Spotify Offering Free Google Home Mini to Family Plan Account Holders
It’s promotion season and that means it is also time for smart speaker discounts and giveaways. Spotify is getting into the act by offering a free Google Home Mini to family plan account holders. The company announced in a blog post yesterday:
We are teaming up with Google Home to give Spotify Premium for Family master account owners in the U.S. a Google Home Mini as part of their subscription.
This offer is apparently available to both new and existing family plan members and starts today. The promotion runs from November 1st through December 31, 2018, but is only available in the U.S. From the Spotify website:
* New and existing Premium for Family plan master account holders can sign up for a Google Home Mini at https://www.spotify.com/us/family/ starting on 11/1. Note, this is a limited offer, only available for U.S. Spotify Premium for Family users till December 31, 2018—so don’t wait.
Why is Google Promoting a Rival Music Streaming Service?
An obvious question is why Google is helping to promote a rival music streaming service. Google Play Music and YouTube Music both have individual and family plans but neither is offering a free smart speaker to entice new subscribers. However, Google is listed by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan as number six worldwide in terms of subscriber market share with 7.1%. Spotify is the market share leader at 36%. That is 16 million to 83 million subscribers.
Google clearly sees an opportunity to place Google Home Mini smart speakers into more households with the Spotify deal. That offers the potential for Google Assistant to be introduced to millions of users for the first time. It is not surprising that Google is prioritizing the spread of Google Assistant over selling a few more music streaming subscriptions. Google Assistant is far more strategic and closely related to the company’s core business.
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