This past week, a self-proclaimed ‘web-tinkerer’ has released a sleekly designed infographic depicting the country-by-country cost of subscribing to Spotify Premium, the ad-free version of the music streaming web service. It is quickly going viral.
Matias Singers began working on the project after moving from his native Denmark to Malaysia where he noticed the extreme variation in service fees.
His international pricing index reveals that not all fees are in fact created equal. While the upgraded service will cost you $9.99 (about 54 kroner) in the US, in Denmark the tab is a whopping 99 kroner – almost double.
Other staggering costs include the UK at 92 kroner a month and Norway at 91 kroner. But Denmark’s fee is the highest of all.
Outrage on social media
On social media platforms like Reddit and others, users have expressed outrage and confusion regarding the price differences.
Some have attempted to figure out why the disparity exists, questioning whether VAT is to blame for the higher European prices. But factoring in a 20 percent tax does not explain why the European Spotify Premium rates are significantly higher than in the US.
Others have speculated on whether it’s adjusted to account for the country’s GDP? However, Singers also includes these numbers in the infographic, and Norway’s GDP per capita is more than 50 percent higher than Denmark’s: 359,920 kroner compared to 232,772 kroner.
And there have even been some theories that Spotify, a Swedish company, is singling Denmark, its old foe, out in some sort of black-humoured, brotherly jab for all the wars they've fought.
Nevertheless, Singers maintains that he is happy to pay the high price as subscriber to the Danish version.
“I’m currently paying for the most expensive Spotify Premium plan in the world when converted to USD. So will I be making the switch [to Malaysia’s version]?" he asked on his site at
"Probably not, I still want to listen to Danish tracks which aren’t available in the cheaper countries like Philippines and Malaysia.”
