Gratifications from using freemium music streaming services: Differences between basic and premium users

Online music streaming services have become popular in listening to music. Most online music streaming services employ the freemium business model. The specific gratifications from online music streaming are not well understood. Moreover, research examining the freemium model from a user experience perspective remains scant. We employ uses and gratifications theory and examine four gratifications, namely ubiquity, social connectivity, discovering new music, and enjoyment, as the predictors of continuance intention. We examine the differences in these gratifications between the basic and premium users with data from 374 Spotify users. The results demonstrate that enjoyment, discovering new music, and ubiquity, are the main drivers of the continuance intention. Interestingly, social connectivity has no effect on continuance intention. Furthermore, premium users experience higher levels of enjoyment and ubiquity than the non-paying basic users. Finally, enjoyment is the only predictor of continuance intention among basic users, but has no effect among premium users.