Hulu and Spotify are teaming up to offer their services together as a bundle for college students.
For $4.99 per month, eligible U.S. students can get access to Spotify Premium and Hulu with limited commercials. The services will be combined at the one price but customers will still need the separate apps to access both Spotify and Hulu.
Undergraduate students enrolled in a U.S. Title IV accredited college or university who are already subscribe to Spotify Premium for Students can switch their plan to Spotify Premium for Students, now with Hulu. New students can sign up through Spotify.
“In bringing Spotify and Hulu together, we’re now able to offer students—both the millions already on Spotify Premium, and those who are new to Spotify—access to the world’s best music, TV and movie content in the simplest possible way,” said Alex Norstrom, chief premium business officer at Spotify, in a statement. “We’re very excited to be partnering with Hulu—a like-minded company which is as focused as we are on delivering the very best in high quality streaming content.”
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Interestingly, the deal with Hulu—which marks the first time Spotify has bundled its service with a video provider—comes after Spotify recently bid adieu to Tom Calderone, head of original video and podcasts, amid a refocusing of its video strategy. The company intends to restructure its video strategy around Rap Caviar, Rock This and other features, a spokesman told Bloomberg.
For years, Spotify has fought for foothold in the streaming video space. Spotify announced plans in 2015 to add video clips and original programming to its mix of streaming music and brought on board content partners like ABC, NBCUniversal, TBS, Comedy Central, ESPN and Conde Nast.
But plans have gradually changed as programmers jumped ship upon learning that the views weren’t coming in.
“What Spotify has come to learn is that Spotify is amazing when you have a passive audience—when the audience doesn’t need to look at a video,” a Spotify content partner source told Digiday. “Some of the Spotify videos that did best were TED Talks, because those don’t actually need to be watched.”