Spotify is expanding beyond music and podcasts yet again, this time by turning long-form magazine journalism into something you can listen to.
The streaming giant has added more than 650 narrated articles to its audiobook library. It is pulling in stories from major publications, including Spotify, Rolling Stone, WIRED, The Atlantic, Variety and Pitchfork.
Rather than dropping full news archives into the app, Spotify seems to be focusing on the kind of stories its audience is already likely to binge. For example, think deep dives into music, pop culture, entertainment and tech. Each narrated article clocks in at under two hours, making them feel more like short audiobooks than traditional podcasts.
The feature is available in all regions where Spotify audiobooks already exist. However, the current rollout is limited to English-language articles.
Spotify says the move is designed to bridge the gap between podcasts and audiobooks. It gives users shorter listening formats that could eventually encourage them to spend more time with full-length books. Moreover, it fits neatly into Spotify’s growing push to become an all-in-one audio platform rather than just a music streaming app.
There is a catch, though. These narrated articles count toward your monthly audiobook allowance. Spotify Premium subscribers currently get 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month. Therefore, marathon-listening through feature stories from Vogue or Billboard could start eating into that quota pretty quickly.
Users who need more listening time can either buy audiobook top-ups through Spotify’s Audiobooks+ add-on or purchase individual articles separately for around $2 each.
Spotify says its audiobook team produced the narrated articles in-house. However, the company has not yet confirmed whether human voice actors or AI-generated voices handle the narration. That question feels especially relevant given how aggressively Spotify has been leaning into generative AI lately.
Just last week, the company revealed plans for AI-generated personalised podcasts and audiobook playlists built from user prompts. This makes it pretty clear that Spotify wants listening, not reading, to become the default experience inside the app.
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