When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
100% agree, it’s better than all the other music services in quality on linux just because it (3rd party) offers something that has somewhat better sound quality than the basic video version of any other one, and Spotify being the only other one that has an unendorsed official native client (done by the devs in their spare time without any official support offered) is pointless because their best audio quality is trash.