X has increased its Premium subscription prices by nearly 40%, raising the monthly cost from $16 to $22 in the United States. The annual subscription has also increased from $168 to $229, with changes effective immediately for new subscribers and January 20 for existing ones.

Similar price increases have been implemented across European countries, with rates rising from €16 to €21 in France, Germany, and Spain. The basic subscription tier remains unchanged.

Elon Musk justifies the increase by highlighting new features, including:

• Complete ad-free experience
• Priority support
• Enhanced trend monitoring tools
• Higher usage limits on Grok AI models
• Improved creator revenue sharing program

The price hike comes amid X's ongoing legal battle with 17 music publishers, who are seeking $250 million in copyright infringement damages for approximately 1,700 songs. The National Music Publishers' Association reports alerting X to nearly 300,000 infringing tweets since December 2021, with the platform largely failing to address these violations.

Prior to Musk's $44 billion acquisition in 2022, Twitter was in licensing negotiations with major music labels Universal, Sony, and Warner. These discussions have since stalled, leaving X as "the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service," according to NMPA President David Israelite.

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