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Spotify just hiked prices again. There are cheaper options

Spotify just hiked prices again. There are cheaper options

Yep, it’s time for another Spotify price hike—meaning it’s also time to look for better music-streaming deals. Starting next month, the price for an individual Spotify Premium subscription in the U.S. will rise to $12.99 a month, up $1/month from the previous $11.99-a-month rate. Spotify Premium Duo plans for two people are going up to $18.99 a month, up from $16.99/month, while Premium Family plans are getting hiked from $19.99 a month to $21.99/month. Even Premium Student plans are going up, from $5.99 a month to $6.99/month. Existing Spotify subscribers will soon get emails that details the new rates, which will likely kick in after the next billing period, according to Variety . New subscribers hoping to sign up for Spotify’s Duo or Family plans will have to pay the new prices immediately, while those opting for individual or student plans will get a month free before the new rates kick in. The last time Spotify raised its prices was back in June 2024 , when it boosted individual rates from $10.99 a month to $11.99/month, and prices for other Premium plans also got went up. The June 2024 increase was Spotify’s second price hike in a year. It’s worth noting that music streaming prices aren’t soaring at the same rate as those of video streamers like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max. For now, individual music-streaming rates are still hovering within a few bucks of $10 a month, which was pretty much standard for a decade. Still, there are plenty of cheaper music-streaming options than Spotify for those who are willing to export their playlists . Amazon Music Unlimited Individual plan: $11.99/month (non-Prime), $10.99/month (Prime) Family plan: $19.99/month Amazon’s unlimited music service boasts more than 100 million songs, right up there with Spotify, and it also offers lossless and high-resolution tracks, spatial audio, and one audiobook a month via Audible. Subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited Sign up Apple Music Individual plan: $10.99/month Student plan: $5.99/month Family plan: $16.99/month Like Amazon and Spotify, Apple serves up more than 100 million songs in its streaming catalog, plus lossless and high-resolution tracks along with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos. There’s also the specialty Apple Music Classical app that curates classical tracks with proper classical-music metadata. Finally, Apple Music’s Student plan includes Apple TV access for free. Subscribe to Apple Music Sign up Tidal Individual plan: $10.99/month Student plan: $5.49/month Family plan: $16.99/month One of the pioneers of high-quality music streaming, Tidal tees up heaps of music tracks in lossless and high-resolution quality, and it was an early adopter of Dolby Atmos mixes. There’s also a track-mixing DJ Extension available for the Individual and Student plans for an additional $9/month. Subscribe to Tidal Sign up YouTube Music Premium Individual plan: $10.99/month Student plan: $5.49/month (first month free) Family plan: $16.99/month Yes, there’s still a music-only YouTube streaming plan, although it’s worth noting that the streamer doesn’t offer lossless audio tracks yet. Subscribe to YouTube Music Premium Sign up

Critical WordPress Modular DS Plugin Flaw Actively Exploited to Gain Admin Access

Critical WordPress Modular DS Plugin Flaw Actively Exploited to Gain Admin Access

A maximum-severity security flaw in a WordPress plugin called Modular DS has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to Patchstack. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-23550 (CVSS score: 10.0), has been described as a case of unauthenticated privilege escalation impacting all versions of the plugin prior to and including 2.5.1. It has been patched in version 2.5.2. The plugin

SK Hynix’s new, $13 billion memory plant won’t make RAM for you

SK Hynix’s new, $13 billion memory plant won’t make RAM for you

The three biggest memory producers on the planet are Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. The latter just announced that it’s investing 19 trillion Korean won, approximately $13 billion USD, into a gigantic new memory fabrication facility. But if you’re hoping it’ll make RAM for PCs or graphics cards, keep on hoping: this facility is exclusively making High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for industrial hardware. According to SK Hynix’s press release (machine translated), this massive investment is supported by the local governments in the North Chungcheong Province. With a planned total area of approximately 231,000 square meters or 57 acres, the facility would be more than triple the size of a professional football stadium, and approximately eight times as expensive as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper. As “AI” data centers continue to be planned and constructed, putting strain on electricity and other resources, industrial demand for memory far outstrips current output. The result is a memory supply crunch that has sent prices skyrocketing across the entire electronics industry, from the biggest companies to the smallest customers. Micron has flat-out killed Crucial , its direct-to-consumer memory seller. And Samsung has struggled to fulfill orders to its own consumer electronics division , as the semiconductor business prioritizes more profitable orders from data center suppliers. Unfortunately, chip fabrication plants take years to get up and running. Even if the HBM memory supplied by this new mega complex could ease the production crunch and open up manufacturing capacity for consumer-grade RAM elsewhere, it’s likely that it won’t be built and getting chips out before 2030. Industry commenters say that one to two years of constrained memory supply is the absolute best-case scenario, with some estimates saying that the current situation may take six years or more to resolve.