Amazon is fighting back against Spotify on the audiobook front. Starting today, Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK, and Canada have access to the Audible library of more than a million audiobooks. Individual subscribers and basic family plan account holders can listen to one book per month at no extra charge, along with ad-free music and podcasts.
Of course, Amazon doesn’t want to take away Audible’s business. The Premium Plus subscription, in addition to a lot of on-demand content, offers one audiobook per month. Use it, and the book title will remain with you forever, even if you cancel your subscription. The Amazon Music Unlimited approach is more like a library. You can borrow one audiobook from the Audible catalog at a time.
You can listen to as many audiobooks as you want during the month. When the next billing cycle starts, you can try a different audiobook – or pick up the same audiobook for the next month. Of course, you can also subscribe to Audible or buy audiobooks on an ad hoc basis if access to one per month isn’t enough for you.
By the way, Amazon offers new Music Unlimited subscribers three months of free access. Otherwise, Amazon Music Unlimited costs $10 per month or $99 per year for Prime members and $11 per month for other users.
Last year, Spotify began offering Premium subscribers 15 hours of audiobook listening per month at no extra charge (not enough to listen to the entire Fellowship of the Ring, for example), with the option to add 11 hours of listening for $11. Later, the company introduced an audiobook-only plan with 15 hours of listening for $10 per month – just $1 less than the Premium plan with the same benefits and much more.
