On the two-year anniversary of its rollout of audiobooks, Spotify says the format is seeing rapid growth.
The number of people listening to an audiobook increased by 36% over the past year, while the number of hours spent listening grew by 37%, Spotify shared with Bloomberg.
That’s a slight increase from the 35% growth in listening hours that Spotify cited in its latest quarterly earnings report. The company didn’t share the total number of audiobook listeners.
Notably, the growth in the audiobooks audience size far outstrips growth in Spotify’s overall user base, which in the most recent quarter grew 11% YoY, to 696 million monthly active users. Premium subscriptions grew 12% YoY to 276 million.
The rapid growth will likely reignite concerns in the music industry that audiobooks may be cannibalizing the music listening audience.
Spotify doesn’t publicly release the granular data that would make it possible to determine whether audiobook listeners spend less time listening to music, but what is known is that the company’s royalty payouts to music continue to grow. Spotify paid $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, up around 11% YoY.
The streaming service’s move into audiobooks has caused some friction with the music business, most notably surrounding Spotify’s decision to pay out lower mechanical royalties to music publishers in the US by declaring its music streaming service a “bundle” with audiobooks.
Spotify argued that it was within its rights under the Phonorecords IV collective agreement, but the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) disagreed and took Spotify to court over the move.
Earlier this year, a federal court sided with Spotify and dismissed the case, but it was given a new lease on life last month when a federal court granted the MLC leave to file an amended complaint against Spotify.
“They’re reaching people who don’t go to bookstores often.”
Amanda D’Acierno, Penguin Random House US
Book publishers, for their part, have largely sounded an optimistic note about Spotify’s move into audiobooks, giving it credit for at least some of the recent boost in audiobook sales, which in the US rose 13% YoY in 2024 to $2.2 billion, according to the Audio Publishers Association.
While some in the book industry have voiced concerns that audiobooks could cannibalize physical book sales, others say Spotify is bringing a new and younger audience to books, and providing a new avenue of book discovery.
“What we’ve seen here in the US is very, very good,” Amanda D’Acierno, who oversees Audio at Penguin Random House US, told the New York Times in 2024. “They’re reaching people who don’t go to bookstores often.”
Spotify’s own data suggests this is the case. The majority of audiobook listeners on the platform are under age 35, per the Bloomberg report.
Owen Smith, head of audiobooks at Spotify, told Bloomberg that children’s books and short stories have done especially well on the platform. He attributed this to “sampling” – the habit of listeners trying out fragments of books until they find something they like.
This is possible thanks to Spotify’s inclusion of 15 hours of audiobooks with a Premium subscription, which gives listeners the ability to jump from book to book until they hit their limit. (Listeners can buy more audiobook time.)
Spotify promised book publishers they would expand the book audience base and “I think we’re succeeding with what we promised the industry on day one,” Smith told Bloomberg.Music Business Worldwide
