Spotify just matched Apple Music’s free trial period

Spotify is giving you more time to fall for its premium service.

The streaming giant is tackling Apple Music head-on by dangling a three-month free period for anyone who signs up to Spotify Premium, the top-shelf product which unlocks access to its library of 50 million ad-free tracks and upwards of 450,000 podcast titles.

Until this week, the free spell was just 30 days.

Spotify

With triple the time to live with Spotify and learn all its nuances, corporate types will hope more people come on board, stay there and everyone makes money.

The new perk is a permanent one, Spotify claims, and it’ll rollout globally from this week.

With this new offer, Spotify’s free trial falls in line with Apple Music, its main rival which is still some way off the pace with a reported 60 million paying subscribers as of June this year.

Spotify’s execs won’t be ignoring Apple, which came relatively late to the streaming market with a launch in June 2015. Apple went live with its three-month “free” trial, which it initially botched by waving artist royalties during that period. That was, until Taylor Swift took the trillion-dollar company to task.

Streaming services won't mess with Taylor Swift

Competition is a great thing. In recent weeks, Spotify announced its paid subscriber base had swelled to 108 million globally in its second quarter, a year-on-year 31 percent gain in “paid subscribers.”

In the three-month period, the Stockholm-based streaming hulk added eight million paid members, a figure down on forecasts. Total monthly active users have race past 232 million. Spotify’s Australian base is said to be north of 5 million.

There’s more work to be done. Earlier in the week, the listed company swung in with new features for its premium family package, which now allows parents to filter out songs with naughty words and “adult” themes.

The package allows six people who live at the same address to log in, for A$17.99 a month. The clincher is that phrase, "living at the same address." Despite its subscriber base growing at a healthy rate, its revenue per user has been down. Blame family plans.

Separately, news emerged this week that Eminem’s publisher is suing for copyright infringements, the outcome of which could change the way streaming services share royalties for thousands of artists.

There’s never a dull moment at Spotify’s HQ.