Spotify to Give Premium Subscribers Access to 15 Hours of Free Audiobooks per Month

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify is hoping to jump-start its push into audiobooks — announcing that paying subscribers can access up to 15 hours free listening per month from among 150,000 titles.

Last year, the audio streamer announced that users would be able to purchase and listen to 300,000 audiobooks on Spotify. Spotify’s entry into the audiobook market came after closing its acquisition for audiobook distributor Findaway in June 2022, paying about $119 million in cash for the company.

About half of that catalog will be available as part of Spotify Premium subscriptions. Initially, the company is offering each Premium individual, as well as plan managers for Family and Duo accounts, 15 hours of listening per month.

The 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,” Spotify said in announcing the launch. “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.” Any book that’s marked “Included in Premium” is available within the Spotify Premium catalog, which 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..