For Spotify, Audiobooks Are The New Frontier

Amid an increasing demand for audiobooks, Spotify recently created a new, more affordable audiobook subscription plan. Launched on March 1, it offers users 15 hours of listening from the platform’s catalog of more than 200,000 titles, which range from Barbra Streisand’s 48-hours-long memoir to A Court of Thorns and Roses by bestselling romantasy author Sarah J. Maas.

The new subscription tier, which costs $9.99 a month, comes after free users increased their daily searches for audiobook content by a whopping 45%, according to Spotify.

The spike follows wider industry trends. According to the Audio Publishers Association, top publishers including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster reported an audiobook revenue of $1.8 billion in 2022 — the same year that time on Audible increased by 25%.

Spotify first launched its audiobook service in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia in October 2023 in light of the format’s growing popularity.

The executive director of the Audio Publishers Association, Michele Cobb, previously told the BBC that Spotify’s audiobook expansion is what publishers have long “been striving for.”

“There are hundreds of millions of Spotify subscribers — a good proportion have probably never listened to an audiobook before,” Cobb said. “So introducing them to the format, alongside other audio entertainment options, is a great thing.”

As for people’s favorite audiobook genres? All signs lead to romantasy. According to Spotify, listeners of 64% of the songs on the Top 50 Global list have sought also out A Court of Thorns and Roses, as well as Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker, a favorite in BookTok circles.