Spotify Premium users can now get access to Hulu’s ad-supported plan for free. This is available to new users here, for existing users go into account settings and then change your plan to the new Spotify + Hulu plan. It might make sense to sign up for Hulu separately through Swagbucks first if you haven’t already to complete that money making offer. Previously I believe Spotify student plans came with Hulu, now it’s all plans excluding Spotify family plans. I personally use a family plan as it’s much cheaper between multiple people but if you don’t then this is free Hulu.
Be warned, I signed up through Swagbucks, was charged $5.99, then did the Spotify link to get it covered for free. But the $5.99 charge is sticking around, and—sigh—the SB don’t seem to be tracking, so might be worth just doing the free link and saving oneself the trouble.
so I normally buy spotify GC. had me setup auto billing. sent it through paypal. put a temp charge of $1 and looks like it’s going to continue using GC. I use month to month plan
I was already paying for the Spotify/Hulu (ad supported) bundle. I got an email yesterday telling me of this change and that my account would be adjusted automatically. It’s not often that a service of any kind goes down in price when you are already paying for it. So it was a welcome change.
If you have any gift card balance on your Hulu account, merging with Spotify will cause you to forfeit that balance as they are stating you are being billed by Spotify and can’t use a Hulu gift card to pay
Just recently tried Spotify – after recent Starbucks 250 star promo. I do like how it integrates with Waze (odd since Google owns Waze). I’ve tried Google Music, Amazon Prime and Unlimited as well as Pandora. Honestly I’ve used Prime the most and like the lyrics option.
We do subscribe to the Ad-free Hulu – I might have paid another $3-4 for Spotify premium, but definitely wouldn’t ever signup for this deal – but I guess that they are marketing to a different market segment.
Already been getting this perk with Spotify Student for only $4.99/month.
what qualify’s as student in their eyes?
Spotify uses SheerID’s service to verify student status. I believe SheerID has some sort of access to lists of active students at select institutions but I’m not completely clear on how it works. All I know is that when I was on leave of absence at my institution, SheerID wasn’t able to automatically verify me but when I reactivated, they were.
Ring uses a similar 3rd party service to verify student discount. I scanned in my college ID from 2003 and put on a sticker with “2020” on it and it passed…
I graduated May 2018 and I’m still getting the $4.99 student rate as of this month.
I have a prepaid premium plan (yearly) that ends in September, but when I choose Spotify Premium with Hulu, it wants me to add a card and charge me $9.99. Will I be charged this amount still?
I would like to know as well. I am also facing the same issue.
Spotify needs to stop excluding family plans (same premium plan as normal) from things. Can’t pay for family plan with a gift card, only the single plan – makes no sense and now no hulu.
I don’t really mind it, I just see family plans as a deeply discounted plan that doesn’t offer any additional benefits. Although GC should still work, I’m surprised that’s even legal.
Just a pointer with the family plan and gift cards. I was successfully able to cancel my family plan, add the gift card to my account balance and then re-sign up for the family plan again. Afterward, my family plan charges deducted from the gift card balance on my account. The only real annoyance was sending out the links again for people to re-join your family plan. It’s an extra step but it allows you to add a gift card in order to pay for your family plan.
Too late! I gave away my gift card
Gift cards definitely do not work with family plans. I can confirm that.
even using the “redeem” link on the owner’s account?
I wonder if you can upgrade to no add plan after that.
I signed up through Spotify and you can’t upgrade the Hulu plan if you link it up with Spotify. It makes specific mention of this and says you need to have a regular subscription if you want to do the no ad plan (or any other upgrades). It only allows for Hulu with ads.
can anyone with the hulu ad plan comment on how much ads they play, as much as regular tv, very rarely like spotify, etc.
Varies a lot. I just started with hulu a month ago and usually they do 40 to 80 second. breaks every 20 minutes or so. Other days I have watched a full hour episode without a single ad which others have reported as well.
I’ve used the “with ads” Hulu when it was 100% free with ads, and still have it now that it’s a monthly subscription.
For a usual 30 minute show there’s generally three ad blocks (one right after the intro credits, one in the middle of the show, and one right before the end credits). On average these are usually three ads per block.
For hour shows or longer they’ll add a comparable amount, so maybe 5 blocks for an hour show and 7 for a 1.5 hour show.
I’d say it’s slightly less than regular TV, but still pretty close. A 30 minute show is usually 22 minutes of show and 8 minutes of ads, give or take a little. With Hulu you’re looking at 22 minutes of show and more like 5 minutes of ads. It’s also easy to skip the last block of ads because there’s no point in watching the end credits most of the time, so realistically more like 3 minutes of ads.
awesome, I appreciate the breakdown!