When Spotify first hit the music scene (not too long ago), users signed up in droves. Spotify offers users an unlimited amount of downloads for a monthly price. In every manner, Spotify was different from iTunes and this was a positive thing. Spotify has done so well for itself that it’s a wonder a company like Audiobooks didn’t come along sooner. Audiobooks is now offering subscribers access to 11,000 audio books for one monthly price.

No doubt Audiobooks will trounce other pay-per-book services, but does Audiobooks have a large enough audience? Audiobooks hopes that by offering an app in addition to site access, the service will catch on (these two options will give users two ways of listening to unlimited audio books). Yet, many are still skeptical that $24.95 per month is a decent price to pay to listen to unlimited audio books.

Why Audiobooks Might Not Work

Many audio books are narrated by people who have interesting voices. But, then there are those books that are poorly narrated or narrated by a computer. Books that come with bad sound quality are often ignored. Sound aside, today’s world is one that’s moving more towards digital books, but less towards digital books that don’t come with some sort of device. Seemingly, consumers want to purchase an e-reading device that comes with a book subscription. Further, few people listen to audio books.

For those who are seeing impaired or prefer to listen to books while traveling, the Audiobooks deal might seem like a good one. There’s no doubt that audio book narrations will get better with time, and even computer generated narrations are bound to improve. However, this reviewer can’t see a number of people scrambling to listen to audio books, no matter how great the subscription price is. Speaking of price, Audiobooks will corner the market when it comes to a great unlimited membership price, but is this enough to propel the new venture forward?

The One-by-One Advantage

Similar to Spotify vs. iTunes, there’s an advantage to buying books one-by-one. That advantage is that those who don’t listen to too many audio books might be better off purchasing one book at a time. By buying one book at a time, the cost of belonging to such a service may be drastically reduced. After all, if you’re only spending $5 per month on audio books, it doesn’t make much sense to purchase a $25 monthly subscription. If you think that you will listen to a number of audio books per month that extra expense makes sense.

Most current best-sellers are available through the Audiobooks platform, if you think that this service will serve you well. Do you think that you will use the Audiobooks monthly offering? Is $24.95 a good price to pay for an audio book or are audio books altogether outdated? While this reviewer doesn’t think there’s much of a market for audio books, it is possible that I’m wrong, so let me know: does the Audiobooks subscription plan appeal to you?