Spotify wants to be your everything app — music, podcasts, and now audiobooks too. Again. The streaming giant has introduced “Audiobooks Plus,” a new paid add-on that doubles the monthly audiobook listening cap from 15 hours to 30. It sounds like a decent deal, but it’s an extra $15.99AUD a month. If you’re on the single plan, that’s more than double your usual subscription ($13.99).
And the family plan? It’s no cheaper.
For $95.94 a Month, You & Your Family Can Listen to… A third of A Storm of Swords
Here’s how the math shakes out. In Australia, the Spotify Family Plan runs you $23.99 AUD a month, and that comes with 15 audiobook hours — for the plan owner only. If the same family wanted to add 15 audiobook hours per person (up to six accounts), they’d need to buy separate Audiobooks Plus add-ons for each, totaling a jaw-dropping $95.94 AUD extra every month. For that, you don’t get unlimited listening. You don’t even get to finish The Eye of the World.
You could, technically, get through a couple of shorter books or one longish one — but once you hit your limit, you’re out of luck until next month. Want to re-listen? That’ll cost you more hours. Want to buy the book outright? Spotify doesn’t let Premium subscribers purchase audiobooks included in their catalog, so good luck trying to support authors directly.
The Audible Elephant in the Room
Compare that to Audible, which charges $16.45 AUD a month for one full book credit (yours to keep) and unlimited listening from its Plus catalog. The time limit? None. The math? Better. The value? Obvious.
Audible still uses the credit model Spotify is trying to disrupt, but Spotify’s alternative ends up feeling more like a penalty box than a perk. It’s a half-step that punishes heavy readers and nickel-and-dimes families who just want to share the literary love.
The Promise vs. the Reality
Spotify’s audiobooks rollout isn’t new — they launched audiobook access for Premium users in late 2023, branding it as a big win for readers. But this latest add-on feels more like a monetization scheme than a meaningful expansion. Audiobooks Plus is currently only available in select countries (Australia, New Zealand, the UK, parts of Europe), and Spotify says U.S. availability is on the way— which translates to: they’re testing the waters.1
Still, Spotify is pushing the narrative that this is about “optional listening” and discovery. In a statement to The Verge, Spotify’s Director of Audiobooks Strategy Shaela Greenfield said they’re “excited to make [more listening] possible,” noting that feedback from trials in Ireland and Canada has been “positive.” It might be, if you’re listening to one-hour thrillers. Not so much if you’re trying to get through The Way of Kings.
The Verdict
If you’re already a Premium subscriber and dabble in short audiobooks, the 15-hour baseline is a nice bonus. But once you cross into power-listener territory, Spotify’s offering starts to look like a budget-buster. It’s not built for serious audiobook fans — or for families who want to share one library. And it’s definitely not built for anyone who just wants to listen without calculating how many hours are left in the month.
In the streaming wars, Spotify may have just found its next vertical to squeeze. But unless you’re happy paying premium prices for fragments of a book, Audiobooks Plus is less of a plot twist and more of a disappointment.
- U.S. users already have the option to buy 10-hour top-ups for $12.99 — so this is more of a convenience tweak than a value shift. ↩︎