Buy audiobook instead of using Premium hours

[Blangi1]

I have a premium plan. I want to listen to an audiobook and don’t want to be restricted by the free or top up hours. I just want to buy it. How do I do that? Books now show as ‘included in premium’ and don’t show the purchase price. 

UK iPhone Premium Plan (family)

[Blangi1]

Hey @Ben45678,

Thanks for reaching out.

Audiobooks that are part of the "Included in Premium" rotation cannot be purchased directly at the moment, I'm afraid.

I hope this clears things up 🙂

[BrianNelson7]

OK people I was chatting with the support people and went around in circles for almost an hour but got the answer!

I was only given the option to purchase my audiobook when I was not signed into premium. I just wanted to buy one audiobook but it wouldn't give me the option. So I went to an incognito tab and it said $8, that means I pay that and can listen to it as many times as I want without limitations.

What they are counting on is that we are fools and will pay $12/month for premium with only 15 hours of listening time, and $13 for each additional 10 hour top-up forever more.

If you want to buy you have to cancel your premium subscription.

[kingbadger88]

Totally agree with this thread. Am a returning user tempted back by a 3-month subscription offer. I was on Audible, and now I have discovered how useless the "included audiobooks" are in Spotify. UK£9.99 for a 10-hour top-up is more than most whole books on Audible. And my £7.99/month audible subscription includes 3 audiobook credits  - and the "book" credit unit is independent of the book's length. So sorry Spotify, you are playing at this. Stick to music or at least become competitive with Audible. I will not be subscribing at the end of my trial since for me audiobooks are the core and music is the add-on. 

[dellavina]

Why not just add to the current subscription price & have as many audiobooks as you want?

[TristonJudd]

I'm a member of a family plan so i can't get the free hours of listening without requesting them and I also can't purchase more listening hours. I've purchased Audiobooks before without any problems but now its not working at all. I know damn well the books can be bought as, like it said, ive done it before so why is it that now i can't purchase them and it just keeps telling me torequest more hours from my plan manager. Spotify needs to fix this or they will lose a lot of money on this.

[ShurlGurl]

Honestly Spotify! You need to up your game here.  I'm another long time premium subscriber that's seriously looking at jumping ship to Audible. You're loosing us daily.

[Fengshen]

After using my "free" listening hours, I came to the conclusion that I would have to wait for a month, or pay €1 per hour for a total of €80 ON TOP of my €18 family subscription, just to continue listening to the rest of the Tolkien books as narrated by Andy Serkis this month -AND- only being able to hear them once. Or, I could create a new account WITHOUT premium so I can pay €127 to listen to the books whenever I want to, however many times I'd like.

Or... I could grab an Audible subscription and get all of these audiobooks to keep forever for a fraction of the price, with a better media player and a better functioning search function...

This greed has driven me off and I will not be returning to Spotify Audiobooks as long as they keep ripping off their loyal paying customers.

[Nuck101]

Yet another Spotify family account premium member.

This is insane. I don't want to give more money to Amazon via audible. But I'm not going to perpetually pay an exorbitant amount to rent a book through add on hours.

So I'll give the money to audible. Way to go Spotify.

[RobertSurtees]

Agreed.  Listening to a 60 hour Brando Sando Stormlight book.  With top ups it's going to cost over 60 dollars to finish the book.  My solution was to downgrade from Premium to Basic. 

[tommy51]

What a scam. So you pay $13 to listen to a book for 10 hours. I own books on Audible that are 45 hours long. Can you imagine paying $40 to listen to a book ONE time!? That is just outrageous.

[kayarlo1]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

How do I purchase audio books on spotify?