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Spotify has launched its new audiobook service in the US

Spotify has launched its new audiobook service in the US
Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

  • Updated:

When you think of Spotify you no doubt think of music. This, however, is not quite the image that Spotify wants to have. Sure, it’s great that whenever you share a song, an album, or a playlist with your friends you’ll likely send them a Spotify link, but Spotify wants to be more than that. Spotify doesn’t want to just be music, Spotify wants to be audio, Spotify wants to be anything and everything that you listen to. This is why the Spotify homepage is being redesigned to give podcasts much more space and why Spotify has just launched its new audiobook feature in the US.

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We first reported on Spotify’s plans to expand into audiobooks at the beginning of June when we broke the news that the streaming platform was going to bolster the few story book playlists present on the platform and launch a fully-fledged audiobook service to rival Amazon’s Audible. Spotify has now begun rolling out the feature to Spotify subscribers in the US.

The service offers users access to a catalog of more than 300,000 audiobooks, which are available to purchase or preview. At the moment, however, users have to click on links that will take them to webpages outside of the app to preview or purchase audiobooks. Once they have completed purchases though, the purchased audiobooks will appear alongside music and podcasts in the Spotify app itself.

The audiobooks will be available to download for offline listening. Users will also be able to control the speed of the playback of their books and Spotify will also have an automatic bookmarking function, which will allow users to pick up where they left off. One thing, however, that Spotify has made clear in the blog post announcing the new audiobook service is that this is just the start for Spotify’s audiobook offering and users can expect to see more updated features coming soon. Unfortunately for users outside the US though, there was no news of when the new audiobook catalog will be available in other regions just a mention that the expansion is definitely on the cards at some point in the future.

In other recent Spotify news, premium subscribers now have access to separate play and shuffle buttons.

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney is a news reporter for Softonic, keeping readers up to date on everything affecting their favorite apps and programs. His beat includes social media apps and sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. Patrick also covers antivirus and security issues, web browsers, the full Google suite of apps and programs, and operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Android.

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