Spotify brings audiobooks to more than 180 markets and 750 million users

A much wider audiobook footprint

Spotify is extending audiobooks to more than 180 markets across Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. The rollout has already started and will continue over the coming months, giving a potential audience of more than 750 million users the ability to stream audiobooks through the app.

Until now, the format had been largely limited to English-speaking countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand — as well as Germany.

A catalogue built around local languages

For the new markets, Spotify is bringing more than 350,000 titles, and its overall collection now spans more than 120 languages, according to TechCrunch. The launch in Spain alone includes over 45,000 Spanish-language titles. To keep expanding local catalogues, the company is working with more than 300 publishers worldwide, among them Planeta and Mondadori.

How listeners get access

Access depends on the market and the plan. In eligible countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Poland, Chile, Norway and Peru, Premium subscribers get 12 hours of audiobook listening as part of their subscription. Elsewhere, and for heavier listeners, Spotify offers a standalone Audiobook+ subscription with a 15-hour allowance, and individual titles can also be bought outright. In November, an Audiobook+ add-on will arrive for student plans in select regions.

The business is already showing traction

According to TechCrunch, Audiobook+ — which launched last year — has passed 1 million subscribers and generates more than 100 million in annual recurring revenue for Spotify. Over the past year, monthly audiobook listeners grew 40 percent and listening hours climbed 30 percent, the company said.

A feature called Page Match, introduced in February, shows how Spotify is trying to bridge print and audio: users scan a page of a physical book and the app jumps to the corresponding point in the audiobook. The company said roughly 1 million people use it each month.

Broader bets beyond music streaming

The expansion sits alongside several other initiatives TechCrunch highlighted. Spotify introduced Audiobook Charts this year to help listeners discover popular titles, and it launched an AI-powered tool that lets authors turn their books into audiobooks using models from ElevenLabs. The company is also experimenting with selling physical books through its audiobook platform in markets including the United States and the United Kingdom.

Why it matters

Audiobooks give Spotify a way to deepen engagement and lift revenue per user beyond its core music business, and the company is explicitly positioning the format against audiobook apps like Audible as well as other music streaming providers. Dropping audiobooks into more than 180 markets at once lets Spotify leverage a user base — over 750 million people — that dedicated audiobook services cannot match, while publisher partnerships across hundreds of firms build out local-language catalogues that decide whether the format actually sticks outside English-speaking markets. The AI narration tool also lowers the cost of producing an audiobook, which could change how publishers decide which books get audio editions at all. For listeners, the practical outcome is simpler: in a growing number of countries, audiobooks become part of a subscription many people already pay for, rather than a separate purchase.