Spotify has launched two new Audiobooks Plus add-on subscriptions that enable Premium customers to double their audiobook listening restrict to 30 hours. They’re accessible to particular person Premium subscribers and customers who handle Household and Duo plans. Different customers on Premium accounts can now additionally request 15 hours of audiobook entry from their plan supervisor. Nonetheless, the brand new plans are nonetheless too quick for many who choose to hearken to longer books.
The 30-hour restrict received’t get you thru titles like George R. R. Martin’s A Sport of Thrones or Brandon Sanderson’s The Approach of Kings, for instance. You possibly can hear to 2 or three smaller novels as a substitute, however if you wish to re-listen to them sooner or later, you’ll should sacrifice these hours once more. And you may overlook about shopping for books to get round these points — any audiobook included in Premium isn’t accessible for Premium subscribers to buy.
I scoured by Spotify’s audiobook listings to search out something I may purchase as a Premium subscriber and got here up with nothing. By comparability, Audible’s $14.95 premium plan provides customers a complete free e-book every month that they’ll hold perpetually, and regularly has titles on sale for a lot lower than the value of Spotify’s time-based top-ups. The payouts that Spotify provides to authors are reportedly higher than what Audible pays, nevertheless it sucks that Spotify makes it so troublesome to help authors instantly with purchases.
These add-ons are presently solely accessible for Spotify Premium customers within the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands, following preliminary assessments in Eire and Canada. Pricing will differ by area. Within the UK, each Audiobook add-ons are priced at £8.99 (about $12, which may double the $11.99 particular person Premium plan pricing within the US).
Spotify will finally introduce comparable plans to the US, based on TechCrunch, although customers in that area have already got the choice to buy 10-hour audiobook top-ups for $12.99. The primary perk right here is comfort — these rolling add-on subscriptions will mechanically enable Premium customers to hearken to 30 hours of audiobooks every month with no need to purchase top-ups. A Spotify spokesperson wasn’t instantly accessible to touch upon what number of customers presently hearken to over 15 hours of audiobooks.
The 15 hours offered to Premium subscribers is a “good to have” for those who additionally stream music on the platform, particularly for those who solely hearken to a handful of shorter e-book titles each month. Spotify additionally has a $9.99 audiobook-only Premium plan that gives 15 hours of listening with no music perks for those who choose to hearken to your tunes elsewhere.
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