It turns out there really is no such things as a free lunch. Spotify is slashing in half the amount of free listening available to long term users of its service, with listening hours slashed in half from 20 to 10 hours from 1 May. New users will be moved over to this new restricted model in the next six months.
The details of the new service is this: The existing free advertising supported services will still exist as they are today. “Spotify Free” needs an invitation to work but is unlimited. “Spotify Open” – where anyone can just register without an invite – becomes limited to 20 hrs a month, no invite needed.
Brand new Spotify users still get to use the free service as it is today (either Spotify Free or Spotify Open) for the first 6 months, then the capping begins. But users who registered an account before 1 Nov who will see the changes from 1 May.