Family members showing audiobooks locked, even under premium family account

[cliffordboobyer]

Plan

Premium Family

Device

(iPad)

Operating System

(iOS latest)

My Question or Issue

Hi, when i browse my app under my account, I can see audiobooks which are able to be played. However when I use my kids premium family login under their iPad, same audiobooks shown as locked. What gives? Some kind of early restrictions or teething issues as it seems audiobooks for streaming is quite new.

[dkintheuk]

I agree with all the comments here. Plus you only get 15 hours a month. The first I want to listen to is 24 hours. I usually listen to a different audiobook most days. This is a ridiculous limitation and they wonder why people are pirating content now. What a con.

[hermdog]

why? In what world is ONLY giving the account manager access to the 15 hours... that makes 0 sense, and really just sounds like spotify is trying to be extra greedy. which doesnt make me want to keep using your service...

[Zyloh]

This is actually INSANE!!!! How on earth did this get through Quality Assurance?! This has to be unintentional, because not even a corporate overlord couldn't think this is a good idea. Please fix soon, as you have paying customers who are literally not getting their full service. 

I'd label this a CRITICAL bug.

[Awal10]

The outrage here is justified. I've been a happy Spotify premium user for years and this makes me feel like I've been legitimately hoodwinked by Spotify. Considering canceling because this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

[Journeyman]

I think that is grossly unfair and reeks of sharp practice

[Journeyman]

Not a quality isse just greed on Spotify's part

[Journeyman]

---

@Maxim wrote:

Hey @cliffordboobyer,

Thanks for coming to the Community.

Right now, Audiobooks in Premium is available only on select plans and is limited to plan managers.

This means if you joined a Duo or Family plan as a member you won’t have access to the free listening time, but this is something that will be explored in the future to allow Family and Duo users to have more flexibility from their audiobooks access 🙂

For more info, you can also visit the following Newsroom article: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-10-03/audiobooks-included-in-spotify-premium/.

Hope this clears things up! Yes Pal it certainly does. Makes it very clear that Spotify is intent in gouging customers they believe to be locked in. Guess what we're not! 

---

[stuart1-us]

As paying subscribers, all members of the Premium Family Plan should have equal rights to explore the diverse content on Spotify, including audiobooks. We urge you to reconsider this policy and extend this exciting feature to every member under the Family Plan, fostering an inclusive and enriching experience for all subscribers.

[KoodGarma]

Ditto other responses! - I'm a premium account family member and I want to listen to audiobooks too!! - Spotify please fix this asap!!!

[Reginald6600]

This is a horrible experience. Me and my partner are on a family plan. I happen to be the plan manager and don’t listen to audio books. But my partner does listen to audio books. For no good reason, Spotify won’t let my partner use the 15h of audio books included in the plan just because I happen to be the plan manager instead of them. This doesn’t make sense at all and is leaving me a very frustrated customer. 

Please fix this and make the 15h of audio books accessible to anyone in the family plan. Or hey, better yet, for the large monthly price of a family plan, give us 15h per user. 

[Halipenyo]

What an insane policy.

We just spent ages trying to figure this out - logging out and back in, deleting the app and reinstalling, looking for solutions, etc.

Spotify has created a situation where you have to cancel your whole account, create a new family plan with the main audio book listener's account, then have other members log out of their account and into the primary persons account to listen to their audio book, and we have to keep track of this arbitrary 15 hour limit each month.  Not to mention, now you may have a child logging into the primary account to listen to their books, but they also now have control of the whole account!

None of this is explained up front so we all have to waste time figuring it out for ourselves.

This is anti-customer and insane.  In all honesty, Spotify should remove access to audiobooks until they figure this out.

[wyattlewis]

This topic is not solved. 

Spotify needs to weigh in a fix this issue.

[wyattlewis]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Pixel 5, Pixel 7, Web

Operating System

Android 14, Windows 11

My Question or Issue

Apps for family members do not have access to E-books.  

The head of the family plan (me) has full access, but everyone included in my plan does not have access.  As of now, there is a solution accepted to this problem on the community board and that is not an acceptable solution.

Will a Spotify representative please respond to the growing concerns of the community that access to this premium feature will be restored to its users?

EDIT: I have included two pictures. The first picture is on my wife's phone showing that the book is locked.  The second picture shows that on my phone the book is available now.

Please enable access to this premium feature or allow a way for us to designate a member to have this access.

[wyattlewis]

Everyone, 

I have created a new thread here:  https://community.spotify.com/t5/Premium-Family/Family-Members-cannot-access-premium-E-books/td-p/56...

It appears this thread is being ignored due to an accepted solution.  I will not accept a solution that is not from a spotify representative providing a written policy answer for the reasoning behind this or admitting this was a mistake and a fix is incoming.

[Akaln2023]

Absolutely ridiculous policy restriction. remarkable that it passed through quality control. How can you justify locking access to features for some members that we pay a family plan for?

[theoriginalDre]

This is simply absurd.  Finding this out after 20 minutes troubleshooting why my wife couldn’t play an audiobook as an equal member of our premium family plan.

[Mo78]

This is not a solution. It should be escalated to allow all users under a premium account to access the same content. 

[Mo78]

I agree. This is false advertising and I’m reporting them to the BBB. 

[Mo78]

This smells of class action lawsuit to me 😉

[sptifyuser2023xx]

This is an utterly ridiculous policy. Everyone on premium should have access. This is a laughable policy.