Audiobooks in streaming: Spotify launches offer in Germany

Spotify is now also launching its audiobook service in Germany. Users can now access a range of audiobooks (number in Germany) from German publishers and hundreds of thousands of foreign-language audiobooks. Premium subscribers receive 12 hours of audiobooks per month, but audiobooks can also be purchased individually. This also applies to users who have not subscribed to the Premium service.

Spotify launched the audiobook service in English-speaking countries in 2023 and expanded it to France and the Benelux countries in 2024. Thanks to collaborations with various publishing houses, the library now includes over 350,000 audiobooks in English and 15,000 each in French, Dutch, and Flemish.

Read As You Go

The monthly hour limit opens up another source of income for Spotify. If an audiobook has a length of 30 hours or more, the 12 hours included in the Premium offer are not enough to listen to the book in full. Spotify offers additional hours that can be purchased individually. In Germany, this costs ten euros per ten hours, in Austria 11.

According to Der Spiegel, the remuneration of the publishing houses differs from the remuneration when music is streamed. According to the report, publishing houses earn 20 to 40 cents per hour that a user listens to – far more than with song streaming. Here, the remuneration is only a fraction of a cent per stream.

The market continues to grow

With its increased involvement in the audiobook segment, Spotify is part of a rapidly growing market. With annual growth of 25 percent, the growth of audiobooks is more than ten times that of the printed book market, according to a report. The latter's annual growth is around two percent. While the market volume for 2025 will still be seven billion US dollars, it is forecast to rise to up to 35 billion in 2030.

(acha)