News

Samsung And Spotify Offer Free Premium Deal In MENA

Nearly seven in ten streams in the region come from 18-to-34-year-olds — the audience Samsung is hoping to entice into its ecosystem.

Published

5 hours ago

August 7, 2026

Nour Nasir

Samsung

Samsung has announced a partnership with Spotify spanning the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye, bundling Spotify Premium with select devices across its ecosystem. The headline offer — up to four months of Premium for free — is a first for the region.

Customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Türkiye who buy any OLED or 98-inch television, or any Galaxy S or Z series mobile device, get four months of Spotify Premium. The offer, tiered by market and device, is available at retail and on Samsung.com, and redeemed through the Samsung Promotion and Samsung Members apps.

For Samsung, the strategy is less about free music than about lock-in. The Korean tech giant’s pitch is continuity: a track starts on a Galaxy smartphone through Galaxy Buds on the commute, moves to a Samsung TV and soundbar in the living room, and stays controllable from a Galaxy Watch. The more seamlessly music travels between those devices, the harder it becomes to swap any one of them for a rival’s.

“Technology should bring people closer to the things they love, and few things connect people the way music does,” said Omar Saheb, Regional VP of Marketing and Online Business at Samsung Electronics MENA. The partnership, he added, gives customers “a genuine reason to choose Samsung for the experience, not only the product”.

Also Read: Shokz OpenFit Pro Review: Open-Ear Audio Finally Grows Up

For subscribers, Premium brings the usual package: ad-free listening, offline downloads, richer audio quality on Galaxy Buds and Samsung sound devices, and Jam, which lets friends build a shared queue.

“At Spotify, we are always working to make every listening moment feel more personal, meaningful, and worth it,” said Rami Jamal, Head of Partnerships at Spotify for South Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

The demographics go a long way to explaining the strategy. Across MENA, Türkiye, and Pakistan, nearly seven in ten Spotify streams come from listeners aged 18 to 34, according to the company — precisely the audience Samsung wants inside its hardware ecosystem before buying habits harden.

News

Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

First lit for a papal visit, Alfa’s 5G in and around Beirut is now permanent — timed for the summer expat influx, with 70 percent of Lebanon the eventual target.

Published

2 days ago

August 5, 2026

Nour Nasir

lebanon's 5g era begins with 150 stations and a $1 million budget

Lebanon is switching on 5G, seven years after South Korea launched the world’s first nationwide commercial network. Touch and Alfa, the country’s two mobile operators, announced last week that they are expanding fifth-generation services in coordination with the Telecommunications Ministry, part of a three-year project to install 150 base stations split equally between them.

Alfa made the first move by permanently restoring the 5G stations it originally activated for Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Lebanon in late November 2025, bringing coverage to downtown Beirut, Antelias, Dekwaneh, the Beirut Port area, and the vicinity of the Presidential Palace in Baabda. The timing is deliberate: summer brings a wave of Lebanese expatriates home, and internet consumption spikes with them. Stations in Dbayeh, the airport area, Adlieh, and Jounieh come next, followed by 75 more across the country.

The Touch network is close behind, according to its chairman Karim Salam. “Today, we are moving from the preparation phase to the actual implementation phase ahead of the commercial launch of the service,” Salam stated, as the first batch of equipment arrived in Beirut.

Also Read: Shokz OpenFit Pro Review: Open-Ear Audio Finally Grows Up

Touch, which selected technology from Huawei and Nokia, plans to activate 15 5G sites covering key areas of the capital before the end of August, with 60 more due between September and November in Beirut, Greater Beirut, the area around Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, Batroun, Jbeil, Jounieh, Tripoli, Zahle, and several other areas outside the capital. A second phase will extend the network across the rest of the country, including the south, the area most affected by the war between Hezbollah and Israel since October 2023. Touch also intends to upgrade 75 sites to 4.5G and build 75 new rural sites before the end of 2026.

A Telecommunications Ministry source told L’Orient-Le Jour the project’s total cost is around $1 million, covering installation, license activation, and network upgrades. The first 150 stations are expected to reach 20 to 25 percent of subscribers; in later phases, the ministry says, that could rise to around 70 percent of the Lebanese population.