With new competitors on the horizon and an already crowded marketplace for streaming music services, Spotify is dumping its free monthly listening time limits for all users tuning in via the web client. U.S.-based listeners could already stream all the gratis songs their ears could desire, but free listeners in many other countries were limited to 2.5 hours of tunage per week after a six-month trial.
The news will be a boon to anyone who loves to crank Spotify during the workday, although Spotify freeloaders will still have to sit through periodic ad spots. But that's a small price to pay for free, unlimited listening across Spotify's entire catalog—a catalog that has scored some big names in recent months, including Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
Spotify's time limit dump puts it on par with Pandora, which dumped its time limits for desktop users back in 2011. But rivaling Pandora's freemium model was probably not a major impetus for Spotify's limit lift.
Marching to the Beats of a different drummer
Next Tuesday, however, the Beats Music streaming service goes live, promising to "deliver the right music to you at the right time" thanks to a combination of human curators and computer algorithms.
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