Spotify is moving to test a 13% price hike for its premium family plan (SPOT)

And in emerging markets, where consumers likely have less willingness and ability to pay, Spotify has launched cheaper options. Spotify has also tested a subscription plan called Premium Duo targeted at couples for a discounted $14 a month .

Likewise, its family plan, which lets up to five people use the service under a single subscription, is a much higher value compared with the single subscription offering, at $10. But while these offers drive uptake, they have actually lowered the average pricing of the service, and therefore steadily lowered Spotify's average revenue per subscriber in recent years.

The 13% price hike is likely the start of an attempt to counter this trend. And since the family plan is already such a high-value offering, the price hike may not seem as aggressive as on a single-user tier, and could help the company to boost revenue in countries where usage is already entrenched.

But this move could backfire, since Spotify's music streaming competitors are likely not under similar pressures to raise prices, given that they're all subsidized by cash-rich parent companies.Spotify's only service is audio streaming including music and podcasting and its core business relies on and subscription revenue (about 90% of total revenue) and ad revenue (about 10%).

However, its competitors like Amazon, Apple, and YouTube, which all offer music streaming services, do so in addition to their core businesses. While Spotify is a global market leader in music streaming, and as such has some amount of leeway to set prices, there's likely still a limit on how high it can take its prices.

For comparison, Netflix whose only business is SVOD, unlike some of its streaming competitors has been introducing price hikes consistently over the past two years, and just recently reported its first-ever sub dip, which it attributed in part to the higher prices.

Spotify could face a price ceiling, but price hikes still might be its most viable route toward greater monetization in the short term.As Spotify diversifies the content on its platform most recently with podcasts it could roll out additional ad formats to boost its overall ad business.

However, even though increased ad load might benefit the platform, Spotify has always been hugely concerned with its listeners, and it seems unlikely that it would sacrifice user experience in favor of a higher cashflow: In the company's recent launch of its podcasting arm, CEO Daniel Ek highlighted that discovery and user experience were top priorities, a statement echoing previous announcements.

Even though the company indicated it may not institute the price hikes more expansively, or even permanently, it seems likely that it'll be forced to if not now then soon given the rising competition within the streaming audio space, and its investment in more original podcasts and expansive licensing agreements.

Interested in getting the full story? Here are three ways to get access:

Sign up for the Digital Media Briefing to get it delivered to your inbox 6x a week. >> Get Started
Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to the Digital Media Briefing, plus more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
Current subscribers can read the full briefing here.