[dangerlibrary]

Spotify, in general, appears to consider accounts disposable. I think I saw something about this getting better recently, but a few months ago the only way to move my paid account to a family subscription was to delete the old account and create new accounts for everyone I wanted in the family plan.

[ben_jones]

I imagine this comes from the various trial offerings they've had for new customers, including student discounts and family discounts. I myself have gone through ~3 accounts taking advantage of this over the years and I imagine their metrics show a high account churn such that it is not an unreasonable conclusion to view accounts as disposable.

IMO it's certainly better then facebook's undisposable position where you are never deleting your account and every service that uses facebook serves as a mechanism for creating, reactivating, or connecting, with that one account. As a subscription service Spotify should probably make it easier to switch between subscription tiers, but I'm happy enough with the company to at least defend them a little bit :-P.

[k-mcgrady]

As a user Facebook's approach seems much better. I can't remember specifically what it was but I recently wanted to make a change to my Spotify account (which I've had since it first launched in the UK in 2009). Support told me the only option was to create a new account. This would have meant losing all of the songs I'd saved over the years, all playlists I'd created, and all playlists I was following. I'd also have to make all of the necessary friend connections again to access playlists I was collaborating on. The worst part is that the 'profile' Spotify has built that makes it's recommendations decent for me would be lost so Discover Weekly and recommendations would suck until it had built a new profile. That's a horrible experience for the user.

[lyonlim]

Indeed. Some time back (more than one year ago), I contacted support to delink my paid account from Facebook. Their suggestion was to create a new account... and I think they helped with transferring my playlists, then deleted my Facebook-linked account.

[y46ukgrc2n6]

I attempted to do exactly the same operation on Google Music and it was even worse. It wouldn't show the option to upgrade to a family plan anywhere. Turns out that signing up for Google Music All Access also gets you YouTube Red, and that YouTube Red subscription has to be deleted before you can upgrade All Access to the family plan (which also gives you a new YouTube Red subscription). It took a conversation with a google support rep to figure this out, and I think someone who is not a programmer would have a harder time understanding this failure mode.

[cocotino]

I remember back when they had a limit of minutes per month and I had to create like 5 Facebook accounts to bypass it.

[TarpitCarnivore]

It was pretty effortless for me. I just invited my wife via the email address she had registered and it connected it to the plan. Her account was previously on the free tier so maybe that's why.

[melvinmt]

Hmm, I just upgraded my ancient account (2008) to the family plan with no troubles.

[skykooler]

Which is pretty awful for anyone who signs on with Facebook.

[tekromancr]

I believe you can login direct to spotify using your fb credals.