Spotify to expand audiobooks to over 180 markets worldwide
Spotify is bringing its audiobook service to more than 180 markets by the end of 2026, alongside new language catalogues, student listening plans and updates to Page Match.
Spotify is preparing to take its audiobook service to a much wider global audience, announcing plans to expand from 22 markets to more than 180 by the end of 2026.
The expansion comes three years after Spotify first introduced audiobooks as a Premium benefit. Since then, its catalogue has grown to more than 800,000 titles, while monthly listeners are up almost 39% year over year and listening hours have increased by almost 32%.
Catering for its users’ clear appetite for books and stories, Spotify has continued to develop its audiobook service, adding more countries, titles and ways for Premium subscribers to access audiobooks.
Spotify is bringing audiobooks to more markets
Spotify will introduce new local-language catalogues as part of the expansion, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish, among others. The service will eventually cover more than 120 different languages.
This builds on Spotify’s steady expansion of audiobooks as a Premium benefit across Europe and other markets. Availability and the amount of included listening time have varied by country, with Spotify also introducing ways for subscribers to purchase additional hours.
That flexibility has continued to grow through Audiobooks+, which gives eligible Premium users extra audiobook listening time each month. The new expansion will make the service available to a much larger international audience, although specific titles and features will continue to vary between markets.
Spotify says the growth is also helping introduce more people to audiobooks, with many of its listeners discovering the format for the first time.
Audiobooks+ is coming to students
Spotify is also introducing Audiobooks+ for Students, giving students a new way to add audiobook listening hours to their plan.
The feature will launch on November 5 in Ireland, Belgium, Austria and Finland. It builds on the flexible audiobook add-ons Spotify introduced for Premium users, which allow subscribers to get additional listening time without purchasing individual audiobooks.
This is the first time students will be able to add audiobook listening hours through the new offering, giving them another option for accessing Spotify’s growing library.
Page Match makes switching between reading and listening easier
Spotify is also updating Page Match, its feature designed to connect physical or digital reading with audiobook listening.
Page Match has been used by more than one million people since launching in February. Spotify says users of the feature finish books 2.5 times quicker than those who do not use it.
The latest update makes the feature easier to use. Readers will be able to scan the barcode on a book to find the page that matches their current position in the audiobook.
The feature is part of Spotify’s wider effort to connect listening with physical reading. The platform has already linked audiobooks with physical book sales in the UK and US through its partnership with Bookshop.org, allowing users to discover and purchase printed copies of books they find on Spotify.
Spotify’s latest audiobook expansion shows how far the service has developed since its launch. With more than 800,000 titles, over 120 languages planned and availability coming to more than 180 markets, audiobooks are becoming an increasingly significant part of the platform’s wider audio offering.