About a month after Spotify announced that a selection of audiobooks would become part of its Premium subscription, the company is today expanding the service to US users for the first time. Subscribers will now have access to 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month across a catalog of 200,000 titles — up from the 150,000 available when the service first arrived in its original markets of the UK and Australia.
Spotify first introduced audiobooks to its music streaming platform in September 2022, after acquiring digital audiobook distributor Findaway in 2021. Its debut catalog included around 300,000 titles in the US, and then began expanding to other English-speaking markets later in the year. with the addition of Canada in early 2023.
The company has touted the potential to tap into a growing market with the addition, noting that audiobooks today make up only a 6% to 7% share of the broader book market, but the category was growing 20% year over year. Additionally, Gen Z and millennials lead audiobook consumption, with 72% of 18- to 34-year-olds listening.
However, accessing Spotify audiobooks was a cumbersome process at launch. Because Spotify did not want to share commissions with app stores for in-app purchases, users would first have to purchase the tracks à la carte through Spotify’s website in order to be able to listen in-app. This introduced extra steps and made it more difficult to start listening. By combining a certain number of hours with the Premium subscription, the process has become more seamless — now you can find the book you want and press play to start listening. Additionally, if users want more time, they can purchase an additional 10 hours as a “top-off”.
The books themselves can be found through the original Spotify app stream or by searching for a title. There’s also an editorially curated selection of popular titles to browse in the app audiobook hub.
Top titles include new releases like Britney Spears’ “The Woman in Me” and Jesmyn Ward’s “Let Us Descend,” as well as from other popular authors including Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and more , as well as musicals. artists like Willie Nelson and Dave Grohl; Spotify says its catalog now includes more than 70% of its best-selling titles, including books from the big five publishers as well as independent publishers and authors. Titles vary across genres and also include classics such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
With the addition, Spotify hopes to make its Premium subscription more exciting, as it will now offer an on-demand music catalog of more than 100 tracks and more than 5 million podcasts, as well as over 200,000 audiobooks.
Inside the most recent quarter, Spotify grew paying subscribers 16% year over year to 226 million and its monthly active users rose 26% to 574 million — 2 million ahead of the company’s forecast. Revenue also rose 11% year-on-year to 3.4 billion euros (US$3.63 billion) as Spotify benefited from recent price increases.
