Audiobooks are expensive to produce and have extra licensing associated with them. Even Amazon can only give out 1 credit for $15 a month. A single books costs anywhere between $10-$60 bucks. Its just unreasonable to expect spotify to be able to afford that when they already barely pay musicians.
The real story's in the comments. This helped my single-mother-friend stay sane in the early/poorest years. Everyone needs to know how their library has changed since they last borrowed a book in 1982. Thanks for posting this -- I forgot too!
I'm about 2/3 of the way through backing up my 'Liked' songs to MP3 files, at which point I'm ending my sub.
It's a bummer because I actually really like Spotify's algorithm and it suggests great music for my tastes, but, I can have that for free without feeding their stupid insatiable greed.
They probably have a bunch of 1 hour 'books' that mess with the average as shorter is cheaper to help pad out their numbers.
Looking at my personal library, the median length audiobook is The Last Wish at a tad over 10 hours. So it'd be equal to 1.5 books going by that, not the worst marketing exaggeration I've ever seen.
If you read the article, the main point was that Spotify doesn't inform about the limits clearly. Not the pricing.
Even now Spotify site says: "Spotify Premium: Listen without limits". Clearly there is a limit, but the limits are only mentioned after the first subscription button if you scroll far enough.
Audio books are no longer expensive to produce. I bet my ass most except for the biggest titles will be AI generated in very short time.
Whether people like it or not.
Well unlike your ass, I appreciate the nuance of a good performance. But i know what you mean.
GPU time, while cheaper than a voice actor, is still a bit spendy though. And you then you also have the various copyright/licensing "issues" associated with AI content, companies may be a bit hesitant to go all in on producing books like that. Makes more sense for someone like Amazon/Audible and less sense for someone like spotify.
Besides, most audio books exist already so that really only applies to newer titles.