Spotify will now let free users pick and play tracks

Following its long-awaited launch of lossless streaming for paid subscribers, Spotify is upgrading its service for free users, too. On Monday, the company announced that free users globally will now be able to search and play any song they want or play a song shared by a friend or an artist they follow on social media.

The company calls the new features “Pick & Play,” “Search & Play,” and “Share & Play,” respectively. With the former, free users can hit play in the Spotify app to pick and play any song they want, or can even search for a particular song and play it.

The “Share & Play” feature could encourage free users to open Spotify when they come across music on social media. For instance, Instagram lets users share a Spotify track to Stories with sound and allows users to share music on Instagram Notes.

Previously, free users could shuffle songs with limited skips on mobile devices.

Spotify says the new features will roll out globally to free users, but there will still be some restrictions that Premium users won’t face.

When reached for clarification, the company told TechCrunch that users on the free mobile experience will have an allocation of “on-demand time,” and when they reach that daily limit, they’ll then be restricted to a limited number of skips per hour. Spotify did not share what that time limit is, but noted that Premium users will not have these restrictions.

In recent months, Spotify’s ad business has been struggling, with CEO Daniel Ek telling investors the company has been “moving too slowly” on this front. The streamer wants ad revenue to make up 20% of its overall revenue, but has grown it only to 11% as of June. By adding new free features, Spotify could boost engagement among its free user base, who would then be exposed to more ads.

Spotify says that other features, like its support for lossless, AI Playlists, and Mix, will remain Premium-only offerings, while others like the newly launched Messages and personalized playlist daylist, available to global users, will span both the free and paid experiences, as they had before.

The company’s free users today make up the bulk of its user base. Out of Spotify’s 696 million monthly active users in the most recent quarter, 433 million were free, ad-supported customers. In addition, there were 276 million Premium (paying) subscribers in the quarter.

Updated after publication with more information about the restrictions impacting free users.