PlaysterReviews 88

I loved Playster when I first joined. Within 6 months, the fee I was paying for audiobooks tripled in price. To make matters worse, I can only choose certain audiobooks in my pricey package. Ive tried really hard to stick with Playster, but I am about to give up. Im glad I kept my Audible subscription as that is what I use most. Ive rarely taken the time to write reviews for anything, and I dont enjoy submitting a negative review. I just feel duped by the steep price increase and limited audiobook selection.

As a software engineer working in an agile work environment, I have a lot of empathy when it comes to bugs in code. However, this seems to happen all too often with Playster. The service isn't consistent enough for me to pay as much as I do for it.

I wanted to try Playster over Audible, because I like the idea of streaming audiobooks vs purchasing them, but the price has doubled since I initially signed up. I often feel I would be saving money by switching to audible, and even worse, I'm often unable to even listen to my audio books on my commute to/from work because of a bug.

2 main things that need to change:
1. Find a price point that makes it worth streaming audiobooks. If it is just as expensive as Audible, where I actually purchase and own the book, then I'm losing out going with Playster.
2. Make the platform more stable. Create a testing suite with end-to-end tests to build confidence that new features will not break the product.

On a plus side, it seems the product team is very engaging with the community, so keep that up.

Playster has been a nightmare from the beginning but its something Ive learned to manage. The app is constantly crashing, deleting stuff, telling me my subscription is invalid and then I randomly get told Ive cancelled when Ive changed nothing. Price is very high but its rhe only thing on the market like it. I listen to books constantly so its a pain Ive learned to live with. Its not reliable by any means and with how much you pay a month its ridiculous in my opinion. The cost changes have been frustrated and if my price for audiobooks alone goes up anymore Im done. I started paying $10 or less for full audiobook access and now pay $30. The app worked better at $10 and I have since updated my phone to a nicer one and keep the app up to date. Also the search bar is horrible. It almost never works. Like books I know are on there I search title or author and it doesnt work: also most of the time when I click on an author it says server error or will only load their name. But then a few hours later it works fine! Very frustrating.

I was very hopeful about the Playster experience, and the concept and price certainly give the app the potential for greatness. However, in its current form the app has so man bugs and malfunctions that it's just meh. I only use for audiobooks, and had planned to upgrade to full use (and cancel other paid apps) if I liked it. Not going to happen any time soon. Content doesn't always start playing when connected, I can't use my car's play/pause controls with this app and have to control from the phone, I have to go into the app on the phone to play (but can pause from the lock screen), the last chapter of books regularly won't play. It's extremely frustrating to use overall.

First, I am THRILLED that there is a service like playster! I REALLY wanted to love it, and yes, happily give them lots of money so I could listen to audiobooks all the time- the ones I cannot get at the library and don't want to buy. But the software both on my iMac desktop and on my iPhone is so buggy I had to quit my membership. On the phone, my primary device, the app would crash at least once every time I used it, often twice. The search feature does not find the correct items. Really- it needs work. When the app works, I will re-join.

I was thrilled to find Playster months and months ago. And I was thrilled with the then price of 6.99. Then without notice the price jumped to 9.99 and then, I received notice that it was more than doubling-- just for audio books. I was very unhappy, talked to a service rep whose answers just went round and round according to her script, but finally I opted to stay in at the new much higher price (I'm a senior on social security). Now, in the last six weeks, most of the books I had placed in files and was looking forward to listening to just plain -- again without notice -- disappeared. AND to make matters worse, those books no longer seem to be available on the site. I had recommended this service to many people. Now not only am I disappointed, I am embarrassed at having gotten other people to subscribe. I would very much like to know what has happened and if there will be a return of good books or if all that there will be for the forseeable future are stupid romances, sci fi and kids books.

First the good - no limit to the number of books I can listen to each month.
Now the bad - ugh where to start... for one they will remove books without any warning. This has happened to me twice! I had about an hour and a half left in a book I was really into. And then... it was gone. No longer available. It was like missing the epic series finale on a TV series and never knowing how it ended. I did not receive any warning of the book being removed or I would have made the time to finish it. This is so irritating! The least they could do is provide a heads up with a few days notice when a book that you have saved is about to be taken off the site.
The app also quits working a lot while using it.
It quite often forgets where you left off in your book so you spend forever trying to figure it out (flipping thru chapters, fast forward, rewind) until you either figure it out or like me say screw it...
The app also goes down a lot and you have to wait for them to fix it. Really irritating when you have a set time to listen to your books and you cant.
Sometimes when you search for books by author it doesnt work. And sometimes it does. I like to read other books by the same author so its frusterating when I cant search that way.
I also feel like there are less books available recently. Havent proven it yet but Im having a much harder time finding books than I did in the past. Probably mostly due to the author search issue I mentioned above.
However, I still pay for the app because when it is working properly I do enjoy it.

I love the unlimited books that play store has to offer. I've been able to read a lot of new release books that I've loved, although the new releases seem to be sparser lately. I have been annoyed at the number of times I've had to reboot the website, reset my password, and get locked out frequently. I also wish that you could permanently delete books that you have already read so that you wouldn't get the message that you have many unread books left on the site. Keep improving, and we'll keep subscribing