After adding 15 hours of free audiobooks to its subscription plan late last year, Spotify is today introducing a $9.99 per month option that will allow its free users to also access its audiobook collection. The company was announced on Friday the new “Audiobooks Access Tier,” which, similar to the service offered to subscribers, allows customers in the US to stream 15 hours of listening from their catalog of more than 200,000 titles.
With the addition, free Spotify users will be able to continue streaming music and podcasts through the ad-supported service, but pay to listen to audiobooks without having to purchase a Spotify subscription.
You can’t save much here, given that a Spotify Premium subscription starts at $10.99 per month for a single plan — just a dollar more than the audiobook-only plan. However, the move could allow Spotify to upload audiobooks to customers who aren’t as interested in its music service or who regularly use another app for it. It could also make the Premium product look more compelling.
Additionally, the move gives Spotify a way to compete with Amazon-owned giant Audible as it introduces a different model for listening to audiobooks. Instead of paying for Audible’s $14.95 monthly subscription that offers a credit to buy a title from its larger collection, including best sellers and new releases, users could pay $9.99 a month to Spotify for a certain number of hours. Fifteen hours is quite generous, often including more listening time than a single audiobook, if not two smaller books.
The company also offered an update today on free users’ interest in audiobooks, noting that since launching audiobooks for Premium subscribers, it’s seen a 45% increase in free users searching for and engaging with audiobook content every day.
In its most recent quarter, Spotify posted its second-biggest quarterly gain in users in the company’s history, reaching more than 600 million monthly active users and more than 236 million paid subscribers — up 15% year-over-year, despite an increase in prices in the US from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. It also said it had become the No. 2 audiobook provider, behind Audible, but noted it was still too early to tell what impact the service had on subscriber dynamics and other aspects of its business.
