Spotify prices to soar again, but there's still no sign of Hi-Res streaming

Spotify is set for another price hike this summer, and it's also gearing up to launch an even more expensive tier.

The Financial Times claims that Spotify will be "prioritising profitability" as the growth in user numbers slows and record companies push for even higher prices.

Although the US market is likely to remain untouched for now, the price hikes in Europe are expected to arrive in June, and will be €1 in most markets. We can also expect a standard Spotify Premium sub to go up £1 in the UK.

While a price hike is annoying but inevitable, the FT says that record companies are also pushing the big-name audio streamers to introduce what they call "Streaming 2.0". That could mean getting less from your streaming subscription in order to drive you to more expensive "super-premium" tiers.

Why streaming prices are about to soar

Music streaming is no longer growing explosively, and that means streaming revenues aren't going up as quickly as record companies and streaming firms would like. To solve that, the labels want streamers to up their prices dramatically.

The record companies understand that too much of a price hike would backfire, so instead they're pushing for the introduction of new, "super-premium" tiers that would cost considerably more – so for example, the rumoured price tag of Spotify's super-premium tier is 50% more than a standard subscription.

There are two ways to tempt people to take out a super-premium subscription: you can offer something brilliant that everybody will gladly pay to have, or you can make the standard service worse. And inevitably, at least some of the suggested moves take option number two.

The FT describes one possibility as restricting must-have new releases to super-premium users first.

There's no word whether a Spotify Music Pro service with Hi-Res Audio will be part of super premium membership – it's thought that could be an additional, even more expensive service, in fact.

The plans aren't just being attached to Spotify either. According to the FT it's also in the pipeline from the likes of Apple, Amazon and YouTube too. All three tech giants are also preparing their own super-premium options, it says.

It seems likely that music streaming is going to go down the same road as video, where instead of a single option for everyone, there's a confusing collection of plans offering different levels of quality, different levels of advertising and in some cases, slightly different catalogues of content too.