Since nobody wants to hear advertising while streaming music, if you are a regular Spotify user, you probably already have a Spotify Premium subscription. Your subscription is about to provide you with a lot more value.
According to an announcement from Spotify on Tuesday, its Premium subscribers will now have free access to more than 150,000 audiobooks.
Last year we announced that users would be able to purchase and listen to hundreds of thousand of audiobooks on Spotify, advancing our vision for making Spotify the seamless one-stop destination for all things audio. Listeners in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand jumped on the opportunity to sink into sonic worlds created by some of their favorite authors and narrators.
Today we’re starting an entirely new chapter for our audiobooks offering by making more than 150,000 audiobooks available as part of Spotify Premium subscriptions. To start, we’re offering each Premium individual, as well as plan managers for Family and Duo accounts, 15 hours of listening per month—giving them the ability to enjoy as many titles as they want within that monthly allocation.
What’s more, this means eligible users are now getting even more from their Premium subscriptions: an on-demand catalog of more than 100 million tracks, 5 million podcasts, and over 150,000 audiobooks.
This feature will be available for Premium users in the U.K. and Australia starting tomorrow, with the U.S. following later this year.
We believe that offering personalized music, podcasts, and audiobooks on a single platform gives you a superior way to connect with your favorite artists, podcasters, creators, and authors—all in one spot. Not only can you listen to some of your favorite authors’ works, but you can also tune into podcasts where fans dissect the most minor details of a story and find the hidden meaning in every sentence, without leaving the app.
To kick off the audiobook addition, all Spotify Premium individual account holders and plan managers for Family and Duo accounts will be given 15 hours of monthly audiobook listening.
Although there is a time limit, there is no limit on the number of titles users can access within those allotted hours.
If you run out of the 15 hours before the next billing cycle, you can purchase a 10-hour top-up to listen to more titles or finish the series you were listening to.
Spotify’s audiobook catalogue includes upwards of 70% of bestselling books with titles from major publishers, including HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and more, according to the release.
I skimmed the selection and found it included a lot of the titles that I currently have on my reading list, which was actually heart-breaking to see as an Apple music user.
To access the audiobooks, all you have to do is type in the title in Search and hit play. You can also browse for titles from the recommended audiobook section in your Home feed or browse Spotify’s audiobook hub.
If you don’t have a Spotify Premium account and are considering joining, an individual account is $10.99/month. For context, an Audible subscription starts at $7.95/month but doesn’t include access to bestsellers or music.
In addition to the 150,000 audiobooks, Spotify is expanding its offerings with more than 100 million tracks and five million podcasts.
