

Show HN: Spotify International Pricing Index - mts_
http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/

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timje1
Why do internet services always seem to be more expensive in the UK? Surely
they should be able to be provided at approximately the same cost as the US.

For example, Steam games are consistently well above the US price + 20% for
VAT.

Netflix is £5.99 a month, which is over ten USD.

I'm sure there are many more examples.

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bonaldi
There can be lots of reasons, not all of them just "that's what the market
will bear".

There is a genuine cost of doing business in the UK, for instance, in that you
can't fire staff on a whim, have to pay national insurance for them and so on.

For Netflix (and Spotify, I'd imagine) rights issues can also be expected to
come into play: rights holders may charge more for UK clearance than they
would US.

Steam I'm not sure about - they don't seem to have a UK operation. Perhaps
they join Adobe in the "squeeze them till they hurt" camp.

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MojoJolo
Spotify Philippines is super cheap. But I didn't realized how cheap it really
is until I saw the site. I think they just launched last month with a really
low price. Spotify Premium here in PH only costs 129 pesos[1]. How cheap is
it?

Today, _$1 = P44.28_ so _P129 is just $2.91_.

Of course it was adjusted with the market value here in PH. It was really a
good deal. They also partnered with the telcos here to boost their presence.
And I think, they don't have much competition here in PH.

[1] [http://www.rappler.com/technology/news/55045-spotify-
philipp...](http://www.rappler.com/technology/news/55045-spotify-philippines-
launch)

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dataewan
Nice.

It might be better for the upper map to select a colour scale that has a zero
point on it - this would represent countries that have the same price as the
dollar.

A diverging colour scale would make it easier to distinguish which countries
are cheaper and which are more expensive. For example:

[http://colorbrewer2.org/?type=diverging&scheme=BrBG&n=7](http://colorbrewer2.org/?type=diverging&scheme=BrBG&n=7)

~~~
mts_
Great idea!

I actually had no clue how to do the color scale, and I ended up doing it with
5 different colors based on quantile. Did a small write up with my thoughts
about it: [http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-
index/](http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-index/)

Will revisit the map with these color changes.

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squidi
I would find it more intuitive if the most expensive countries had the light
green rather than dark green i.e. reverse the colour scale

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cmer
It'll never cease to amaze me that all these countries, including many
underdeveloped countries, get to have great internet services such as Spotify,
but somehow Canada is never one of those.

There's something seriously wrong with this country...

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rainboiboi
most probably the licensing deal didn't go through

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cmer
That's why I'm saying this. Licensing deals go through in pretty much every
country except Canada. There's an issue...

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Systemic33
It's clearly priced according to the cost of living/wage level.

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MrBuddyCasino
Except HongKong, US, Singapore and Australia. Anyone knows why those are
outliers?

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arb99
Do different areas have the same music library available though?

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stkhlm
Nope, the author explains that in a blog post here:
[http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-
index/](http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-index/)

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eadz
so has anyone managed to sign up to Spotify Philippines?

~~~
redredredred
I signed up for Spotify Malaysia when I lived there and continue to pay the
lower subscription fee now that I am living in Singapore. The only differences
are a minor difference in selection and the fact that, for some reason, all my
iPhone push notifications from the Spotify app are in Bahasa Malay (Malaysia's
primary language)

