- The trial, which will be expanded to US later this year, offers 15 hours of access
- Equivalent to two average-length audiobooks, but you must be a premium user
Spotify has launched a library of 150,000 free audiobooks for subscribers in the UK and Australia as the streaming giant seeks to take on the might of Amazon’s Audible.
The trial, which will be expanded to the US later this year, offers 15 hours of access to the service each month – equivalent to about two average-length audiobooks – but the catch is you have to be a premium user.
An additional 10 hours can be bought for £9.99, on top of the Spotify subscription which starts at £10.99 a month.
Users must have a premium individual account or be the plan manager for their Family or Duo account in order to take advantage of this feature as of now, the company added.
By comparison, Amazon’s customers can access audiobooks via the Audible app. They pay a monthly fee for credits to buy titles, starting at £7.99 for one book credit.
Spotify is instead going down the streaming route, announcing the new feature as an extension to the pay-as-you-go audiobook service it launched last year.
That gave customers access to some 300,000 titles, but the process was criticised because the books cannot be bought directly through the app.
The streaming giant is looking to build on its subscriber base of 220million, having last year laid out plans to get one billion users by 2030 and reach $100billion (£82million) in annual revenue.
Announcing its new audiobook feature, Spotify said: ‘We believe that offering personalised music, podcasts, and audiobooks on a single platform gives you a superior way to connect with your favourite artists, podcasters, creators, and authors — all in one spot.
‘Not only can you listen to some of your favourite 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.’
The company added: ‘From beach-friendly bestsellers to riveting memoirs to the latest fantasy series, you’ll be able to find amazing reads on Spotify Premium.
‘And whether you’re in the car running errands or doing chores around the house, audiobooks will transport you to new worlds of stories and sound.’
Spotify boasts that its new catalog will have ‘upwards of 70 per cent of bestselling books’, with titles from major publishers including Hachette, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and RB Media.
Among these are JK Rowling’s latest Robert Galbraith thriller and Stephen King’s Fairy Tale.
Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller, told The Times that Spotify’s new feature was ‘bordering on revolutionary’ because it is the first time major publishers have struck a deal with a massive streaming giant.
‘It seems like they’ve got enough of a window both in terms of the number of hours you listen to, the number of audiobooks on its platform and the types of publishers in order to truly experiment whether this is a way that consumers want to absorb audiobook content, as they already do music and film and TV,’ he said.
‘If they do, then we’re really in a different space overnight, and I’d say the entire audiobook market will have to reshape itself around whatever Spotify does.
The new announcement comes three months after Spotify raised prices for its premium plans across several countries including the US and the UK.
The streaming service increased its subscription rates by £1 per month, citing pressure from the record industry.
The company also said the price hike would allow for continued growth in an ‘ever-expanding market’.
Its premium plan now costs £10.99 per month in the UK, a £1 rise from the previous monthly rate.
Its duo subscription and family plans – which include six users – also increased by £1 each, now costing users £14.99 and £17.99, respectively.
