this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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194
Spotify Premium Will Include Instant Access to 150,000+ Audiobooks (UK/AUS tomorrow, US to follow) (newsroom.spotify.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Hydrogen@lemdro.id to c/android@lemdro.id
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[–] MeepMorp@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"To start, we’re offering each Premium individual, as well as plan managers for Family and Duo accounts, 15 hours of listening per monthβ€”giving them the ability to enjoy as many titles as they want within that monthly allocation.

[...]

For those super audiophiles who use up their 15 hours before their monthly billing cycles refresh, you can purchase a 10-hour top-up to finish that series. Not sure how many hours you have left? Check it at any time in your in-app settings. "

No cost listed on how much the top-ups are.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

Thought this was an interesting addition, but I see they figured out a way to ruin it from the start.

[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I don't know if they have these, but for the purpose of clarity it doesn't matter.

The Martian is 11 hours.
The Color of Magic is 7 hours.

That's two audio books that together surpassed their joke of a monthly allotment. Two.

[–] somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

We're friends now because you listed Color of Magic.

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

And I'm going to burn a whole bunch of those hours falling asleep while the audio still plays.

[–] rex30303@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

Or if its something like Lord of the Rings or Eragon its about a third of a book.

[–] letsgocrazy@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many Audio books do you listen to a month?

[–] KingJalopy@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Not who you asked but I drive and work outside all day for work and listened to 18 books last month.

[–] XbSuper@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Ya, only offering 15 hrs means I won't even look into this.

[–] cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Drake meme:

βœ‹Release subscription service and destroy Audible

πŸ‘‰ Copy Audible and nickel and dime the users to maximize revenue per user

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'd really love an audio book service like Netflix but 15 hours is a joke, that is 2 days worth of listening for me personally and a lot of books you wouldn't be able to finish in that time.

I've tried the majority of the audio books services out there and they are all a load of shit, I think I'll stick to piracy at this point, at least then I can keep the books I enjoy too to come back to again.

[–] Rouxibeau@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's barely a quarter of Sanderson book...

fuck that.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Literally listening to White Sand right now :D love Sanderson!

[–] uthredii@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Libro.FM is DRM free and lets you buy any book once a month for a fixed cost.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah I checked it out, it is basically audibles business model with the whole 1 credit a month thing. Yes, DRM free is great but I average 7-8 hours of listening a day so one book doesn't last very long at all.

[–] KingJalopy@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use Libby, with your library card. Unlimited audiobooks and works for almost any library.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, no it doesn't. For a start I am not in the US so it isn't Libby and secondly I tried the library card / app route and the selection is woefully shite.

It doesn't even have what would be the most popular books for example say Lord of the Rings. It has a seemingly random selection. On top of that they have minimal licenses for the books so if you do manage to find something interesting you want to listen to someone may have already "rented it out" via the app and so you'd have to wait for them to "return" it before you can listen.

Library cards and apps (at least where I am) are one of the poorest choices available and that is saying something going up against the utter dogshit that is audible.

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Cool, now can we get a cheaper plan that just plays music?

[–] emuspawn@orbiting.observer 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, best we can do is make a new tier at the same price that only plays music, while we jack up the price of the new Premium Plan to account for 'rising market costs'!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cheeseburger@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Perhaps as likely as YouTube Premium separating music access from no ads on videos... I wish. It keeps me locked in.

[–] TrustingZebra@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

They had that YouTube Premium Lite tier in a few regions, which was basically that. But Google just killed it.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

It's understandable why they are doing this. Apparently the company has never ever made any profits, and since the main 3 record labels are demanding 70% of the revenue from Spotify, they can't do anything to change that revenue split to 50-50 instead as an example.

[–] roguetrick@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ahhh xmanager and Android, still the best kept secret I see.

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The GitHub seems to only be for a downloader app that distributes unverified APKs that don't currently do anything. Removing this thread as a precaution - particularly given recent news of malicious modded APKs.

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for sharing! I do think audiobooks are a much better fit than trying to make podcasts exclusive and paywalled.

[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

People on here are acting like Spotify raises their price every two weeks like Netflix or something. This is an added feature that will likely not raise the costs to the user as it is intended to reduce the part of revenue they give to music labels (i.e. this helps keep the price you pay the same because they can't make a profit, so the alternative is higher prices)

[–] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, their first price hike in something like 10 years and it's a 1$ raise, which is less than inflation.

[–] sillieidiot@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

It's their second hike. They raised it $1 in 2021, then again in 2023.

[–] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

technically you're correct, but this depends on the country and/or plan. For example family plan in europe is increased by 3 EUR

[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I understand why the family plan got raised by 3EUR as it has 6 users total, so a 0.50€ per user raise. Though I understand this is a bigger increase, it is kind of like cell operators in Canada, they give you 40GB for 50$ instead of like 5GB for 10$, the plans are artificially more expensive even though per GB Its cheaper

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Great. More garbage I don't want shoved in my face.

I'm getting real tired of modern day UX in apps.

[–] jack@monero.town 4 points 1 year ago

That's the joy of using proprietary software.

[–] Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Spotify is and will always remain a music streaming app for me. I spend way more time listening to podcasts instead of music, but I don't do that in Spotify.

[–] camr_on@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

15 hours is pathetic lol. Need to hurry up and move my music library off of Spotify

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"As many titles as they want"

Sooo... around one and a half standard length audio books a month, from a category probably filled with garbage romance novels and cheap sci fi. Be still my beating heart...

[–] randromeda@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

New feature isn't good.

Agreed

Stop using old features

What?

[–] camr_on@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's now one of my more expensive monthly subscriptions since I have the family plan, and they don't offer a way to pay for a year to save overall last time I checked. I'm just not as impressed as I used to be considering the price rose as well

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I sense a price increase coming...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

I’ve been running modified Spotify IPAs and desktop scripts for years to get around paying premium; here’s to hoping that I can still play these audiobooks!

[–] Kushia@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I have the family account but I'm not the one who will use this. Hopefully it's not a pain to switch who can claim this because currently it's limited to the main account holder.

[–] philodendron@lemdro.id 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Podcasts in the app are terrible but this is something if actually consider switching to Spotify for

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For the 15 hours a month allocation of audiobook time...?

[–] philodendron@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago

Yes. Especially if I don’t have to work with virtual book checkouts and return deadlines

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It's moreso how they make audiobooks and podcasts a little subheading on the library page instead of being able to just switch over to full podcast and audiobook browsing.

I absolutely love that they're skip song button is a 30 second jump on podcasts, makes the car journey so easy.

I used to use Youtube for podcasts but it isn't good at skimming through bits without opening your phone and doesn't integrate with Android auto at all.