When I tried to redeem my home mini for having afamily plan, Google STILL charged me the full price so I had to cancel the order. I used the link in my email and also went through the spotify website and it still tried to charge me for it.
If you’ve been summoned by the promise of free stuff, welcome. I have good and costless news for you. Announced on Tuesday, Spotify users can get a free Google Home Mini, the smaller version of Google’s smart speaker. No catch. No sneaky “buuut you have to sign up for this other thing” fine print. It’s quite literally as simple as it sounds: if you have a premium Spotify subscription, you can get a free Google Home Mini.
In a blog post, Spotify said that from now until November 15 (provided supplies last), you can get the $50 smart speaker completely free. The offer is available for anyone with the Premium Individual account (the standard $9.99 subscription) or the master account user for the Premium Family account. Unfortunately, if you’ve got a free account or a student account, you won’t be able to get a Google Home Mini.
In peak 2019 fashion—where music streaming services want to give you robots for your house—I first learned about this offer from a TikTok. We are truly living in the future. However, Spotify offered a similar promotion for new Premium Family accounts last year. With this year’s deal, Spotify has expanded the offer to anyone with a Premium regardless of whether you signed up last week or last year. (If you claimed your Google Home Mini through last year’s promotion, you also won’t be able to sign up to participate in this year’s giveaway.
It should be noted that the offer is for the Google Home Mini, not the recently released Nest Mini. The main difference between the two is the Nest Mini touts better sound quality and a headphone jack. Otherwise, they look virtually identical. Plus, one of them is free.
“At our core, Spotify Premium wants to make it easy to enjoy your favorite music anytime, anywhere,' Marc Hazan, Vice President of Premium Partnerships, said in a statement to CNN. “We were delighted by the response of our first Google Home Mini offer last year, which is why we're excited to extend our partnership with Google and expand the offer to now include both Family and Individual Premium plans.”
Here’s how to claim your Google Home Mini:
- Sign into Spotify and click “Premium.” That’ll take you to the page for the Google Home Mini deal.
- From there, you’ll be prompted to select the type of Spotify plan you have: individual or family.
- Then, you wait. If there are still Home Minis left to claim, you’ll get an email confirming your “reservation.”
- When your “reservation” is ready, you’ll get another email linking to Google’s online store and with a promo code making your Google Home Mini free.
- Order your free mini and revel in the time in which we live.
Spotify appears to be pretty easy to use with Google Home. Per an emailed release from last year’s promotion, you can listen to music by saying things like, “Hey Google, play Spotify” or “Hey Google, play my Discover Weekly” or “Hey Google, play Study music” or “Hey Google, play Emotions by Mariah Carey.” You could ask Google to play other songs but...why?
This deal comes in light of recent reports of Google and Amazon using smart speakers to listen to users. Researchers from the firm Security Research Labs created apps to exploit vulnerabilities in the home speakers. These could allow people to eavesdrop on or phish users. In response to the news, a Google spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that they are conducting an internal review of all third-party actions. They’ve also temporarily disabled some Google Home actions while that investigation is happening.
Just a good reminder to keep track of the third-party apps you use through your smart speakers and to delete those apps you’re not using. I suppose every free thing does have some sort of catch.
If you pay for Premium but can't use your Premium features, try the following:
- Log out and back into your account
Occasionally this is necessary to force a sync of info between your device and our account system - Check the status of your subscription
Go to your account page and scroll to Your plan. - Check the status of your payment
If your Spotify payment is marked as 'pending' on your bank statement, it might not have gone through successfully. When you submit a payment, your bank puts the funds aside as ‘pending’. If the payment fails, the pending status will expire and the funds will be returned to you.
For more information, check out payment troubleshooting. - Check that your Premium subscription isn’t on another account
You might be logged into the wrong account. It's possible to create multiple Spotify accounts, each with their own login details, saved music, and subscription plans.
Check to see if you have any other accounts.
Still not working?
Free Google Home Min With Spotify But Charges 49 Still Alive
If you have Premium Family, make sure the owner hasn't removed you from the plan.
If your Premium plan is associated with another company (e.g. with your broadband/mobile provider, or with iTunes), check with them to make sure your subscription is still active.