Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Playster, an alternative to Kindle Unlimited?

 



A new multimedia site came to my attention recently called Playster.  It has media content such as books, music, games and movies.  For this review I’ll concentrate on the books since this is a book site.  As far as book content goes it’s pretty good.  Playster scored a major publisher in Harper Collins. For the romance novel lovers this means Avon Books!  I saw some very familiar names in Janet Evanovich, Rachel Gibson, Johnna Lindsey, Kim Harrison, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Lori Wilde, Pamela Palmer, Nicole Williams, Kelley Armstrong, Amy Plum, and L.J. Smith.  
For some non-romance titles I saw “The American Sniper”, Charles Bukowski, Michel Crichton, James Rollins, Pittacus Lore, a ton of cool non-fiction/biographies, and some “dummies” books. I have my eye on “Knitting for Dummies”.

What originally caught my eye was Kim Harrison’s The Hallows series. I’ve wanted to read this series but at 10 books deep that’s quite the investment if I like the series.  This one series could potentially cost me close to $80.00 using $7.99 as the ticket price per book.  If you are anything like me I can read fast and whip through a series in a couple of weeks if I love it enough.  
So let’s talk Playster numbers. You get a 30 day free trail, if you don’t cancel within the 30 days you will automatically be upgraded to a member of the site for $15.99 per month.  If you forget to cancel within the 30 days you are charged the $15.99 non-refundable but you can still cancel and enjoy the remaining days of the month you paid for, which I think is reasonable enough. I mean come on we all know when you sign up for a “free trail” you are actually signing yourself up for a membership and it’s your own fault for not reading the terms and conditions when you put in all of your details including your credit card number.  You can cancel a number of ways including calling, emailing and there is even a chat option.

So how does this compare to Kindle Unlimited? One, you don’t have to have a Kindle to use Playster. It is compatible with any smart device such as a smart phone, computer or tablet. They have an app you can download. I admit have not actually used the app, the reading I did was on my computer while I was working (ssshhhh don’t tell anyone!) I chatted in with Playster asking if it was compatible with my Kindle Paperwhite and they said you can use the experimental browser to read on your device but it will load somewhat slowly and the reading experience would be better through the app.  Two, which the price of Playster is higher at $15.99 vs $9.99 I found that the books on Playster are better. I’ve found that Kindle Unlimited has a lot of self-published or Indy authors which is great, I like those books too, but I can buy them at $1-$2 a pop at my leisure.  The bigger names that you see on Playster go more for $5-$10 a pop so you only have to read 1-3 books a month on Playster to cover what you spent for the monthly subscription.  I say give it a whirl; don’t see any books you like, cancel it before the 30 days and harm no foul.

Since Playster does have other content I feel I’d be remiss if I don’t at least mention it. The music is a lot of Indy musicians. If you love to experiment and find new music I think you’ll love Playsters music content.  The movies, unless you love movies based on musicans I didn’t really see anything worth mentioning. Games, I don’t really play any games but I found a review from a gamer and he assured us that the game content is quite good.  http://gamepadreviews.com/playster-review/  if you would like to see the review.  What I would like to mention about Playster and it’s content this is a brand new site, it is still in Beta so I figure that the content will only get better with time.

Will Playster in time replace your Netflix and Spotify, I don’t know but I think it has the potential if they do it right. 

14 comments:

  1. This is a very thorough review. I enjoyed your breakdown of the price relative to your actual real life reading. However I see the cost has now increased to 24.95. Would you say it is still worth it?

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    1. Im so sorry! I am just now seeing this... I did see the price was increased and I would say if you are just going to be reading books I'd say $24.95 is kind of steep but I did look around a bit and saw that you can get JUST book for under $10.00 so I would say if you're a reader and you are looking at playster just for the books I'd say its definitely worth it.

      If you are looking at the full membership at the $24.95 price point I'd say it's still a pretty good deal. The movies are still not on level with Netflix but if you dig around you can find some older but still good movies. The music has improved, they even added audiobooks! Whoot whoot! And there are some gooood audiobooks on the site! Im still not a gamer so I really dont touch those and have no idea if they have added anything to the games but from what I understand they had a pretty good selection to begin with.

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  3. Thanks for giving me some insight into Playster. You make it sound like a cool service.

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    1. It is pretty cool! I think it's only going to get better, well hopefully anyway :)

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  4. This was written back in April. Have you kept up your subscription? If you have, what’s new and why did you stick around?

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    1. I have kept it and still love it! It pays for itself every month with as much as I read. Playster has even saved my butt a few times. I'd be on Goodreads and see a new to me book or author and my first reaction has been to go to Amazon to go buy the eBook and then I have a moment of clarty but I dont really want to spend $8.00 on an untried author even if the reviews are good... So then I'll go to Playster plug it in and Boom they have it! Couple of time I wasn't all that impressed with the book and was like whew! Glad I didnt spend $8.00 bucks buying it. Sorry that was probably more then you wanted to hear lol...

      Since I wrote this post they have add a ton of new titles! They signed on with Simon and Schuster which brought along my beloved Kresley Cole! They have even added a grip of audiobooks. Thats a pretty new development, I think within the last couple of weeks. I logged in and like a bday present there were audiobooks! They have some really good ones too from all sorts of different genres. If you give it a try come back and let me know if you like it. =)

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  5. Signed up when I heard they had audiobooks, really looking forward to when we can listen to them on the app!

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    1. Hey! Im not a huge audiobooks listener but they have a really good selection from what ive seen. I listened to Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews recently. You can now listen not on the app but from your mobile browser. So just type in playster.com, sign in and listen from there!

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  6. Nice review! What have you been reading on Playster recently? I’ve been trying to get a feel for what’s on the service but I can’t find their list of books anywhere!

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    1. Hey Ruth! I did some digging for you... They have read.playster.com . I was told by their chat person you can use that link to check out some of the titles before you enroll. I've read a bunch of historical romances.. (I dont like to pay for these bc I so often am just meh on them but they have had a bunch of good ones!). I read all of the Molly Harper Naked Werewolf series which I had been meaning to get my hands on forever! There is the Kim Harrison the Hallows series, I got through a few of those. Hmmm what else.. I've listened so some music. They have some Dubstep which I really enjoy. If you sign up come back and let me know how you like it!

      I've listened to a few audiobooks .I like Ilona Andrews on audiobooks so I listened to Burn for Me even tho I've read the book a bunch of times.

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  7. Great post, really laid out the service for me. I think I’ll check it out!

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    1. I hope you like it! I've been enjoying it so far :)

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