Is Playster Worth A Listen?

I’ve been seeing ads on Twitter for Playster. I was interested in the audiobooks that they offer. Would this be a suitable replacement for Audible?

The Hook:

• Only $9.95 for unlimited audiobooks and ebooks.  I’m paying $14.95 for one audiobook a month from Audible

 
Playster offers music, movies, books, audiobooks, and games. I chose a free trial subscription of just the books and audiobooks. You can’t get audiobooks only. When you go to the audiobook page on Playster you are offered playlists in addition to being able to search for books.

One of the playlists under Genre and Mood is Hungry. Yes, they have a whole section dedicated to Foodie Books!

These are the categories under Hungry.  There is a fairly good selection in each one. 

Do they have the books that I’m going to want to listen to?

I checked the books that I’ve gotten from Audible in the last six months.  Playster had all the nonfiction but was missing a few of the urban fantasy books. 

The Listening Experience

The Android app is a bit of a mess.  It is pretty but it is not easy to navigate.  I think on an audiobook listening app there should be a huge button as soon as you open it that says, LISTEN TO YOUR BOOK.  This app has….nothing.  It took me a while to figure out how to play the books. 

I ended up saving any books I downloaded to the My Audiobooks tab.  Then I could open that and select them to play.  There is no place I could find to just access books that you’ve downloaded.  That is my biggest complaint.

Once you find your book on the app, it works well.  It remembers where you left off.  It puts a bar on your homescreen so you can access it without digging through the app until you shut down the app.  It plays well through the bluetooth connection in my car. 

Pros:

• Less expensive for more audiobooks than Audible.  I haven’t even started exploring the ebooks that it comes with too.

Cons:

• Slightly annoying audiobook app but the work-around isn’t too cumbersome.
• You don’t own your books like on Audible.  That doesn’t matter to me but might to other people.
• Selection might be smaller than Audible.  I could still find a lot of books on here that I would be interested in.

My decision

I am going to keep Playster instead of Audible after my free month because of the cost savings and being able to listen to more than one audiobook a month.

I think this site is what Overdrive could be if my library subscribed to more audiobooks and I didn’t have to wait for other people to be done with them. 

Has anyone else tried Playster?  What did you think?