Tag: subscription

Spotify’s New Audiobooks Access Tier Gives Booklovers More Listening Options

March 1, 2024

Spotify is continuously innovating to provide the best possible offering for every kind of audio fan. Since launching Audiobooks in Premium, we’ve seen a 45% increase in free users searching for and interacting with Audiobook content each day. Now we are introducing a new plan option to give our listeners a variety of choices.

Starting today, the Audiobooks Access Tier provides booklovers in the U.S. with 15 hours of listening from our audiobooks catalog of over 200,000 titles for $9.99 a month. With this plan and in one app experience, listeners can continue to tune into music and podcasts on our free, ad-supported service, offering a great option for literary enthusiasts who are looking for more audiobook-specific content. 

Spotify offers several subscription plans tailored to fit a variety of users’ preferences and will continue to invest in giving our listeners more options to cater to their unique needs.

For more information on our available plans, visit our audiobooks page. To stay up-to-date on the latest news from Spotify, follow @SpotifyNews.    

The DMA Means a Better Spotify for Artists, Creators, and You

January 24, 2024

What’s one of the top complaints about Spotify? It’s actually something that until now has been outside of our control: the ability to seamlessly subscribe to and buy things through Spotify on your iPhone. Consumers have asked us for years about the dead ends, lack of information, and endless hoops to jump through just to purchase a subscription or audiobook. But beginning March 7, if you live in the European Union, that will change. With the Digital Markets Act (DMA) rolling out, your Spotify is about to become a whole lot better, and that means more opportunities for developers and creators everywhere. 

For years, even in our own app, Apple had these rules where we couldn’t tell you about offers, how much something costs, or even where or how to buy it. We know, pretty nuts. The DMA means that we’ll finally be able to share details about deals, promotions, and better-value payment options in the EU. And an easier experience for you means good things for artists, authors, and creators looking to build their audiences of listeners, concert-goers, and audiobook-loving fans. What’s more? All of this can now come without the burden of a mandatory ~30% tax imposed by Apple, which is prohibited under the DMA. 

For Spotify, this unleashes huge opportunities, so here’s what you can expect us to roll out starting in March:

Direct communications in the Spotify app about subscription offerings, upgrades, product prices, deals, and promotions

We’ll soon be able to give you information in the Spotify app about prices for things like Premium subscriptions and audiobooks.

And we will be able to communicate clearly with you in the Spotify app about new products for sale, promotional campaigns, superfan clubs, and upcoming events, including when items like audiobooks are going on sale.

Seamless and secure in-app payment 

Soon we expect that if you want to buy a Premium subscription or an audiobook, or are looking to seamlessly upgrade from Individual to a Duo or Family plan to save money, you will be able to do so with just a couple of easy clicks.

Right now you can’t upgrade from Free to Premium in the app, and we’re not even allowed to tell you about how much our various subscriptions cost, how you can save money, or where to purchase them. That doesn’t make sense. For everyone living in the EU, this is about to change.

Purchasing an audiobook directly

You will have choices. In the growing list of markets where we offer audiobooks, for the first time you will be able to see the price of an audiobook when browsing, easily buy it, and quickly start listening. 

Downloading other Spotify apps onto your iPhone

Thanks to the DMA we’re looking forward to a future of superfan clubs, alternative app stores, and giving creators the ability to safely download Spotify for Artists or Spotify for Podcasters directly from our site—and that’s just the start. 

The fight continues

It should be this easy for every single Spotify customer everywhere. But if you live outside certain markets, you will continue to encounter frustrating roadblocks because of Apple’s ridiculous rules.

That’s why developers everywhere are continuing to ask other governments to pass their own laws like the DMA. Like Spotify, they want to provide the best user experience for their customers. We’ll keep fighting because freedom from gatekeepers means more choice for consumers and positive impact for artists, authors, creators and developers everywhere. 

 

Storytel Audiobooks Will Be Available on Spotify Later This Year

May 20, 2021

Just a few weeks ago, we announced the Spotify Open Access Platform, which gives creators with existing subscriber bases the option to deliver paid content to their paid audiences using Spotify. Now, we’re excited to follow with a partnership with Storytel, one of the world’s leading audiobook streaming services. Later in 2021, Storytel subscribers will be able to enjoy Storytel’s library of audiobooks on Spotify by linking the two accounts. 

“It is Spotify’s goal to be the singular platform for all audio: music, podcasts, live conversations, and now via this partnership, audiobooks,” said Courtney Holt, Global Head of Studios, Spotify. “By utilizing the Spotify Open Access Platform, Storytel will be able to deliver its premium audiobooks offering using Spotify’s best-in-class platform, all while retaining direct control over their relationship to their audience.”

“We want everyone to have access to great stories, and today we offer more than 500,000 audiobooks on a global basis across 25 markets,” said Jonas Tellander, founder and CEO, Storytel. “Partnering with Spotify will make amazing audiobook experiences and exciting authorships easier than ever to access for our customers, while we will also be tapping into the opportunity of reaching new audiences who are on Spotify today, but have not yet experienced the magic of audiobooks.”

This partnership illustrates the power of open access as an opportunity for audio creators and providers everywhere to make a home for their content on Spotify while retaining complete control over their business model and a direct relationship with their subscriber base. As we open up the Open Access Platform, listeners will find a greater variety of content available for them to enjoy, all within one app.

Audiobooks are just one form of audio that will be available using Spotify’s Open Access Platform—the possibilities in audio are limitless. Stay tuned for the details on additional partners and widespread access to the program, launching later this year.

Five Things to Know About Spotify HiFi

February 22, 2021

Artists and fans have told us that sound quality is important to them. We agree, and that’s why today at Stream On we announced Spotify HiFi. 

Beginning later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs the way artists intended. 

Read on for five things you need to know about our new high-quality music experience:

  1. High-quality music streaming is consistently one of the most requested new features by our users.
  2. Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favorite tracks.
  3. Ubiquity is at the core of everything we do at Spotify, and we’re working with some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers to make Spotify HiFi accessible to as many fans as possible through Spotify Connect. 
  4. HiFi will be coupled with Spotify’s seamless user experience, building on our commitment to make sure users can listen to the music they love in the way they want to enjoy it. 
  5. Spotify HiFi will begin rolling out in select markets later this year, and we will have more details to share soon.