If you’re a Premium user (or the plan manager for a Family/Duo account), you won’t even have to pay. Spotify is providing 15 hours of free audiobooks for its Premium users in the US.
A little over a month ago, paid subscribers in two countries got the same bonus from Spotify – UK and Australia (via 9to5Mac). The streaming giant said it would roll out the free 15-hour/month access to audiobooks for US users at a later date – and the date has come.
An official communiqué from Spotify says US readers can now access 200,000 titles in their catalog and, actually, not only Premium accounts could get the 15 free hours per month:
To start, we’re offering each Premium individual, as well as plan managers for Family and Duo accounts, 15 hours of listening per month. There’s no need for you to do anything: Starting today, you’ll simply start seeing audiobooks marked as “Included in Premium” that you can hit play on right away. Fifteen hours should get you around two average audiobooks per month, but if you do hit the limit, you can purchase a 10-hour top-up or buy the book you’re listening to outright.
15 hours may be enough to fit two audiobooks in some cases, but clearly not enough for Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, audio recordings of which can be over 20 hours.
Per Spotify, their audiobook catalog has “something for everyone, including over 70% of bestselling titles: from of-the-moment sensations like Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me and Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend, to beloved classics like Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights”.
The genres span from “cozy mystery” to “historical romance”, as they put it.
Spotify is providing some interesting insights and statistics. According to a survey they ran, the younger generations in the USA are keen on listening to their books instead of reading them: Gen Z and millennials lead in audiobook listening, with 72% of 18-to-34-year-olds reporting that they listen to audiobooks.
