunity and to provide choice to and value to users.
“In India, the Lite plan is no longer available. Spotify Lite users are being offered to move to Spotify Standard at the same price.”
Student plan prices have also been reduced in all five markets.
What’s changed – market by market
- In India, Premium Standard has been cut from ₹199 to ₹139 per month – a 30% reduction – matching the price at which Lite had been set.
- The Student plan drops from ₹99 to ₹69 per month, also a 30% cut.
- The Premium Platinum tier, priced at ₹299 per month and offering lossless audio and AI-powered features, remains unchanged.
- In Indonesia, Standard has fallen from Rp 79,900 to Rp 59,900 per month – a 25% reduction – again matching the former Lite price.
- The Student tier has dropped from Rp 39,900 to Rp 29,900, while Platinum remains at Rp 119,900.
- In South Africa, Standard has been cut from R 94.99 to R 69.99 per month – a 26% reduction.
- The Student plan falls from R 47.99 to R 37.99.
- Platinum remains at R 179.99 – but a new tier, Basic Platinum, has been introduced at R 119.99 per month, offering all Platinum features except audiobook listening hours.
- In Saudi Arabia, Standard drops from SAR 31.99 to SAR 23.99 – a 25% reduction – while Student falls from SAR 15.99 to SAR 12.99.
- A Basic Platinum tier has been added at SAR 39.99
- Interestingly, the full Platinum tier has been repriced upward, from SAR 59.99 to SAR 69.99.
- In the UAE, Standard drops from AED 31.99 to AED 23.99 per month.
- Student falls from AED 15.99 to AED 12.99, while Platinum is reduced from AED 69.99 to AED 59.99.
- A Basic Platinum tier has been introduced at AED 39.99.
A six-month U-turn
The pricing restructure amounts to a reversal of the trajectory Spotify had been pursuing in these markets.
When it launched the three-tier structure in November 2025, the net effect was a price increase: in India, for example, the equivalent of a full-feature Premium subscription rose from ₹139 to ₹199 per month – a 43% increase – with the Lite tier slotted in at the old price for users who did not need offline downloads or higher audio quality.
That restructuring came just three months after Spotify had raised its India prices for the first time since launching in the market in February 2019, taking the individual Premium plan from ₹119 to ₹139 per month in August 2025.
With this latest change, Spotify has effectively collapsed two of its three tiers into one across all five markets, returning the full-feature Premium experience to the same price point as the old Lite product.
In three of the five markets – South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – Spotify has simultaneously introduced a new Basic Platinum tier, which offers all Platinum features except audiobook listening hours.
That tier did not exist in the original November 2025 lineup, and its introduction suggests Spotify is continuing to experiment with mid-price offerings in these territories – even as it retreats from the Lite model at the bottom of the range.
India is one of Spotify’s largest markets by user count, with the vast majority of its users on the free, ad-supported tier.
According to a joint report from EY and FICCI published in March, 178 million people streamed music online in India in 2025, but only around 8% – or 14.4 million – were paying for it.
The number of paid subscriptions grew 37% year-over-year, however – a shift the report attributed to “measures by music streaming platforms to discourage free usage.”
The EY and FICCI report also noted that Wynk, Resso, and Hungama all ceased operations in India over the previous 18 months, concentrating the market among a smaller number of players.
Converting free users to paying subscribers in India has been a long-running challenge for Spotify, which competes with local rivals including JioSaavn and Gaana, as well as YouTube Music and Apple Music.
In October 2023, Spotify restricted features for free-tier users in India in an effort to push more listeners towards paid plans.
Globally, Spotify‘s Premium subscriber base stood at 293 million at the end of Q1 2026, up 9% year-over-year, with total monthly active users reaching 761 million, according to the company’s most recent earnings report.
While Spotify has been raising prices in developed markets – hiking its US Premium tier from $11.99 to $12.99 per month in early 2026 – its strategy in these five emerging markets now appears to be tilting in the opposite direction: lowering the barrier to entry in pursuit of subscriber volume.
Spotify paid out over USD $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, the company said – the largest annual payment to music creators in its history.
The above story has been updated from an earlier version which focused only on India.Music Business Worldwide
