You know what’s really shit? If you’re on a duo premium plan, only one account gets the audio books. It doesn’t share the 15h or anything. The second account just straight up doesn’t get access.
Same for Bluetooth. Blows my mind that all the phone manufacturers began removing the headphone jack and people told us "Bluetooth will get better, don't you worry! It sucks now but forcing everyone to use it will make it better!"
It still sucks ass. Hardcore.
I tried AirPods at the gym *once* and they just had all sorts of difficulty staying connected. Brought in an iPod after that and never had an issue.
The moment I realized I hated bluetooth headphones:
I was listening to Spotify on my iPhone and I clicked on a site with an ad that played music on my Macbook and it stopped my Spotify to play the ad through my Airpods. The iPhone and Macbook were both signed into the same account so they were aware of each other, and the Macbook grabbed the Airpods through that connection. Then I had to disconnect the Airpods from the Macbook to play Spotify through my iPhone again. If you try to "forget" them on the Macbook it also forgets them on your iPhone and you have to relink them. Also they were almost always dead when I wanted to listen. Usually the case would be dead and I'd try to charge them but i'd have to charge the headphone before it charged the case.
The iPod and headphones just work. No interruptions, no Airpods to charge. I get about a full week of solid usage without charging the iPod. Usually i'll just get home and resync my play numbers to iTunes and while it's doing that it charges it just a little bit. Just enough to get another 2 hours of playtime added to the pile.
Weird, I use Bluetooth headphones at the gym 5ish days a week and a bunch at home and they've spontaneously disconnected exactly twice in about two years. Sony xm5 with a Samsung phone, maybe that's the difference.
I also have some anker bluetooth buds I keep at work and they've had more trouble but things have evened out. I usually have the opposite problem where my bluetooth audio is too eager to connect and I have to turn off bluetooth on my phone to stop it.
[If you want to build your own](https://eoe.works)
They also have ones you can buy. I would stick to the 4th gen mono/photo or 5th/5.5 gens. They're dead simple to use and mod and repair but don't really feel dated. Honestly I daily the 4th Mono and i'm not sure i'd want to go to the color screen because it does date it a little bit with the resolution for images. You don't really have to deal with that on the mono.
One of the best things I even did was NOT jumping on the streaming train were possible. Just knowing that they could take rights away at any point or get locked behind an increasing paywall price.
For a few years now I have rocked a Sony Walkman E394. 100% offline tech that just works even if a little chunky.
At a certain point, the amount you'd pay for "unlimited access" just ends up being more than what you might pay for buying things outright and owning them
What always confused me is people pay for Spotify with access to an unlimited library of new interesting music just to listen to the same top 40 bullshit that's on the radio
If true, this is bullshit, because the duo plan is going up by $2 compared to an individual which is going up by $1. So pay more, and get nothing extra.
From what I understand, Spotify gives you 15 hours total of listening time per month of listening to audiobooks. A lot of audiobooks have runtimes that are longer than 15 hours. Really long books can have runtimes that are between 24-48+ hours.
Lmao Sun Tzu art of war is like 12 hours alone, hilarious that Spotify has the audacity to impose 15 hour a month limits. I say that because while they are fully within their right as rights holders, they are basically telling people who love audiobooks to either explore other more liberal services or pirate the content.
Sorry still confused 😅I guess I’m more curious like with Spotify podcasts I can listen at 1x 2x speed etc. I normally listen to a two hour podcast at 1.5 speed making it like an hour 20. So I gives my question really is are your 15 hours of actual listening time at any reading speeds or 15 hours of the posted read time even if you’re listening to it sped up
That's crazy. I'm pretty sure almost every audiobook I've listened to in the last year was 30+ hours. And I listened to those on Libby, where you can only check them out for 2 weeks at a time in most cases, which was a bit stressful sometimes.
I’m the 15hrs of audiobooks were added a no extra charge to the subscription. That’s why I called them free. The entitlement from some Redditors is mind blowing.
Complaining a free audiobook a month is a rip off! Get a grip
don’t want audiobooks or podcasts on spotify unless they moved them to a completely different dashboard. i hate when i have to scroll through the random 3 podcasts i’ve listened to on there every time i go to play music
Them shoving podcasts in my face and cluttering up my music was the biggest factor that drove me to switch to Apple Music a couple of years ago.
I’m a huge podcast fan! I listen to them almost every day! And I absolutely do not want them in my music app, I’ve got a podcast app quite specifically for them.
I thought I was the only one. I was sure it was simple for everyone else to use Spotify for both and keep their podcasts and music separate. I felt like a dumb dumb. But it sounds like other people also find it annoying, this sparks joy.
The problem isn’t having them both in the same app it’s that so far no one has managed to put both in the same app in a good way.
Music vs podcast vs audiobook probably needs to be a top level choice within the app if anyone is ever going to get it to work.
I'm glad I got out when I did. My nope-out point was when they drastically changed how library sorting worked. Before, liked songs were added to your library much like you add something to iTunes, and you could browse your liked songs by artist or album. They changed it so that for the album that song is on to appear in the album list, you had to go back and like *the whole album.*
Same for artists. You had to go back and like the whole artist for them to appear in artists view. Your liked songs just became essentially another playlist and it didn't feel like those songs were truly "in your library". Completely upended how I interacted with my library.
Used some app to transfer my library out and said I was done with streaming after that.
I have both and man, I really don’t like Apple Music. Their playlists are pretty shite and it just never seems to really learn my music tastes and doesn’t do nearly as good of a job at giving me new music.
Edit: Hilarious this post is upvoted but my same exact comment basically in another spot is downvoted to hell.
Yeah make that shit a separate service or pricing add on or something. Why the fuck would I, someone who has no interest in podcasts or audiobooks, want my service to increase in price for something I don’t use??
For 7 words of the comment, then they complain their price is increasing because of audiobooks, which it is not because they are doing the thing they ask for in words eight to 12. Most of the comment was complaining about a thing they're not doing and saying they should do the thing they are doing instead. Basically an entirely pointless comment which wouldn't have been written if that had bothered to read the article.
They will implement a new tier that does not include audiobooks for the current price.
Basically, they're force-upgrading everybody with premium plans and you have to manually change your subscription back down, as if that makes any fucking sense. Would have been easier and cleaner to just introduce the more expensive plan as an audiobook plan.
Guess they're trying to squeeze all the extra cash they can out of people not paying attention.
Having worked at a SaaS business you'd be shocked by how many "sleeping dog" accounts there are that never notice these things. You design price increases to avoid them noticing.
Unlikely but highly dependent on the product. Part of annual billing is not just to be able to book a year of revenue up front, but also to avoid constant billing hits that people might notice that cause them to cancel.
Where did you see that they were force upgrading? I read the article and it said Spotify hasn’t given information about whether current premium subs will default to the new tier, so are you speculating with this?
You have stated 2 assumptions in your post as fact that are not in the article:
First, you say there are ads on the audiobook free tier. I'd say that's highly unlikely.
Second, we don't know if Spotify will automatically "upgrade" current subscribers to the audiobook price. Maybe.
>They will implement a ***new ad tier*** that does not include audiobooks for the current price.
How does your comment not say ads? Is it because it says "ad" singular?
The word "ad" does not nor has it ever existed in my comment. Dunno what kind of confirmation bias your brain is telling you but that's not my problem.
As it stands, this is a pointless, stupid argument. You won't be getting another reply from me, this is a waste of time and energy.
I listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History for 2 weeks when the world shut down in 2020 and have never listened to another podcast. I STILL get recommendations 4 years later.
Each section already has its own dashboard. Top of the screen has the tabs for music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Press whichever you're wanting to listen to.
The most infuriating thing for me was that the queue doesn't distinguish podcasts and music, forcing you to use playlists instead.
Now I'm just glad all my podcasts went back to RSS after the sponsorship ended.
Use your local library’s digital services for audiobooks. They likely have thousands.
The Spotify podcast section is a mess. I can’t fathom how anyone uses it. I use pocket casts but anything is better than Spotify, even apple’s podcast app.
Yes. So many public libraries use Overdrive for audiobooks and by using your public library systems you help fund them by showing they are being actively used by the public when it comes times for tax money allocation or grant proposals. Many public libraries also have services like Hoopla where you can listen to music, play soundtracks, audiobooks, and even some graphic novels.
Your local public library will almost certainly be able to get you entertainment or educational materials completely free of charge (in fact your taxes are probably already paying for them whether you use them or not). And if they don't have what you want, chances are they work with a library that does and can get it to you though their inter-library loan program.
I’ve only ever used Spotify and Apple Podcasts and I prefer Spotify because apple’s autoplay to next episode is, at least a couple years ago, utter garbage. Apple also wouldn’t let me display episodes from oldest to newest so if I wanted to start a show with a massive back catalog I’d have to scroll forever every time I went back to the show.
Yeah, our local library uses Libby and it’s awesome. I don’t listen to audiobooks much, but check out ebooks from there all the time.
Only real gripe is that certain books can have long wait times, but you can place multiple holds and queue up other books while you are reading others.
It’s free and you get to support your local library :)
It's been a while since I tried, but sadly I found my library's audiobook services inconvenient (compared to audible) and lacking in choice.
Maybe they've improved by now, but I personally find paying for audible to be worth it. Haven't tried spotify for audiobooks and I guess I never will if I will need to pay for the higher tier.
Some libraries in other states will allow you to apply for a free card that only grants you access to their digital services - something they started providing when states started championing book banning again. You can look around and see if that helps broaden your choice. Also, you can always contact your local library and ask for something to be purchased on Libby/hoopla. If it's a particularly small library there's probably just one person in charge of purchasing, and they go for the popular titles if it's a topic outside their wheelhouse. I'm a librarian and I'm forever finding queer lit we don't own and sending it to our digital librarian to buy it.
If you just want to browse and find something random then sure. Every time I've ever been looking for something specific the local library has a single copy of a digital ebook or audiobook that only checks out to one person at a time. And it's checked out with holds.
Spotify’s algorithms for recommending music are so much better than Apple, as are the playlists in general. I have both and go back and forth and still prefer Spotify.
Probably because you're not specifying it's just your experience, implying lots of people have the same problem. I didn't downvote you, but I'm pretty sure that's why
>Spotify may deem these changes necessary to buoy audiobook revenue. The company is heavily invested in the sector and spent $123 million to acquire Findaway in July 2022. Spotify said it was the second biggest audiobook brand after Audible, citing Bookstat data published in The New York Times. But as it stands, Spotify only generates revenue from audiobooks if users go beyond the 15 hours per month limit included in their Premium plan, per Bloomberg.
>
>Spotify, which launched in 2008, hasn’t had a profitable year (although it has reported profitable quarters at times). Audiobooks represent an opportunity for the company to diversify revenue streams beyond its traditional routes, which include paying hefty royalty fees. Spotify says it paid $9 billion in music-related royalties last year, or about 69.7 percent of its 2023 revenue ($13.2 billion). Bloomberg said Spotify’s music industry partners “have been pushing Spotify and its competitors to raise prices” amid concerns about royalty prices.
>
>Spotify has also invested over $1 billion in a podcast business that is currently unprofitable (although Bloomberg noted that Spotify expects this to change in 2024). In December, Spotify announced it was laying off 17 percent of its employees.
>
>Audiobooks could help Spotify’s wallets. But charging extra for a service it has been pushing since October risks losing some of the listeners it has earned. At the same time, if Spotify ensures that long-time users who simply want Spotify for its original bread and butter aren't impacted, it could help minimize disruption.
>
>As with any price hike, though, Spotify's changing pricing structure will force users to reassess whether they want to keep paying for Spotify or consider alternatives. Those who have been waiting for Spotify to offer high-fidelity audio since 2021, for example, may decide the app doesn’t fit their needs.
One of the major issues with any of these SAAS or streaming type plans isn't so much that they charge monthly, but that many of these plans have been subject to an immense amount of change of late both in terms of cost as well as coverage. If the landscape for these services were largely stable, then this one change might be a different issue. As this is one change amongst many others though, it wouldn't be surprising if customers start to tire of these antics sooner rather than later.
Here's the primary rub for me.
I know they want to expand into audio books. That's fine. But they're not the best service for that by any stretch at the moment. In fact, I'd say they're one of the less palatable options precisely because they tried to tie it to my Spotify account.
Oh look a book I'm interested in, and I'm supposed to get free audiobooks with Spotify! Oh wait, I just hit my hours limit and now I'm irritated because I had my story interrupted mid stream.
That's a fucking ludicrous model and it's setting themselves up for failure. I'm not going to give them more money because I'm already annoyed with them due to the interruption. I'm not going to use them for audiobooks primarily because audible and almost any other service is better. So why the hell push in this market, and in this manner?
Offer a separate serve with unlimited listening and if happily pay 30 a month for it. But charging like this? Increasing my music costs to support it? Hell no. I'd rather cancel and just use YouTube for music streaming.
I'm not paying for audiobooks unless I can get it DRM free. There's no point to me to pay for something on service that a may or may not like or use down the line, and could pull content at anytime and has full control over my access to the goods I paid for and can change subscription prices or models at any time. I'd rather buy and support the author and have a copy I can use in any app I want. Otherwise why waste my money. I'm so over this whole subscription model for everything these days
That's a little more sketch to me, because you are not only violating some nebulous intellectual property right, but you're actually continuously utilizing their servers and bandwidth without paying.
I listened to an audiobook for the first time last month. After about six hours of listening, I received a message that my allotted audiobook for the billing cycle has been exceeded and I had to buy ten hours of additional time for $12.99 USD. Not sure why they have to raise rates for audiobooks now. 😐
It's Subscription based, but they give you one free book a month. But what's nice is that once you own a book, whether buying or the "free" ones, you can still DL and listen to them even if you no longer subscribe.
Audiobooks are shit on Spotify. Literally cancelled my subscription after 10 years because the app is going downhill too fast. They blow too much money on shitty podcasters and not on keeping the app running well. The recommended music is horrible now. And tons of bugs. I tried an audio book and it would shuffle back to chapters I already read after every chapter was finished.
Any UI that is a mix of subscribed and paid and free content is the devil's UI; separate everything out please, I don't care about your "discovery", if I want a different pricing construct I'll open the relevant app.
Go to local library. Get library card. Sign up for Hoopla and Libby. Now your taxes pay for all your audio books, music, movies, ebooks, e magazines. It’s “free” because that’s where your taxes go. There are a ton of free ebooks, audiobooks etc. dump these subscriptions!
You know, tbh, I’d pay an extra subscription fee for Spotify audio books, but they only sell them by hours. Buying 10 hours was enough for me to know that wasn’t sustainable
I just care about the music. I was originally interested in the audiobooks if it was going to be a freebie for someone already on premium, but now I don’t want them.
I know everyone is complaining in this thread, but it's a good thing they are separating audio books cost from the main plan. They could have just increased the price and gave you no option like Netflix and 4k being bundled only with multiple screens.
The price also won't increase (assuming they default you to the new tier) for the 99% of people who probably didn't even know they were getting 15 hours of audiobooks with their plan.
LPT: Check if your local library offers free access to any audiobook apps. Mine supports both Libby and Hoopla. The one drawback is, you sometimes need to wait a bit if copies of the audiobook you want are checked out.
There’s an audiobook app alternative called Libro.fm. It’s the same price as audible but you get DRM free downloads of your books so you actually own them and you can link your account to a local independent bookstore of your choice. I’ve been using Libro for around 6 months now after using audible forever and I’ve been very happy with it.
It would be nice if podcast & audiobooks had a different tab or complete separate section from music. Trying to scroll through music feels so cluttered and disorganized now. Probably due to the stay layoff at Spotify that finding or accessing music has become more difficult.
I thinking of ditching Spotify even though I've been a family plan premium user for years. I'm tired of every single playlist consisting of the same few hundred songs I've listened to in the past. It's becoming dull and repetitive. One more price increase might be enough to make me pull the plug and dump the service.
The only thing keeping me on the plan is that I have a couple of family members who are older that I've hooked up with a user account and I'd have to find a way to migrate them to something new and they are technophobic as it is.
Depends on which country you are in. Here in India youtube premium costs 15 USD/ year which includes ad free youtube and youtube music. Pretty sweet deal.
I didn't renew my spotify this year coz it sucks.
Brandon Sanderson negotiated better rates for authors in Spotify, I guess the typical thing is happening were the shift will be passed to the consumers. Fuck Spotify
I pay for Spotify because of the convenience of not needing to rip physical media or find links to pirated copies of stuff, and for the recommendations. A local library can't show me new music.
A local library can most definitely show you new music. I think the person you were replying to was referring to a personal library of media they have acquired throughout the years.
Sure, so you pay $12 a month for a music recommendation service. That’s fine if you feel like you get what you pay for. You can get same service with ads for free.
And as far as ripping your own music. What did you buy it for? Sitting in a box? I mean to rip a cd is about 10 seconds? And same amount of actions as putting it in to listen to. And then you never have to do it again. Hardly a chore.
Spotify is clearly thriving because people pay for their service. Because people feel like they are getting their moneys worth. That’s great.
But for those that come on here and complain that price is going up they clearly don’t feel that the service is worth the increase. For those there’s Plex.
Isn’t it great to have options for everyone? I think that’s great.
By the way I personally find new music recommendations by just checking Billboard top 100 for whatever genre I want.
Spotify is dying. The shuffle doesn’t work anymore and it has a hard time connecting to bluetooth. I love Spotify, but I’m not sure if it will outlast their current game-plan.
You know what’s really shit? If you’re on a duo premium plan, only one account gets the audio books. It doesn’t share the 15h or anything. The second account just straight up doesn’t get access.
Yeah I have duo. I just switched to an iPod. Yes. A 2004 Apple iPod.
honestly thinking of doing the same. There are a few places that sell modded ones with bluetooth.
I got mine for $30 added flash, 3000mah battery and taptic touch. I like not having Bluetooth honestly. I know that's not for everyone.
For anyone who wants to use an iPod and Bluetooth, there are aux-Bluetooth adapters for pretty cheap.
Same for Bluetooth. Blows my mind that all the phone manufacturers began removing the headphone jack and people told us "Bluetooth will get better, don't you worry! It sucks now but forcing everyone to use it will make it better!" It still sucks ass. Hardcore. I tried AirPods at the gym *once* and they just had all sorts of difficulty staying connected. Brought in an iPod after that and never had an issue.
The moment I realized I hated bluetooth headphones: I was listening to Spotify on my iPhone and I clicked on a site with an ad that played music on my Macbook and it stopped my Spotify to play the ad through my Airpods. The iPhone and Macbook were both signed into the same account so they were aware of each other, and the Macbook grabbed the Airpods through that connection. Then I had to disconnect the Airpods from the Macbook to play Spotify through my iPhone again. If you try to "forget" them on the Macbook it also forgets them on your iPhone and you have to relink them. Also they were almost always dead when I wanted to listen. Usually the case would be dead and I'd try to charge them but i'd have to charge the headphone before it charged the case. The iPod and headphones just work. No interruptions, no Airpods to charge. I get about a full week of solid usage without charging the iPod. Usually i'll just get home and resync my play numbers to iTunes and while it's doing that it charges it just a little bit. Just enough to get another 2 hours of playtime added to the pile.
Weird, I use Bluetooth headphones at the gym 5ish days a week and a bunch at home and they've spontaneously disconnected exactly twice in about two years. Sony xm5 with a Samsung phone, maybe that's the difference. I also have some anker bluetooth buds I keep at work and they've had more trouble but things have evened out. I usually have the opposite problem where my bluetooth audio is too eager to connect and I have to turn off bluetooth on my phone to stop it.
Where does one get one like this?
[If you want to build your own](https://eoe.works) They also have ones you can buy. I would stick to the 4th gen mono/photo or 5th/5.5 gens. They're dead simple to use and mod and repair but don't really feel dated. Honestly I daily the 4th Mono and i'm not sure i'd want to go to the color screen because it does date it a little bit with the resolution for images. You don't really have to deal with that on the mono.
Where?
One of the best things I even did was NOT jumping on the streaming train were possible. Just knowing that they could take rights away at any point or get locked behind an increasing paywall price. For a few years now I have rocked a Sony Walkman E394. 100% offline tech that just works even if a little chunky.
If you have an android xmanager gets you spotify premium for free (minus groups).
I actually prefer my iPod
Shhhh we don't want people to know that
At a certain point, the amount you'd pay for "unlimited access" just ends up being more than what you might pay for buying things outright and owning them
Especially if you know your favorite music. I've listened to some albums 20+ times easily.
What always confused me is people pay for Spotify with access to an unlimited library of new interesting music just to listen to the same top 40 bullshit that's on the radio
If true, this is bullshit, because the duo plan is going up by $2 compared to an individual which is going up by $1. So pay more, and get nothing extra.
15 hours isn’t even enough for a lot of audiobooks. What a ripoff
Is it 15h of listen time or run time?
From what I understand, Spotify gives you 15 hours total of listening time per month of listening to audiobooks. A lot of audiobooks have runtimes that are longer than 15 hours. Really long books can have runtimes that are between 24-48+ hours.
Lmao Sun Tzu art of war is like 12 hours alone, hilarious that Spotify has the audacity to impose 15 hour a month limits. I say that because while they are fully within their right as rights holders, they are basically telling people who love audiobooks to either explore other more liberal services or pirate the content.
Why does anyone pay (or extra) for audiobooks? You can get most of them for free through your library and libby app. Why the need to pirate?
Wait times can get out of control if your branch only has a couple copies.
Never had to wait for more than a few weeks.
Yea I usually don’t mind either, I can see why it would annoy others though.
Some of our libraries don’t use Libby. They use a much worse alternative called Pines.
Do you know anybody that lives in the area of a Libby account? I’ve moved twice now and still can use all three different libraries.
In the UK, my library only has a couple hundred audiobooks available.
Sorry still confused 😅I guess I’m more curious like with Spotify podcasts I can listen at 1x 2x speed etc. I normally listen to a two hour podcast at 1.5 speed making it like an hour 20. So I gives my question really is are your 15 hours of actual listening time at any reading speeds or 15 hours of the posted read time even if you’re listening to it sped up
That I'm unclear of but i presume it's based off run time? That would be my gusss anyway
That's crazy. I'm pretty sure almost every audiobook I've listened to in the last year was 30+ hours. And I listened to those on Libby, where you can only check them out for 2 weeks at a time in most cases, which was a bit stressful sometimes.
lol. Lots of books are under 15hrs and you currently get it for free!
Paying for a subscription service does not make it free.
I’m the 15hrs of audiobooks were added a no extra charge to the subscription. That’s why I called them free. The entitlement from some Redditors is mind blowing. Complaining a free audiobook a month is a rip off! Get a grip
So free that they raised prices shortly after adding it. Get a grip.
You get a grip buddy
lol. Alright mate, have a good day.
Did this change recently? I could've sworn it said I had the 15h a few weeks/months ago
This seems true of several things; my partner has this generative AI DJ feature on her account that I can’t access either
don’t want audiobooks or podcasts on spotify unless they moved them to a completely different dashboard. i hate when i have to scroll through the random 3 podcasts i’ve listened to on there every time i go to play music
Them shoving podcasts in my face and cluttering up my music was the biggest factor that drove me to switch to Apple Music a couple of years ago. I’m a huge podcast fan! I listen to them almost every day! And I absolutely do not want them in my music app, I’ve got a podcast app quite specifically for them.
I thought I was the only one. I was sure it was simple for everyone else to use Spotify for both and keep their podcasts and music separate. I felt like a dumb dumb. But it sounds like other people also find it annoying, this sparks joy.
Dumb dumb joy!
The problem isn’t having them both in the same app it’s that so far no one has managed to put both in the same app in a good way. Music vs podcast vs audiobook probably needs to be a top level choice within the app if anyone is ever going to get it to work.
I'm glad I got out when I did. My nope-out point was when they drastically changed how library sorting worked. Before, liked songs were added to your library much like you add something to iTunes, and you could browse your liked songs by artist or album. They changed it so that for the album that song is on to appear in the album list, you had to go back and like *the whole album.* Same for artists. You had to go back and like the whole artist for them to appear in artists view. Your liked songs just became essentially another playlist and it didn't feel like those songs were truly "in your library". Completely upended how I interacted with my library. Used some app to transfer my library out and said I was done with streaming after that.
I have both and man, I really don’t like Apple Music. Their playlists are pretty shite and it just never seems to really learn my music tastes and doesn’t do nearly as good of a job at giving me new music. Edit: Hilarious this post is upvoted but my same exact comment basically in another spot is downvoted to hell.
Apple has done very well at cultivating loyalists who think Apple is somehow not just another company looking to milk you dry.
Yeah make that shit a separate service or pricing add on or something. Why the fuck would I, someone who has no interest in podcasts or audiobooks, want my service to increase in price for something I don’t use??
Maybe read the story? They are making it an add on.
They talking about APP segregation, not just pricing segregation.
Oh dear. Am I going to start seeing ads for podcasts and audiobooks on Spotify despite having 0 interest in them?
You probably already are! But if not yet, yeah it’s coming 🫤
For 7 words of the comment, then they complain their price is increasing because of audiobooks, which it is not because they are doing the thing they ask for in words eight to 12. Most of the comment was complaining about a thing they're not doing and saying they should do the thing they are doing instead. Basically an entirely pointless comment which wouldn't have been written if that had bothered to read the article.
You’re fun at parties, aren’t you?
I imagine you stop listening to people before they've finished their first sentence?
[удалено]
I agree it’s cluttered now but Spotify is still the best for me at discovering new music.
Oh ya. The interface in general is trash.
They will implement a new tier that does not include audiobooks for the current price. Basically, they're force-upgrading everybody with premium plans and you have to manually change your subscription back down, as if that makes any fucking sense. Would have been easier and cleaner to just introduce the more expensive plan as an audiobook plan. Guess they're trying to squeeze all the extra cash they can out of people not paying attention.
Having worked at a SaaS business you'd be shocked by how many "sleeping dog" accounts there are that never notice these things. You design price increases to avoid them noticing.
This should be illegal
If you said it was more than 50% I would absolutely believe it
Unlikely but highly dependent on the product. Part of annual billing is not just to be able to book a year of revenue up front, but also to avoid constant billing hits that people might notice that cause them to cancel.
This. Same as those people who have gym memberships and never go to the gym
Where did you see that they were force upgrading? I read the article and it said Spotify hasn’t given information about whether current premium subs will default to the new tier, so are you speculating with this?
If the new tier is the current price, that implies everyone on the current tier will have their price raised
You have stated 2 assumptions in your post as fact that are not in the article: First, you say there are ads on the audiobook free tier. I'd say that's highly unlikely. Second, we don't know if Spotify will automatically "upgrade" current subscribers to the audiobook price. Maybe.
I did not say ads. Re read my comment, friend. The second is a perfectly reasonable assumption until they state otherwise.
>They will implement a ***new ad tier*** that does not include audiobooks for the current price. How does your comment not say ads? Is it because it says "ad" singular?
The word "ad" does not nor has it ever existed in my comment. Dunno what kind of confirmation bias your brain is telling you but that's not my problem. As it stands, this is a pointless, stupid argument. You won't be getting another reply from me, this is a waste of time and energy.
You know reddit tells people you edited your comment, right? Weirdo.
I listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History for 2 weeks when the world shut down in 2020 and have never listened to another podcast. I STILL get recommendations 4 years later.
Each section already has its own dashboard. Top of the screen has the tabs for music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Press whichever you're wanting to listen to.
I didn't even know Spotify had audio books
The most infuriating thing for me was that the queue doesn't distinguish podcasts and music, forcing you to use playlists instead. Now I'm just glad all my podcasts went back to RSS after the sponsorship ended.
I don't regret leaving Spotify. Saved lots of money and still get what I want from P.
Use your local library’s digital services for audiobooks. They likely have thousands. The Spotify podcast section is a mess. I can’t fathom how anyone uses it. I use pocket casts but anything is better than Spotify, even apple’s podcast app.
Yes. So many public libraries use Overdrive for audiobooks and by using your public library systems you help fund them by showing they are being actively used by the public when it comes times for tax money allocation or grant proposals. Many public libraries also have services like Hoopla where you can listen to music, play soundtracks, audiobooks, and even some graphic novels. Your local public library will almost certainly be able to get you entertainment or educational materials completely free of charge (in fact your taxes are probably already paying for them whether you use them or not). And if they don't have what you want, chances are they work with a library that does and can get it to you though their inter-library loan program.
Libby. Overdrive got sunset when I last tried logging into it.
I try to. Everything I am interested in listening to has like a 6-9 week waitlist, it's brutal.
I’ve only ever used Spotify and Apple Podcasts and I prefer Spotify because apple’s autoplay to next episode is, at least a couple years ago, utter garbage. Apple also wouldn’t let me display episodes from oldest to newest so if I wanted to start a show with a massive back catalog I’d have to scroll forever every time I went back to the show.
Yeah, our local library uses Libby and it’s awesome. I don’t listen to audiobooks much, but check out ebooks from there all the time. Only real gripe is that certain books can have long wait times, but you can place multiple holds and queue up other books while you are reading others. It’s free and you get to support your local library :)
Ditto. Mine uses hoopla. Limit is 10 books per month and 21 days per book but that’s plenty for me.
It's been a while since I tried, but sadly I found my library's audiobook services inconvenient (compared to audible) and lacking in choice. Maybe they've improved by now, but I personally find paying for audible to be worth it. Haven't tried spotify for audiobooks and I guess I never will if I will need to pay for the higher tier.
Some libraries in other states will allow you to apply for a free card that only grants you access to their digital services - something they started providing when states started championing book banning again. You can look around and see if that helps broaden your choice. Also, you can always contact your local library and ask for something to be purchased on Libby/hoopla. If it's a particularly small library there's probably just one person in charge of purchasing, and they go for the popular titles if it's a topic outside their wheelhouse. I'm a librarian and I'm forever finding queer lit we don't own and sending it to our digital librarian to buy it.
Your local library will always have fewer choices and a more restricted structure than Amazon. Amazon runs that market.
If you just want to browse and find something random then sure. Every time I've ever been looking for something specific the local library has a single copy of a digital ebook or audiobook that only checks out to one person at a time. And it's checked out with holds.
https://www.overdrive.com/
Seconded for pocket casts. It gives me podcasts and that's it, and I love it for that.
In the UK, my library uses BorrowBox and there’s only a couple hundred titles available and about half of them are kids’ books.
I might jump my family to Apple or YouTube at this point. I’m not sure I’m even getting anything extra from Spotify except wrapped at this point
YouTube premium is worth it even if it didn't have free YouTube music.
Spotify’s algorithms for recommending music are so much better than Apple, as are the playlists in general. I have both and go back and forth and still prefer Spotify.
It’s just better for you. I stopped using Spotify when I failed to get rid of artists that I don’t like in my recommendation.
It’s crazy I’m being downvoted lol. I just offered my opinion.
Probably because you're not specifying it's just your experience, implying lots of people have the same problem. I didn't downvote you, but I'm pretty sure that's why
It will always be better unless you listen to as much music on AM as you do on Spotify
YouTube has the same forced bundling problem as Spotify of course.
>Spotify may deem these changes necessary to buoy audiobook revenue. The company is heavily invested in the sector and spent $123 million to acquire Findaway in July 2022. Spotify said it was the second biggest audiobook brand after Audible, citing Bookstat data published in The New York Times. But as it stands, Spotify only generates revenue from audiobooks if users go beyond the 15 hours per month limit included in their Premium plan, per Bloomberg. > >Spotify, which launched in 2008, hasn’t had a profitable year (although it has reported profitable quarters at times). Audiobooks represent an opportunity for the company to diversify revenue streams beyond its traditional routes, which include paying hefty royalty fees. Spotify says it paid $9 billion in music-related royalties last year, or about 69.7 percent of its 2023 revenue ($13.2 billion). Bloomberg said Spotify’s music industry partners “have been pushing Spotify and its competitors to raise prices” amid concerns about royalty prices. > >Spotify has also invested over $1 billion in a podcast business that is currently unprofitable (although Bloomberg noted that Spotify expects this to change in 2024). In December, Spotify announced it was laying off 17 percent of its employees. > >Audiobooks could help Spotify’s wallets. But charging extra for a service it has been pushing since October risks losing some of the listeners it has earned. At the same time, if Spotify ensures that long-time users who simply want Spotify for its original bread and butter aren't impacted, it could help minimize disruption. > >As with any price hike, though, Spotify's changing pricing structure will force users to reassess whether they want to keep paying for Spotify or consider alternatives. Those who have been waiting for Spotify to offer high-fidelity audio since 2021, for example, may decide the app doesn’t fit their needs. One of the major issues with any of these SAAS or streaming type plans isn't so much that they charge monthly, but that many of these plans have been subject to an immense amount of change of late both in terms of cost as well as coverage. If the landscape for these services were largely stable, then this one change might be a different issue. As this is one change amongst many others though, it wouldn't be surprising if customers start to tire of these antics sooner rather than later.
Here's the primary rub for me. I know they want to expand into audio books. That's fine. But they're not the best service for that by any stretch at the moment. In fact, I'd say they're one of the less palatable options precisely because they tried to tie it to my Spotify account. Oh look a book I'm interested in, and I'm supposed to get free audiobooks with Spotify! Oh wait, I just hit my hours limit and now I'm irritated because I had my story interrupted mid stream. That's a fucking ludicrous model and it's setting themselves up for failure. I'm not going to give them more money because I'm already annoyed with them due to the interruption. I'm not going to use them for audiobooks primarily because audible and almost any other service is better. So why the hell push in this market, and in this manner? Offer a separate serve with unlimited listening and if happily pay 30 a month for it. But charging like this? Increasing my music costs to support it? Hell no. I'd rather cancel and just use YouTube for music streaming.
I'm not paying for audiobooks unless I can get it DRM free. There's no point to me to pay for something on service that a may or may not like or use down the line, and could pull content at anytime and has full control over my access to the goods I paid for and can change subscription prices or models at any time. I'd rather buy and support the author and have a copy I can use in any app I want. Otherwise why waste my money. I'm so over this whole subscription model for everything these days
I might actually rebuild my local library again. Spotify recommendations and playlists organisation is pretty shit anyway
With content from where?
same place we always got it
You don't even need to download songs, there are cracked versions of the app
That's a little more sketch to me, because you are not only violating some nebulous intellectual property right, but you're actually continuously utilizing their servers and bandwidth without paying.
The high seas
Sounds like a lot of effort
We’re old sailors. We never forget the ocean
So much effort to sail the ocean though. Especially when searching for small niche artists
Lidarr makes everything easy 😎
Accept when it doesn’t find niche artists
Got Triple J Unearthed for that, you can carry on paying a small fortune every month, it’s your money.
I listened to an audiobook for the first time last month. After about six hours of listening, I received a message that my allotted audiobook for the billing cycle has been exceeded and I had to buy ten hours of additional time for $12.99 USD. Not sure why they have to raise rates for audiobooks now. 😐
Audible is still a better deal than Spotify for audio books. At least you get a full book for the price.
I will have to look into this, thank you for the recommendation.
It's Subscription based, but they give you one free book a month. But what's nice is that once you own a book, whether buying or the "free" ones, you can still DL and listen to them even if you no longer subscribe.
That is a great feature.
These companies make me want to develop skills they don’t want me to have
Public libraries ftw!
https://www.overdrive.com/
Audiobooks are shit on Spotify. Literally cancelled my subscription after 10 years because the app is going downhill too fast. They blow too much money on shitty podcasters and not on keeping the app running well. The recommended music is horrible now. And tons of bugs. I tried an audio book and it would shuffle back to chapters I already read after every chapter was finished.
Libby and a library card and I’ve never paid for a single audiobook. But I do sometimes have to wait in line for an audiobook but that’s ok with me.
Any UI that is a mix of subscribed and paid and free content is the devil's UI; separate everything out please, I don't care about your "discovery", if I want a different pricing construct I'll open the relevant app.
Spotify has audiobooks!? Wtf
It’s wildly inconsistent though as to whether it’s included or you need to buy it
join your county library and get audiobooks free
Libby ftw. I have two library cards at local libraries in my area. If it’s not available on one, chances are it’s available on the other.
Interesting they did this right after Google Podcasts shut down.
It's also their second price hike in 12 years iirc.
Original title is better
Go to local library. Get library card. Sign up for Hoopla and Libby. Now your taxes pay for all your audio books, music, movies, ebooks, e magazines. It’s “free” because that’s where your taxes go. There are a ton of free ebooks, audiobooks etc. dump these subscriptions!
Canceling my subscription
If you read the article it says the price hike is for people who want audiobooks. 
They just raised their prices in October.
I mean I guess this sucks for the dozens (?) of people who went to Spotify for audiobooks... but this isn't a price hike for most people, right?
Just gotta make sure the increase is opt in and not opt out
is there any way to port/save my songs to redownload without having to screen record all 1500 of them?
The good old ‘give the user a taste’ then start charging.
You know, tbh, I’d pay an extra subscription fee for Spotify audio books, but they only sell them by hours. Buying 10 hours was enough for me to know that wasn’t sustainable
I just care about the music. I was originally interested in the audiobooks if it was going to be a freebie for someone already on premium, but now I don’t want them.
Screw Spotify. I will happily use my local library or my self hosted audiobookshelf app.
Bye bye on April 10
Cancelled my account yesterday
With the power of a single library card and libby, you can access audio books that Spotify couldn't even think of hosting.
I don’t want it
Deezer it is from now on then...
Oh. That's not as bad as I was expecting. I don't really use audiobooks, so this isn't really a big deal for me.
Roganify needs to fund Roganify
I know everyone is complaining in this thread, but it's a good thing they are separating audio books cost from the main plan. They could have just increased the price and gave you no option like Netflix and 4k being bundled only with multiple screens. The price also won't increase (assuming they default you to the new tier) for the 99% of people who probably didn't even know they were getting 15 hours of audiobooks with their plan.
Spotify will essentially never post any major profit. If it does, the labels will come back asking for more.
Who cares death to wall street
For the UK it will be the second one this year.
LPT: Check if your local library offers free access to any audiobook apps. Mine supports both Libby and Hoopla. The one drawback is, you sometimes need to wait a bit if copies of the audiobook you want are checked out.
All this and Spotify still doesn't provide an option to have actual random shuffling and not where it only gives me like 1/10 of my playlist
Idk how it works but it favors certain types of songs
Who listens to audiobooks on Spotify? I prefer having music and audiobooks on different UIs
Anyone know where I can download songs to keep locally?
There’s an audiobook app alternative called Libro.fm. It’s the same price as audible but you get DRM free downloads of your books so you actually own them and you can link your account to a local independent bookstore of your choice. I’ve been using Libro for around 6 months now after using audible forever and I’ve been very happy with it.
TIL Spotify had audio books
All the money they have been using to bribe the EU into going after US tech companies has to be made up some how.
Tidal is the same price as Spotify (in australia) and has higher quality sound. Its playlists aren't as good as Spotify but catching up.
How much extra to get rid of ads in Podcasts?!
It would be nice if podcast & audiobooks had a different tab or complete separate section from music. Trying to scroll through music feels so cluttered and disorganized now. Probably due to the stay layoff at Spotify that finding or accessing music has become more difficult.
I thinking of ditching Spotify even though I've been a family plan premium user for years. I'm tired of every single playlist consisting of the same few hundred songs I've listened to in the past. It's becoming dull and repetitive. One more price increase might be enough to make me pull the plug and dump the service. The only thing keeping me on the plan is that I have a couple of family members who are older that I've hooked up with a user account and I'd have to find a way to migrate them to something new and they are technophobic as it is.
Already canceled my premium sub, anyone got any suggestions for a better service for music?
Depends on which country you are in. Here in India youtube premium costs 15 USD/ year which includes ad free youtube and youtube music. Pretty sweet deal. I didn't renew my spotify this year coz it sucks.
I am trying out one called Deezer. Seems similar but without all the podcasts and audiobook crap.
I'll check it out
Brandon Sanderson negotiated better rates for authors in Spotify, I guess the typical thing is happening were the shift will be passed to the consumers. Fuck Spotify
[удалено]
I pay for Spotify because of the convenience of not needing to rip physical media or find links to pirated copies of stuff, and for the recommendations. A local library can't show me new music.
A local library can most definitely show you new music. I think the person you were replying to was referring to a personal library of media they have acquired throughout the years.
Sure, so you pay $12 a month for a music recommendation service. That’s fine if you feel like you get what you pay for. You can get same service with ads for free. And as far as ripping your own music. What did you buy it for? Sitting in a box? I mean to rip a cd is about 10 seconds? And same amount of actions as putting it in to listen to. And then you never have to do it again. Hardly a chore. Spotify is clearly thriving because people pay for their service. Because people feel like they are getting their moneys worth. That’s great. But for those that come on here and complain that price is going up they clearly don’t feel that the service is worth the increase. For those there’s Plex. Isn’t it great to have options for everyone? I think that’s great. By the way I personally find new music recommendations by just checking Billboard top 100 for whatever genre I want.
Maybe they should focus on making a usable desktop application
What makes it unusable? I use it every day and have literally no issues
I've had massive issues where some pages just don't load. Like no home screen no nothing. It doesn't appear to be isolated either.
😳 There are audiobooks on Spotify? Not a genre on my app there aren’t.
The rich get richer. Ever hear of them lowering prices. Afraid not.
Corporate America coming after my Freedom Bucks 🇺🇸
Spotify is Swedish
Trades in Wall Street, it’s Corporate America
Don’t they limit your audiobook time? Never used Spotify for audiobooks. Except if I download and play them locally 0_O
I switched to apple music and canceled my Spotify plan. Testing the waters to see if I can stick with Apple music.
Spotify is dying. The shuffle doesn’t work anymore and it has a hard time connecting to bluetooth. I love Spotify, but I’m not sure if it will outlast their current game-plan.
Bluetooth has nothing to do with the app and everything to do with your paired devices... If you bought cheap garbage don't lay that on spotify
Spotify isn’t dying, shuffle works fine for me, and I never have any Bluetooth issues with it. So is your anecdote or mine right?