Spotify today announced an option that brings audiobooks to the free tier — for a price. Dubbed the Audiobooks Access tier, it’ll get you 15 hours of listening from more than 200,000 books for $10 a month, without having to also pay for Spotify Premium.
And, well, that’s it. Spotify says that since it started offering audiobooks as part of the Premium subscription, it’s seen a 45% increase in free users both searching for and interacting with audiobook content on a daily basis.
“With this plan and in one app experience,” Spotify wrote in a news release, “listeners can continue to tune into music and podcasts on our free, ad-supported service, offering a great option for literary enthusiasts who are looking for more audiobook-specific content.”
Audiobooks are available within the Spotify app, right alongside music and podcasts. The same caveats from the Premium access still apply here. For example, if you listen to a 1-hour audiobook at 2x speed, it still counts for the full hour, not just 30 minutes. And you can listen to a book more than one time, but it will count against your allotted 15 hours twice. And whatever listening time you don’t use doesn’t roll over to the next month. You use it or lose it.
You can sign up for the Audiobook Access tier now on Spotify's website .
Spotify is available on pretty much any connected device, from your phone and tablet to streaming platforms and web browsers (or even full desktop apps). Spotify had some 602 million monthly active users as of the end of 2023, with more than one-third of them paying for a Premium subscription, which starts at $11 a month for a single account and ranges up to $17 a month for a family account.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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