After launching an audiobook marketplace for the streaming service last fall, Spotify announced this week that Premium users will soon have access to over 150,000 audiobooks as part of their subscriptions. Starting tomorrow, Premium users in the UK and Australia will be able to listen to audiobooks for up to 15 hours a month without paying any additional money. Spotify says that this feature will come to the US as well before the end of 2023.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the impending arrival of this feature in September.
In a blog post, the company revealed that Spotify Premium individuals and the plan managers of Family and Duo accounts can enjoy 15 hours of audiobook listening time every month. They can listen to a single book or jump between multiple books until their time expires.
If your free listening time runs out before you finish your book, you can either wait for it to reload after the next monthly billing cycle or purchase a 10-hour top-up. You can buy as many of these top-ups as you like, but Spotify didn’t say how much they would cost.
Spotify explains that every book labeled “Included in Premium” is available with this feature. The company says that its audiobook catalog “currently encompasses upwards of 70% of bestselling books, with titles from major publishers including Hachette, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and RB Media, as well as independent authors and publishers globally, including Bolinda, Dreamscape, and Pushkin.”
The feature is not yet available at the time of writing, but you can get a headstart by checking out Spotify’s audiobook hub. Some recent popular books clocking at under 15 hours include Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw’s “The Dead Take the A Train,” David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and Emily Henry’s “Happy Place.”
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