The UK’s Times and Sunday Times newspapers have announced that they will start charging to access their websites in June.

Readers will be charged £1 (US $1.50) for a day’s access or £2 ($3) for a week’s subscription.

This immediately reminded me of Spotify. As an occasional Spotify user, I really like the access it provides me to literally millions of tracks. However as a free user I am occasionally irritated by their ads.

So I decided to upgrade to the ad-free Premium version. Or at least I was intending to, until realising that doing so would cost me £9.99 ($15) per month.

Here’s an idea.

I understand that newspapers and online music services need to start making money.

Yet as happy as I am to pay for my music, I can’t even consider paying £120 a year for it. Especially when all my downloaded tracks and albums will cease to function once my membership is cancelled.

Here’s where I get to the idea.

If Spotify were to make it a real no-brainer, I’d go for it. And so would a lot of other people.

If Spotify offer me a premium account for £3 a month, I’d sign up today. If they offer me the same deal for £2 a month, I wouldn’t even have to think about cancelling my subscription.

Last year Spotify revealed that “less than 10%” of their subscribers had upgraded. Meaning 5%? 3%? 1%?

I guarantee that figure would explode if they were to adopt a more reasonable pricing structure, and their income would increase massively.

If News International were to charge £2 or even £1 a month for access, how many of their regular readers would even blink?

The question is whether News International and Spotify are going to adapt and survive or ignore and perish.

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