The new $9 Audible plan is the one I’ve wanted for years

I used to subscribe to Audible’s Premium plan for quite a while, even though it always felt fairly pricy. You got one audiobook credit a month, and whatever you picked was yours to keep, even if you canceled. I thought that was a nice touch, but even so, I just don’t listen to enough audiobooks to make that price feel sensible. Podcasts take up a lot of my audio time, and I rarely go back to the books I bought years ago. I ended up canceling because the model and price didn’t really match how I listen.

Now Audible has introduced a new Standard plan for $8.99 per month in the US, launching alongside rollouts in the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France. The new tier includes one audiobook per month from Audible’s full catalog, plus unlimited listening from a curated library featuring Audible Originals and nearly 200 titles that were previously available on Wondery Plus.

The trade-off is ownership. With the Standard plan, you keep access to your selected audiobook only as long as your membership remains active. One could argue it’s another case of a service letting you buy something that isn’t really yours, but you still have that option with the Premium Plus plan if you so choose. For me, saving $6 per month is worth losing access to a book I’ve almost certainly already listened to.

Audible says early testing of the Standard plan in the UK and Australia drove a strong double-digit percentage increase in new member sign-ups compared with previous offerings. I’m not surprised, for the reasons I’ve outlined. In my case, I ended up leaning on the audiobooks bundled into my Spotify subscription instead. It’s a service I’m already paying for, and while the catalog isn’t as broad as Audible’s, it’s been more than sufficient for the casual listener like me.

I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that the new Audible Standard plan was a direct response to Amazon’s service losing audiobook market share to Spotify. This new plan feels more realistic, as not everyone wants to build a permanent audiobook library. We’re at a moment when many budgets are tightening as more streaming services vie for our attention, so this seems like a smart move from Audible.