Spotify announced an expansion to its premium audiobook service on Thursday. It features two new plans that will provide subscribers with additional listening time and allow other families to access the services.
This option is currently available only to Spotify premium users in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, after undergoing their first tests in Ireland and Canada.
US users can already purchase 15 hours of listening as a standalone offer via Audiobook Access Plans, but these additions allow people in other markets to customize their access to their needs.
The first new plan, Audiobooks+, adds 15 hours of listening per month in addition to the master plan for premium subscribers, or for those who manage family and duo plans. Today, Spotify's premium plan includes 15 hours of audiobook listening, so the new plan doubles its offering, allowing subscribers to pass some longer and shorter books that month.
Another new plan, Audiobook+ for Plan Members, is an even more welcome addition to those who want to share access to audiobooks. Premium Family and DuoPlan members will have access to 15 hours of monthly audiobook listening.
A similar plan will arrive later in the US, Spotify told TechCrunch.
To use the feature, Plan members first request audiobook access from the Plan Manager who purchases a new add-on. Members can also purchase a one-time 10-hour top-up later if they run out of listening time before the next billing cycle.
Spotify did not share pricing for the new options as it varies from market to market. A spokesperson said users from these markets can visit the Spotify.com/AudioBooks page to see more details.
One major publisher, Harpercollins, said in December that Spotify was working to bring audiobooks to other families with a sharing plan. At the meeting, Harpercollins CEO Brian Murray said the market could grow further as Spotify was at the time carrying out “technical issues” with family planning restricting audiobooks to plan credit card holders.
The streaming service sees AI as another opportunity for expansion, saying it has been getting more books in its previous quarter revenues, such as translating texts from English to other languages, to get more books narrated.
The Spotify catalog spans 375,000 audiobooks. However, like Amazon's Audible, buying audiobook time instead of buying titles allows users to experiment with more of what they want to listen to.