Millions of people (myself included) practically live with some of the best headphones in their ears listening to Spotify. Well, the streaming service is now set on not just broadening your musical tastes but also your mind, with it set to give users an audiobook treat.
According to the Wall Street Journal in a bid to test paid subscriber's appetite for audiobooks, Spotify has been working with some of the biggest publishing houses in the US. It seemingly has ambitions to offer up to 20 hours of listening to audiobooks a month as part of the standard subscription cost. The average length of an audiobook is around 10 hours, so this would theoretically translate to around 2 books each month.
Spotify is said to be considering this package with a decision to follow in the coming months, but I think it would be a great idea. With the recent price hike, this would be a handy way to add value to the subscription fee. It's definitely much nicer to see features added on for a premium subscription, rather than taken away from the free plan, with many reporting that Spotify is testing making its lyrics service premium-only.
Currently, Spotify has more than 300,000 audiobooks but they have to be individually purchased (the same goes with Apple Music) so this would be a pretty big change in the business model.
Of course, the biggest player in audiobooks is the Amazon-owned Audible. For £7.99/$7.95 a month you can stream as many books as you like and even pick one to own each month. To be honest, If audiobooks appeared on a service like Spotify as a sort of "one-stop shop" for audio streaming, that would definitely have my interest. Certainly, I'd swap all of the exclusive podcasts that Spotify spent so much to acquire for audiobooks.
Of course, if Spotify really wanted to add value to their subscription, they could just give us that long-awaited hi-fi audio tier.
