Looks like Spotify could be soon dropping their free tier for a three-month trial.

The three-month ‘proposal,’ advanced most principally by major labels Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, would allow current, free-access, ad-supported (or ‘freemium’) subscribers to continue their plans for 6 months, while new users would be limited to three months only.

As I wrote earlier this year on my family blog:

The average artist makes less than a cent per stream on Spotify. Demon Hunter has seen a lot of my money, but artists that I’ve only played once or twice has seen next to nothing. I’ve gotten more value than I’ve given to them. When you buy an album in iTunes, the artist sees between 10 and 50% of the money. You’d have to stream a song some 30 times to pay the artist as much as the purchase in iTunes would pay them.

I had gotten more value than I had given. As an artist and developer, that stings. Every once in a while I think of turning back. Cheap access to music (I was a Premium, $9.99/month subscriber) is enticing, but I gotta say that owning music is way better. I’m glad I switched to iTunes. I seldom used Spotify as a radio, but instead for listening to entire albums. I use iTunes the same. iTunes Radio is nice from time to time for discovery, but I own a lot of music and buy a new album every month or so now.