Paused membership now app freezes constantly.

So I've been a member for years and have dozens of not hundreds of books. Never been a problem, always worked great even across multiple devices resuming properly.

Since I paused my membership the app pauses/freezes about once an hour. I'll be listening and then it just stops mid sentence. I click on the app and it opens to a blank screen, have to force close and reopen it.

Is this just to annoy me enough to renew my membership?

Update: I'm sure it's completely unrelated but I signed back up for a free 3 month trial and the problem went away.