Audible’s new price tier made my membership cheaper and easier

 At this point, every gadget in my house wants a monthly fee. Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, cloud storage, smart home apps, fitness platforms. Even my coffee beans are on a subscribe-and-save program. None of them is outrageous on its own, but together they add up. Then Audible announced a new $8.99 Standard plan, and suddenly the math on my long-running Premium Plus subscription didn’t look so great anymore.

I’ve been a Premium Plus subscriber for years. The plan costs about $15 per month and includes a credit I can redeem for any audiobook in Audible’s catalog. Since most newer audiobooks retail for around $25 or more, as long as I redeem the credit each month, the value holds up. I prefer reading on a Kindle, but there’s something to be said for knocking out a book while doing chores. I also appreciate being able to grab an audiobook on demand right before a road trip or flight.

The problem is that I rarely feel ready to pick a book every single month. Whenever a credit arrives, I end up telling myself I’ll browse later when I have time to choose properly. Then another month passes, and another credit drops into my account. Eventually, I open Audible and realize I have three or four credits stacked. They roll over, but you can’t pause your membership without spending them first.

That’s how I end up doing a quarterly credit burn session, trying to spend multiple credits in one sitting just so I can pause the plan. In a surprise to no one, obligation-driven shopping in the Audible store is not the most relaxing way to discover your next audiobook. Meanwhile, because redeemed books stay in my library permanently, I always feel like I should choose something I’d want to listen to more than once. Instead of grabbing whatever title is popular or taking a friend’s casual recommendation, I start overthinking it.

Sometimes that pushes me toward classics, and honestly, that isn’t the worst outcome. A good narrator can make a classic less stuffy, and I’ve ended up listening to a few titles I always meant to read but never got around to (highly recommend The Old Man and the Sea narrated by Donald Sutherland). Other times, I’ve bought audiobooks of books I’ve already read, figuring that having an audio version of a favorite has its perks. If that favorite happens to be a classic, even better. The result is that I’ve heard The Count of Monte Cristo more times than I can count (of monte cristo). The point, though, is that instead of choosing books that match my mood, I always feel like I’m trying to make the correct credit decision.

Audible’s cheaper Standard plan drops the price down to $8.99 per month and still lets you pick one audiobook each month. The difference is that with that Standard plan, you don’t permanently own the books you choose. If you cancel the plan, the title disappears with your subscription.

Normally, that trade-off would frustrate me. Like most people, I’m getting tired of the tech industry’s growing trend of turning ownership into subscriptions. But in this case, the lack of ownership actually fixes part of the problem. For about six dollars less per month, or roughly $70 in savings per year, I still get access to Audible’s library, just without the growing pile of unused credits or the pressure to treat every pick like a long-term investment. Since the credits don’t roll over, I also get a built-in nudge to pick books one at a time.

The other thing that made the downgrade easier is that Audible isn’t the only place I get audiobooks anymore. Spotify Premium (one of my many other subscriptions) now includes monthly audiobook listening hours. Libby, the library-based app, also lets me borrow audiobooks digitally for free.

Spotify Premium includes 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, which is often enough for a short to medium-length title or a decent chunk of a longer one. As my family’s manager account, only I can access the hours, and as the family’s main nerd, that works out fine in our case. I tend to use them on hot titles that have long waitlists at Libby, most recently the Briar Club by Kate Quinn. Libby, meanwhile, gives me access to unlimited audiobooks, but as mentioned, they often come with a wait. I use the app for books my group chat mentions or titles I know I want to read, but don’t feel any rush to get to. Between those two services, I already have access to a lot of the books I might otherwise spend a credit on, which doesn’t make Audible irrelevant, but it definitely changes the value equation.

For heavy audiobook listeners, Premium Plus still makes plenty of sense if you enjoy owning your picks or want access to Audible’s Plus Catalog. The Standard plan includes unlimited podcast listening, but it doesn’t include the full Plus Catalog of audiobooks that Premium Plus members can stream.

If your listening habits are more casual or if you’re already supplementing with Spotify and Libby, the cheaper tier might be the better fit. My Audible subscription is still pulling from my pocket every month, but now it actually matches the way I listen. And when every device and service seems to be asking for a monthly tax, saving a few bucks feels oddly satisfying.