Spotify, like most streaming services, has added more service tiers over the years. While the company started with its individual monthly plan for $9.99 when it launched all those years ago, it eventually added a family plan and then a plan to share music between two people.
Then, audiobooks started to get involved, and the standalone audiobook subscription was created. Now, the company is adding yet another individual plan that only includes access to music and forgoes access to audiobooks.
In a blog post, Spotify announced its new Basic plan, adding a fifth option to the company’s growing lineup of paid subscriptions.
On Spotify, users discover and enjoy music, podcasts, and audiobooks, with various plans that meet our listeners’ needs. We offer subscriptions for every stage of life and household, depending on how listeners like to stream. And we’re now offering even more options for eligible U.S. subscribers, who can choose one of the plans below.
All Spotify plans, ranked from least to most expensive
So, now we’re up to five plans when subscribing to Spotify. How the heck do you figure out which plan is right for you? Let’s break it down from least expensive to most expensive:
Audiobooks Access
The cheapest plan you can get with Spotify is its Audiobooks Access plan, which gives you fifteen hours of audiobook listening per month as well as access to ad-supported music.
- Get 15 hours of audiobook listening time from our audiobooks subscriber catalog each month. Your music listening experience will be on our free, ad-supported service. $9.99/month.
Basic
The company has just launched a new plan called the Basic plan. It’s basically Spotify getting back to its roots and once again offering an individual plan that only includes access to ad-free music streaming. Audiobooks are not included with this plan.
- Enjoy the music streaming benefits of your Premium plan without the monthly audiobook listening time. Starting at $10.99/month for eligible users.
Premium Individual
The next plan is the Premium Individual plan. If you want ad-free listening for music as well as access to audiobooks, this is the plan for you. It’s basically a combination of the Audiobooks Access and Basic plan.
- Enjoy offline and ad-free music listening anytime, anywhere with unlimited skips.
- Your plan gives you 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month from our subscriber catalog of over 250,000 titles. $11.99/month.
Premium Duo
Do you and your partner or your roommate both have a Premium Individual plan? If that’s the case, you can mash those two together and save some money. Spotify’s Premium Duo plan offers the same benefits as Premium Individual for two people at a discounted rate — as long as you live in the same household.
- Two people get all the benefits of Premium–offline and ad-free music listening–for less than two full-price Premium Individual accounts.
- Duo plan managers have access to 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month from our subscriber catalog of over 250,000 titles. $16.99/month.
Premium Family
If you have a whole family that you want to give Premium access to, you’re upgrading to the most expensive plan: Premium Family. The plan offers ad-free music listening and access to 15 hours of audiobooks per month for up to 6 people — but like Premium Duo, everyone has to live in the same household.
- Each plan member gets the benefits of Premium, with separate accounts so recommendations are personalized to each user’s listening taste.
- Family plan managers have access to 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month from our subscriber catalog of over 250,000 titles. $19.99/month.
And although Spotify didn’t specifically mention it in the blog post for some reason, there’s also a Basic Duo plan for couples who don’t want 15 hours of free audiobooks every month. Other than that, it’s identical to the Premium Duo plan but costs $14.99/month.
Individual plans don’t make sense anymore
While I understand the need for the Premium Duo and Premium Family plans, breaking up the individual plans into three different options is the one that doesn’t make much sense to me — especially when you consider that they are all within $1 of each other in cost.
Spotify should eliminate Audiobooks Access and Basic and just offer Premium Individual. Sure, it’s $2 per month more expensive than Audiobooks Access, but for $2 per month, I’d rather see the company make it simple for consumers to decide what plan makes sense.
We’ll have to see how the new Basic and recently launched Audiobooks Access plans turn out, but while the company says it’s creating choice, I think it’s creating choice paralysis instead.
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