Through a deal with Bloomsbury Publishing, Spotify is expanding its audiobook collection to include more than 1,000 books by authors such as Sarah J. Maas, Alan Moore, and Anne Patchett. The new titles come just a day after Spotify introduced new tools for audiobooks, such as playlists, visuals, and a sleep timer.
The new audiobooks include the adult fantasy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Suzanne Clarke), award-winning titles such as Cuddy by Benjamin Myers, and children’s adventure books Impossible Creatures by Katherine Randall. The new collection also includes non-fiction titles by historians, such as Peter Frankopan and Want, an anthology compiled by Gillian Anderson. The books will be narrated by such talented actors as Meryl Streep, Emilia Clarke, Ajoa Andoh, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Spotify began offering audiobooks in the U.S. a year ago, and premium subscribers get access to 15 hours of content per month (which can be topped up with an additional 10 hours for $12.99). Since the average length of an audiobook is about 8-12 hours, premium subscribers for $11 will be able to listen to about one book per month. Spotify said today that it pays publishers “hundreds of millions of dollars on an annual basis.”
Bloomsbury already offers its audiobooks on Amazon’s Audible, and many of the titles mentioned above are already available on that platform. Depending on the audiobook, it may be cheaper to just buy it outright than to top up your Spotify account if you want to listen to multiple titles over the course of a month.
