• by Alex Weprin , March 12, 2019

Hulu is making another move to significantly expand its subscriber base and build out its advertising business.

Hulu's base ad-supported tier will now be free for all subscribers to Spotify Premium, the streaming music company’s ad-free plan that costs $9.99 per month, per the companies. Typically, subscribing to both services would cost $16 per month.

The deal will be available to new and existing Spotify Premium subscribers until June 10.

The deal marks a significant expansion to the partnership forged by the two streaming companies last year. In that deal, customers could bundle Spotify Premium and Hulu for $12.99 per month. With the new deal, that price is dropped even further. Existing subscribers will be able to sign up and ave their monthly bill lowered accordingly.

Hulu has been aggressively trying to expand its subscriber base over the past year. Leading up to Christmas 2018, Hulu offered a special rate of $0.99 per month for one year. That followed the previous Spotify partnership.

Early this year, in the wake of price hikes from Netflix, Hulu dropped the price of its ad-supported tier by $2 to $5.99 per month.

The tweaks seem to be working.

The company says it ended 2018 with 25 million subscribers, a net gain of 8 million over the previous year. All those subscribers are in the U.S., and with international expansion on the horizon, growth appears poised to turbocharge.

In turn, Hulu hopes to be able to make up for those diminished subscriber revenues with stronger ad sales results. The company is expanding its programmatic advertising presence, with plans to add dynamic ad insertion and other products, such as ads in downloaded offline videos.