Spotify adds cheaper ‘Basic’ plan that ditches audiobooks

After increasing its prices across the board a few weeks ago, Spotify has now announced a new “Basic” tier for $10.99 per month in the United States. This plan, Spotify says, offers all of the same Spotify Premium benefits, but without the monthly audiobook listening time.

As a refresher, Spotify’s Premium plan includes full access to streaming music, as well as 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month. The price of the Spotify Premium Individual plan increased from $10.99 per month to $11.99 per month in earlier this month.

This new Spotify Basic plan enters the lineup at $10.99 per month, and is the same as Spotify Premium for people who only listen to music and podcasts. Here’s a breakdown of how the two plans compare:

Premium Individual

• Enjoy offline and ad-free music listening anytime, anywhere with unlimited skips. 
• Your plan gives you 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month from our subscriber catalog of over 250,000 titles. $11.99/month.

Basic

• Enjoy the music streaming benefits of your Premium plan without the monthly audiobook listening time. Starting at $10.99/month for eligible users.

Notably, the new Spotify Basic plan is only available as an individual plan. Spotify continues to offer Premium Duo ($15.99/month) and Premium Family ($19.99/month) for multi-user accounts. Those plans also continue to offer 15 hours of audiobooks listening per month. So, if you’re a family that wants to use Spotify, you have no choice but to pay for a plan that also includes audiobooks.

The new Spotify Basic plan matches the individual price of Apple Music at $11.99 per month. Apple Music still has the edge for family plan pricing at $16.99, but Apple Music doesn’t offer audiobooks.

Spotify or Apple Music, what’s your take? Have you made a change recently? Let us know down in the comments.