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.
I dunno. Spotify stopped billing me for the family plan I was paying for some years ago and at this point I've got five accounts mooching off of them and I'm using powershell to download gigabytes worth of music off of them...
Like, Spotify is evil but at this point I'm a negative number for them every month. I'm gonna keep on going until they decide to shut off the hose.
Oh, but I do go to concerts and buy records.