Spotify adds audiobooks

Spotify has expanded its audiobook subscription offering to 22 markets and started selling printed books in the United States and Britain through its app. (newsroom.spotify.com) The update went live on April 15. Spotify said its audiobook catalog has grown from 150,000 titles to more than 700,000 in a little over two years, and it now pays authors and publishers “hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” (newsroom.spotify.com) In the United States and Britain, Android users can now tap a “Get a copy for your bookshelf” button on audiobook pages and complete the purchase through Bookshop.org, which handles price, stock, shipping, and checkout. Spotify said iPhone support will arrive next week. (techcrunch.com) Spotify is also adding more ways to move between formats. Its Page Match tool, which lines up an audiobook with the same spot in a printed book or e-book, now supports more than 30 additional languages, including French, German, and Swedish. (newsroom.spotify.com) The company said listeners who use Page Match stream 55 percent more audiobook hours each week than other listeners, and 62 percent of Page Matched titles are books those users had not streamed before. Spotify also brought its Audiobook Recaps feature to Android after first launching it on iPhone. (newsroom.spotify.com) Spotify tied the rollout to discovery. Audiobook charts are expanding to Germany, and the company added a Kids and Family chart in the United States and Britain to sit alongside its existing music and podcast rankings. (newsroom.spotify.com; techcrunch.com) The push gives Spotify another way to sell more to the same audience. In its fourth-quarter 2025 results, the company reported 751 million monthly active users and 290 million Premium subscribers. (newsroom.spotify.com) Bookshop.org gives Spotify a bookselling partner with a different pitch from Amazon. The site says its model is built to support local independent bookstores, and Spotify said that was part of the reason for the partnership. (techcrunch.com; newsroom.spotify.com) Spotify first previewed Page Match and the Bookshop tie-up in February. The April launch turns those tests into a wider books push, with audiobook listening, print buying, and recommendation features now bundled inside the same app. (tech.yahoo.com; newsroom.spotify.com)