Spotify to Expand Audiobooks Offering to More Than 180 Markets

Starting now through the end of 2026, Spotify is expanding the offering from 22 markets to more than 180. The expansion will also introduce new catalogs in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and more, with more than 120 languages in total.

The move, announced at the Frankfort Book Fair, comes after Spotify launched audiobooks for individual purchase in the U.S. in September 2022 and then introduced 15 hours of access for Premium subscribers in the U.S. in November 2023.

Spotify has not revealed full financials on the audiobooks segment. But in the past year, Spotify says monthly audiobook listeners grew close to 40 percent and listening hours climbed more than 30 percent, with more than 800,000 titles in the catalog.

Additionally, Spotify says it has more than one million Audiobooks+ subscribers, who pay for an additional 15 hours a month, which leads to more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

This is one of the newer segments to join Spotify, which has also been expanding from podcasting and music into fitness, in a push to increase customer stickiness and the time spent on the platform. Additionally, Spotify has been making a big push into AI, which will include allowing premium users to create their own AI-generated covers and remixes.

“Books change how we see the world, and the people in it. For a lot of people, audiobooks arehow they find their way back to reading, on the commute, on a walk, or at the end of a long day. Bringing audiobooks to more than 180 markets means millions more people can discover that, and authors and publishers can reach readers they’ve never been able to reach before,” said Owen Smith, VP of Audiobooks, Spotify.