Apple Music: Apple Audio Books Disappeared In Germany

At Apple Music, adjustments have been taking place behind the scenes for days that are not openly communicated by the company. Users have noticed that audiobooks previously included in the subscription disappear and reappear elsewhere with the price.

Apple is quietly rearranging its audio book collection

Aside from specialized streaming services, large providers such as Apple Music also have a fairly extensive catalog of audiobooks, which, like other content, are included in the subscription. As multiple reports from iFun, Piunikaweb, Macrumors, and Reddit Apple is now quietly making an adjustment. The number of previously available audiobooks has been drastically cut in Germany in the last few days. Corresponding overview lists from third parties also show that Apple has removed almost the entire catalog in this category.

And on the user side, too, the silent adaptation causes great resentment: As can be read under the heading “Audiobooks disappeared” in the support forum on nine pages, some users had to find out that the Audiobooks had simply disappeared from personal media libraries. One person affected even describes that a title was initially stopped during playback and then only displayed in gray. When selecting it again, the message “Article not available” appeared. One point that particularly annoys many authors in the Apple forum: the lack of transparency on the part of Apple.

Some users are particularly annoyed that many of the disappeared titles in the Apple Books app, simply “books” in German, reappear as paid single items. If Apple really wants to bundle its audiobook efforts here, Android users will definitely be left out in the future, as the app is not available for the Google OS.

Publisher confirmed

While Apple has so far kept its users completely silent about the procedure, a request to German publishers by iFun sheds some light on the darkness. Accordingly, a spokeswoman for one of the largest German audiobook publishers has confirmed that Apple had announced a “cross-publisher” deletion of audiobook content from Apple Music. Curious: radio plays are explicitly not affected by this adaptation.