Spotify is giving users of its free version access to more music in a bid to increase subscriber numbers, a move that comes not long after a successful IPO.

The company’s free tier is considered to be a feature to attract people to its mobile app, with the hope they will eventually upgrade to the paid version for $10 a month. The company currently has 70 million paid and 90 million free users.

Following its IPO, Spotify, which is yet to post a profit, promised investors the app will hit 96 million paid subscribers by the end of the year.

Now the streaming service is rolling out a new version of its free app, giving users access to more songs to attract more subscribers. It will also use machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically generate playlists in a bid to compete with traditional radio, media reports state,

“You may ask why give this away for free? We know that it’s the only way we’re going to achieve our goal of getting billions of fans on the plan,” chief R&D officer Gustav Soderstrom said at a recent event in Manhattan, TechCrunch reported.

The announcement doesn’t mean users of the free version will have complete access to its catalogue, but the scope of what they can listen to is widened. Users will also have the option to turn on a data saver feature which means the app will consume up to 75 per cent less mobile data.

As always, those who pay get full access to Spotify’s entire library with no ads.

Spotify’s first-ever earnings report is scheduled for 2 May.

Apple signed up 38 million users to its rival music streaming service, all of which pay for the service because there is no free version. The US company is in the process of acquiring music recognition app Shazam to boost its offering.