Spotify offers additional plans for US subscribers; holds niche with audiobooks

Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) revealed additional subscription plans on Friday as the music streaming service differentiates itself from competitors through its audiobook offerings.

Spotify has introduced Basic and Premium plans, with the Premium plan featuring 15 hours per month of audiobook listening time from a catalog of more than 250,000 titles on top of unlimited ad-free music.

The difference in prices are minimal, being $11.99 per month for Premium individual and $10.99 per month for Basic. Spotify now offers an audiobooks plan as well, offering 15 hours of audiobook listening and ad-supported music for $9.99 per month. 

The streaming music subscription plans offered by Spotify, Apple (AAPL) Music, Amazon (AMZN) Music Unlimited and Google's (GOOG)(GOOGL) YouTube Music are fairly similar in price.

They offer Student plans ranging from $5.49 to $5.99 per month, Individual plans are all about $10.99 per month and Family plans range from $16.99 to $19.99 per month.

However, Amazon Music Unlimited offers a slightly cheaper Individual plan of $9.99 per month and a single device plan of $5.99 per month.

Despite Spotify plans costing slightly more than some other music streaming services, the Sweden-based company continues to drive up its subscription base.

Its most recent financial results featured a 23% year-over-year increase in monthly active users and a 14% subscriber bump.

"The company has implemented strategic price adjustments to increase revenue without deterring new subscriptions, demonstrating strong pricing power," said Seeking Alpha analyst and contributor Noah's Arc Capital Management. "Despite challenges in maintaining profitability, Spotify's price hikes and user engagement strategies are expected to sustain growth and improve profitability going forward."

Spotify dominates the other major music streaming services with about 31% of the global market share, according to Statista, which is only slightly less than Apple Music, Amazon and YouTube Music combined. 

Spotify's massive user base of 615M monthly active users and nearly 300M subscribers is sustained through its multiple offerings, which include music, podcasts and audiobooks.

Analysts are mostly bullish on Spotify, as it has a Buy rating from both Seeking Alpha and Wall Street analysts. It has a Strong Buy rating from Seeking Alpha's Quant system, which routinely beats the market. 

Its stock price has surged 70% year to date and more than doubled over the past 12 months.