Los Angeles Times

Spotify, Hulu offer $12.99 combo deal

The music and video streaming firms team up to woo new users.

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Spotify Technology and Hulu are introducin­g a combined subscripti­on that reduces the monthly price of using both, a promotion designed to attract new paying users to the music and video streaming services.

Starting in summer, advertisin­g-free music on Spotify Premium and the more than 75,000 television shows and movies on Hulu’s U.S. ad-supported service will be available for $12.99 a month, the companies said in a statement. On Wednesday, Hulu began offering a 99cent trial subscripti­on for its ad-supported plan for three months as an introducti­on to the bundle.

The package comes to less than the price of subscribin­g separately to Spotify’s $9.99-a-month service and Hulu’s $7.99-a-month service. Hulu — owned jointly by Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc., Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc. — had about 17 million subscriber­s last year, while market leader Netflix Inc. surpassed 54 million in the United States.

Spotify, which is said to be planning a new version of its free music service as well, expects to reach about 200 million users worldwide by the end of the year, including as many as 96 million paying subscriber­s, according to a March forecast.

Technology giants Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Google owner Alphabet Inc. are all vying for a larger share of the music subscripti­on market.

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