AUDIOBOOK TIME RUNS OUT WITHIN 10 HOURS!

[EOak23]

Plan - premium 

Country - USA

Device - iPad&iPhone 

My Question or Issue

I have had Spotify premium for a long time and have recently started using the audiobook feature. Supposedly this feature comes with 15 hours of audiobook time… I have yet to get through an 8 hour book before I get prompted to buy more time to finish my book… you can look at my account. I have purchased additional audiobook time more than once, and have only listened to a few books less than 10 hours each. I just listen to my first audiobook in a month and was told I ran out of time seven hours in to a 10 hour book…. Which I don’t know if you understand math, but that does not add up to 15 hours of listening time. 7.5 hrs is not equal to 15hrs. That is not, including how fast I listen to the book that is simply normal time. The audiobook is listed at. Please fix this.

[StephMont99]

In the middle of a book, it stops playing, and I get a message that I'm out of listening hours. It stops the book and says I can't start listening again for 21 days.  What the heck is going on?  

No customer service number, nothing!!   crazy that I would be out of listening hours before the book is over. 

[savsontheshore]

Plan

Family Premium

Country

New Zealand

My Question or Issue

I have never been able to finish 1 free book. The time always seems to run out even if the book time is less than the 15hrs provided. My issue is -The time listened does not seem to be correct to the real time listened. If I play the book at a faster speed to complete in the time allowed it still ends before the book. 

I'd rather it was 1 free book rather than hours but understand the drive to get people to pay for the more hours. Not great cust experience but clearly must drive more revenue. 

[savsontheshore]

Unfortunately the customer experience damage being done would mean Spotify is prob better not to have this option at all. For our subscription payment we should either have access to a free book (15hrs max) or nothing. 

Silliness like playing at double speed means double hours consumed just make this laughable. 

Surely this needs to change. Come on Spotify, you can do better than this. 

[1242969460]

Same thing is happening to me and my best friend. Listening to an 8-hour book (we haven’t listened to any other books in months), and both of us “ran out” in the final chapter. Both of our accounts refresh TODAY, only an hour or so after we “ran out.” It really feels like a scam because the same thing happened to us a few months ago. Class action law suit? 

[MihailY]

Hey folks,

Since this thread is getting quite long and our answers are on different pages, we wanted to jump in and remind you that the best way to investigate this would be to download your account data as outlined in this comment. 

Also, make sure to check out the rest of the info provided there and once you're sure that there's a discrepancy, please send over the details that we've requested so we can investigate further.

Cheers,

[playframeprince]

The same thing just happened to me after 5hrs. The first book I've ever listened to on Spotify, at 1x speed. I am owed 10hrs of listening for this month how do you plan to rectify this?

[MistyN]

It says this issue has been solved. But I can't find the solution 

[MistyN]

So Spotify gives me 15 hrs. But if I download a 5 hr book and read it in 2.5 hours you take away 10hrs??? Above you said " (i.e. 5 hours of content at 2x speed is still 10 hours of listening time)!!!! That doesn't make any sense. 5 hr book should take away 5 hrs even if I listen in 2.5. NOT 10 HRS!!

[Mickle83]

Likewise to all these points. I thought I was wrong. But literally started a new book seven and a half hours in, some rewinds but only the occasional 10 minutes. Definitely not 8 hours worth. I got my listening data but good luck deciphering that. Spotify, however you calculate your time, it’s broke and it just ain’t good enough!

[merlinbug]

has this issue been resolved for anyone? It seems like if you pause the audiobook the time runs out anyway. I thought I was getting gaslit by spotify, but there's definitely something shady going on with how the time is being tracked. 

[Vasil]

Hey folks!  
 

We'd like to point out that repeating/rewinding a chapter still counts towards your total listening time and that we count the hours of audiobook content (played at normal speed), not the hours spent listening (i.e. 5 hours of content at 2x speed is still 10 hours of listening time), so please confirm that there's still a noticeable discrepancy even when those factors are accounted for. 

With this out of the way, we'd like to investigate what's happening with the playback time and in order to do so, as mentioned by @MihailY, we'll need to gather some details. 

It'd be very helpful if you could answer the following questions:

• Does the same behavior persist when you're logged in to your account on another device (mobile, desktop etc.)? Meaning, do you still see that you've used up the audiobook listening time? To see how you can check the remaining audiobook listening hours across devices head over to this article.
• What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?
• Have you ever changed to a higher playback speed?
• Have you used the Sleep timer function when listening to audiobooks?
• Does the listening time continue the countdown after you pause an audiobook?

In addition to this, let us know the following details:

• The make and model of the devices you've listened on:
• Link(s) to the audiobook(s) that was/were streamed:
• The date on which you've noticed the inconsistency:
• The exact Spotify version you're using:

Much appreciated! We'll be on the lookout for your replies 🙂

[Spotifyjg]

As someone else mentioned it’s a scam since it rounds to the hour every time you listen. This could end in a class action.