Spotify did something really cool last fall: it started offering Premium subscribers 15 hours of audiobook listening per month with access to more than 150,000 reads. Now they might be doing something less cool: hiking up the price for Premium subscribers who want to listen to those audiobooks.
The music streaming service cost a monthly subscription of $9.99 for 12 years before hiking it up to $10.99 in July 2023. According to a report from Bloomberg, Spotify is eyeing another increase of anywhere from $1 and $2 in the UK, Australia, Pakistan, and two other markets by the end of April and an increase in the U.S. “later this year.” Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable.
Part of the price increase could be to cover the cost of adding audiobooks on Spotify — an addition that many of people, myself included, seem to love. There’s already a limit to how many hours of audiobooks you can listen to on Spotify without paying extra money, which is, admittedly, pretty annoying. An average audiobook is between eight and 12 hours long, and Spotify includes a 15-hour listening period per month. That means if you want to listen to more than one book, or one exceptionally long book, you’ll have to hisse for the top-off or wait until the next month. I have personally paid for the top-off twice. I don’t like it — most users don’t — but I will probably do it again.
But if you’re not an audiobook listener, you’ll allegedly be able to use Spotify’s new “basic” plan, which stays at the current $10.99 Premium rate and doesn’t include audiobooks, according to Bloomberg. We’re still waiting on news and details about Spotify’s “Supremium” plan.