Audible announce their All-You-Can-Listen Audible Plus membership option, without book credits, at around half the price of Premium Plus accounts.

Audible are currently previewing Audible Plus accounts that offer unlimited listening to a selection of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts of different genres, lengths and formats. This includes 11,000 titles with over 68,000 hours of content, including documentaries, comedy, journalism, kids, wellness, self-development, selections from Audible Theater and more. Audible Originals come from new creators and performers such as Common, St. Vincent, Blake Griffin, Jesse Eisenberg, Tom Morello, Kevin Bacon, David Koepp, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Mara, Tayari Jones and Harvey Fierstein and others. Books can be streamed or downloaded for offline listening in the Audible app or across Alexa-enabled devices and Amazon Fire tablets.

Audible Plus launches at $7.95, alongside Audible Premium Plus accounts at $14.95 which merges existing Gold and Platinum subscriptions, with gives access to the full Audible Plus catalog as well as one credit a month (or more for pricer subscriptions) to spend on any audiobook.

Both subscriptions are ad-free, also Audible will supposedly be stripping ads from some third-party podcasts.

The Audible Plus roll out has started for Audible members. New members can sign up to Audible Plus from 27th August.

While Audible has always acted as a subscription service, the ‘one book per month’ offering places it much more in the territory of a traditional online music store than music streaming service. Audible Plus is a great move for Audible, with Spotify dipping its toes into audiobooks. Presumably, should Spotify ever launch a full audiobook platform, it will likely be a similarly all-you-can-listen first model, as with their music. With podcasts offering an ever growing list of great quality free audio content, thanks in part to a huge push from Spotify, audiobooks and their platforms must evolve to stay relevant in today’s streaming economy.