Spotify Will Let You Save Money by Opting Out of Audiobooks
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Earlier this month, Spotify announced its second price increase in less than a year, hiking its rates by $1 to $3 per month and making it one of the most expensive streaming music services.
Although Apple leaped ahead of Spotify when it raised the price of an Apple Music subscription to $10.99 in late 2022, the more prominent streamer wasn’t far behind. Spotify announced its first price increase in July 2023, putting it on par with Apple, and now, a year later, it’s planning to surpass Apple Music in the pricing game.
Spotify says the price increases are so it “can continue to invest in and innovate on the product offerings and features, and bring you the best experience.” However, it seems there’s at least one “product offering” that it’s happy to let users stop paying for.
Unlike Apple Music, which remains all about the music, Spotify has been pushing into podcasts and audiobooks over the past few years, hoping the added content would sweeten the pot for subscribers. For the past few years, Spotify Premium has offered 15 hours per month of audiobook listening, with subscribers able to select from a catalog of about 250,000 titles.
That provides an alternative to more sophisticated audiobook services like Amazon’s Audible, but it’s only geared toward casual listeners. Audible provides enough additional perks that most serious listeners are unlikely to be swayed by Spotify’s offerings.
Thankfully, there’s some good news for those who prefer to stick with Audible or aren’t interested in audiobooks. Spotify has just announced a new “Basic” tier at the old price that gives you everything most Spotify Premium customers are looking for, minus the free 15 hours of audiobook listening.
Enjoy the music streaming benefits of your Premium plan without the monthly audiobook listening time. Starting at $10.99/month for eligible users. Spotify Basic
The new Basic plan isn’t a complete surprise. Bloomberg hinted at it in April, but when the price hike arrived for the Premium plan with no sign of the music-only tier, many assumed that Spotify had abandoned its plans.
However, it turns out it wasn’t forgotten but merely delayed. Sadly, the Basic tier is only available to subscribers in the US right now. While Spotify’s announcement doesn’t mention it, there also appears to be a “Basic Family” plan for $16.99 — the old price of the Premium Family plan — but those who want to share Spotify with only a single partner might as well opt for the Premium Duo plan at the same price.
Currently, there appears to be no way to sign up for the Basic or Basic Family plans directly, perhaps because they’re only available to “eligible” subscribers. Some existing subscribers are seeing them as a downgrade option to their existing Premium plans; however, it’s unclear what Spotify’s eligibility criteria are beyond being in the United States.
The $10.99 Basic plan puts Spotify back on par with Apple Music, which doesn’t bundle audiobooks or podcasts. Apple, of course, has its separate Apple Podcasts and Apple Books apps to handle these, but despite several rumors over the years, it has yet to launch an overall subscription service for either of these categories. Audiobooks are still one-off purchases from the Appel Books store, and podcasts are mostly free; Apple Podcasts lets individual producers offer their own podcast subscriptions, but there’s no overall premium tier.
