After including 15 hours of free audiobooks listening to its subscription plan late last year, Spotify at the moment is introducing a $9.99 monthly choice that may enable its free customers to additionally entry its audiobooks assortment. The corporate announced on Friday its new “Audiobooks Access Tier,” which, just like the service provided to subscribers, permits clients within the U.S. to stream 15 hours of listening from its catalog of over 200,000 titles.
With the addition, free Spotify customers will capable of proceed to stream music and podcasts through its ad-supported service, however pay to take heed to audiobooks with out having to purchase a Spotify subscription.
There’s not a lot financial savings available right here, given {that a} Spotify Premium subscription begins at $10.99 monthly for a person plan — solely a greenback greater than the audiobooks-only plan. Nevertheless, the transfer may enable Spotify to upsell audiobooks to clients who aren’t as fascinated with its music service, or who often use one other app for that. It may additionally make the Premium product look extra compelling.
As well as, the transfer offers Spotify a approach to compete with Amazon-owned audiobooks large Audible because it introduces a special mannequin for audiobook listening. As a substitute of paying for Audible’s $14.95 monthly subscription that gives 1 credit score to purchase a title from its bigger assortment together with finest sellers and new releases, customers may pay Spotify $9.99 monthly for a sure variety of hours. 15 hours is pretty beneficiant, because it typically encompasses extra listening time than one audiobook alone, if not two shorter books.
The corporate at the moment additionally provided an replace on the curiosity that free customers have for audiobooks, noting that since launching audiobooks for its Premium subscribers, it’s seen a forty five% enhance in free customers trying to find and interacting with audiobook content material every day.
Spotify In its most up-to-date quarter, Spotify noticed the second biggest quarterly gain in users in its firm historical past, reaching over 600 million month-to-month energetic customers, and over 236 million paid subscribers — up 15% year-over-year, regardless of elevating costs within the U.S. from $9.99 to $10.99 monthly. It additionally stated that it turn into the No. 2 supplier of audiobooks, behind Audible, however famous it was nonetheless too early to say what influence the service was having on subscriber momentum and different features of its enterprise.
