Hulu joins Spotify for students

PREMIUM FOR STUDENTS — Hulu and Spotify’s partnership could lead to a snowball effect of joint streaming service discounts geared at undergraduate students. (Google)

“We love students; that’s why we made premium for students.”

Spotify and Hulu have teamed up to offer a new bundle deal that includes Spotify’s premium ad-free tier, and Hulu’s with limited commercials. The deal will be available for $4.99 per month to US undergraduate students age 18 or older at an accredited college or university. This is a $13 discount, and the two companies plan to split the subscription fee, according to Business Insider.

The new bundle deal may be indicating a future of subscription services partnering with each other to have a wider audience. In fact, there are already some partnerships preceding Spotify and Hulu: AT&T has DirecTV and HBO, Verizon has the NFL and Sprint is pushing Tidal. T-Mobile just recently announced a new offer for free Netflix. These competing partnerships may be the driving force behind Spotify and Hulu’s joint deal.

The partnership reflects the increasingly competitive on-demand video and music streaming service market. Music streaming services like Apple Music look to continually build out music catalogs, while video streaming services like Netflix are increasing original content production with shows like “Master of None.”

Though this may be true, the teaming up of Spotify and Hulu can help the other stand out. The bundle better positions Spotify to retain its leadership among music streaming services, with over 60 million paid subscribers as of July 2017, while its closest competitor, Apple Music, had 27 million subscribers as of June 2017. Adding access to video content through Hulu could help Spotify stay in the lead.

Hulu, on the other hand, can shore up to competitors in the subscription video on demand realm. They need a larger amount of video subscribers to keep up with Netflix, and Spotify’s music streaming catalog gives Hulu just that — consumers who purchase the bundle will have a music streaming option in addition to video programming. This is especially enticing to college students that are deciding between video streaming services. Nonetheless, Hulu still may have a way to go to inch up to the insanely popular Netflix, with over 100 million subscribers globally, while Hulu last reported having 12 million in May 2016.

Meanwhile, this partnership can also help advertisers reach younger demographics like college students. “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, Spotify’s chief premium business officer in a statement.

Will this quickly become the default college streaming pair, or will Netflix continue to prevail over binge-watching students everywhere? Only time will tell. Go to https://www.spotify. com/us/student in order to sign up for the student-discounted Spotify and Hulu bundle.