Anais Gutierrez
Hulu and Spotify announced its new partnership to bring a new streaming bundle for college students in the United States. Spotify Premium for Students, now with Hulu, is available starting today for just $4.99 a month.
However, Hulu and Spotify aren’t the only ones trying to attract the youngsters into their services. Amazon Music Unlimited recently announced a student plan. And Tesla is striking to music streaming too.
Hulu and Spotify dream bundle
The new streaming bundle from Spotify and Hulu marks the first time that the music streaming service has partnered with a TV and movie streaming service.
“In bringing Spotify and Hulu together, we’re now able to offer students – both the millions already on Spotify Premium, and those who are new to Spotify – access to the world’s best music, TV and movie content in the simplest possible way,” Spotify’s Chief Premium Officer Alex Norstrom said.
“We’re very excited to be partnering with Hulu – a like-minded company which is as focused as we are on delivering the very best in high quality streaming content.”
To subscribe to the new Spotify and Hulu bundle, undergraduate students must be enrolled in a U.S. Title IV accredited college or university and must be 18 years of age or older. Those who already are subscribed to Spotify Premium for Students will simply have to switch their subscription on the Spotify app.
When a student graduates or leaves school, they’ll still get Premium for Students “until it’s 12 months after the date they first subscribed or last reactivated.”
“We are proud to announce Spotify as our newest strategic partner – they’re an iconic brand in music streaming and a proven leader in reaching and engaging young consumers,” Hulu SVP, head of distribution and partnerships Tim Connolly said.
Right now, this new streaming bundle from Spotify and Hulu is only available in the U.S. However, the companies did describe this as simply “the first step” in bundling their services together, hinting that it may become available in other markets in some other form. See also: Best Sites to Buy Spotify Plays, Followers & Streams (2021)
While this is a first for Spotify, it is another contributor of the new model of provider/content services teaming up to reach more customers. Most recently, T-Mobile has partnered with Netflix to give free subscriptions to the movie/television service to all T-Mobile carriers.
Attracting the young audiences
Amazon Music’s ‘Unlimited’ faces tough competition against Spotify and Apple Music.
The service is battling its competitors by slashing prices. A student subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited now costs $6 for six months. After that crazy cheap $1-a-month deal ends, students will pay $4.99 a month.
That’s the same as Spotify and Apple Music’s student rates, which are also $4.99 a month. Those services, though, don’t have the six-month promo that costs nearly nothing to get students to subscribe in the first place.
Subscribing to these music streaming services usually costs around $9.99 a month. Amazon Music Unlimited, which launched last October, offers a discounted $7.99 a month membership to Amazon Prime members. A lot of students already have Prime, since there’s a hefty half-price discount for students.
Amazon wouldn’t have slashed prices to $1 a month if it weren’t trying to steal away some of Spotify’s 60 million subscribers.
Amazon says its new deal is available for a limited time only, so if you want to make the switch, get subscribing.
Tesla is going for its own streaming service
It seems like Elon Musk always has something new up his sleeve, and if clues hiding in Tesla’s latest software update are any indication, Musk could be breaking into the music-streaming industry in the future.
Tesla’s new update includes backend information for a new music streaming platform titled “TTunes.”
However, while Tesla vehicle owners can see a label for TTunes in their media app, there’s nothing actually available (yet) in terms of a program people can actually use. Instead, when users click into TTunes, they are greeted by a note that reads, “Unable to reach TTunes. Try again later.”
Still, it’s another signal that Tesla is working on a music streaming program.
“We believe it’s important to have an exceptional in-car experience so our customers can listen to the music they want from whatever source they choose,” they said.
“Our goal is to simply achieve maximum happiness for our customers.”
Additionally, Musk previously hinted at a Tesla music-streaming service in June during a shareholders meeting.
Source: Daily Mail
