You’ll soon have to pay more for audiobooks on Spotify

Spotify users last faced a price hike in July 2023, but all indications are that more changes are on the cards.

The service hasn’t yet announced a new pricing structure, but according to Bloomberg, Spotify will soon introduce new prices for premium packages, as well as adding new subscription tiers.

At this stage, it looks as though audiobook listeners will face the first price hike. Currently, Spotify users can listen to up to 15 hours of audiobooks per month as part of their subscription plan. But the current £10.99/$10.99 per month individual plan will soon no longer include audiobooks, with a higher-priced tier to be added for those who want to listen to them.

While this is undoubtedly bad news for Spotify’s subscribers, another price hike isn’t a big surprise. Over the past year, many services have changed the prices of their packages to compete in an increasingly crowded streaming market. In addition, Spotify is apparently looking for ways to cover the cost of audiobooks, which has proved a popular addition to the platform, although a costly one for the streamer.

If you want to discover alternatives to Spotify, take a look at our round-up of the best music streaming services.

Here’s everything we know so far about Spotify’s plans.

When will Spotify increase its prices?

The increases won’t occur at the same time in all countries where Spotify is available.

At the end of April, prices will increase in five major markets, including the UK, Australia and Pakistan. The hikes will reach American users later in 2024.

For now, there’s no information about price rises in other countries.

How much is the Spotify price increase?

For now, Spotify offers 4 premium plans:

According to Bloomberg’s unnamed sources, the cost of the Individual package will increase by around $1, while the Duo and Family packages will increase by around $2.

However, this isn’t the end of the changes. Indeed, Spotify plans not only to modify prices but also to change the content of the packages.

The revenue generated from the price hikes will finance the audiobook offering, which has recently become an essential part of Spotify’s library. However, the service realises that not everyone is enthusiastic about them.

Therefore, a completely new basic subscription tier will appear, priced at £10.99/$10.99, and will include music and podcasts – but no audiobooks.

Spotify also plans to introduce a more expensive Supremium tier, which will feature high-fidelity audio.

Still, Spotify hasn’t officially confirmed this, so we’ll still have to wait for details of the changes and we’ll update this article when we know more.