Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers can now borrow audiobooks from Audible's library
You can listen to one audiobook a month as Amazon bites back at Spotify.
Amazon is battling back against Spotify on the audiobook front. Starting today, Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK and Canada have access to Audible's library of a million-plus audiobooks. Individual subscribers and the primary account holders of the family plan can listen to one book a month at no additional cost alongside their music and ad-free podcasts.
Naturally, Amazon doesn't want to cannibalize Audible's business. Along with a swathe of on-demand content, the latter's Premium Plus subscription offers one audiobook credit per month. Redeem that and the title is yours to keep forever, even if you cancel your plan. Amazon Music Unlimited's approach is more like a library. You can effectively borrow one audiobook from Audible's catalog at a time.
You can listen to the book as much as you want during that month. When your next billing cycle starts, you can try another one — or borrow the same audiobook for another month. You can, of course, subscribe to Audible or buy audiobooks ad hoc if access to one per month isn't enough for you.
As it happens, Amazon is offering 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 started offering Premium subscribers 15 hours of audiobook listening per month at no extra cost (which is not enough to listen to all of The Fellowship of The Ring, for instance), with the option to add 11 hours of listening time for $11. The company later introduced an audiobook-only plan with 15 hours of listening time for $10 per month — just $1 less than it costs for a Premium plan with the same benefit plus much more.
