Image Credit: Spotify

Over 500,000 audiobooks will soon be available to listen to through Spotify, but not to all Spotify subscribers.

Spotify have teamed with Storytel as their very first Open Access Platform partner to expand their audiobook offerings. The partnership brings access to more than 500,000 audiobooks to Spotify subscribers but only to users with an existing Storytel subscription.

Storytel and their audiobook offerings will be the first to use Spotify’s recently announced Open Access Platform. The new technology allows access to content through Spotify that is paid for separately to their Spotify subscription.

The new platform opportunity is posited as a bonus for podcasters who offer exclusive paid content usually outside of Spotify. Launching the new technology with Storytel clearly shows however that there is more potential with the technology.

It also shows Spotify are still keen to get involved in the realm of audiobooks, after experimenting with them in the last year. First they launched a limited offering of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone read by some of the wizarding world’s top stars and earlier this year they launched a selection of classic audiobooks to Spotify users.

Storytel founder and CEO, Jonas Tellander said: “We want everyone to have access to great stories, and today we offer more than 500,000 audiobooks on a global basis across 25 markets. Partnering with Spotify will make amazing audiobook experiences and exciting authorships easier than ever to access for our customers, while we will also be tapping into the opportunity of reaching new audiences who are on Spotify today, but have not yet experienced the magic of audiobooks.”

Spotify say that audiobooks are simply one form of audio that they hope to make available through their new Open Access Platform. It will be exciting to see where they take this technology. As Spotify say themselves: “The possibilities in audio are limitless.”