The man who put millions of songs on Spotify for free is putting 150,000 books there too, and that’s just for starters. From Tuesday, 15 hours of audiobook listening per month was added to the content available to Spotify Premium customers in the UK and Australia, Daniel Ek announced this week. Premium customers in the US will get the same service starting this winter. They already pay $10.99 a month so the books aren’t quite free even if they feel free. Also, 15 hours is enough, on average, for only one and a half books, and users who want another 10 hours will have to pay another $10.99. But this is a big deal for publishers, who suddenly have access to 220 million Spotify Premium subscribers that they didn’t have last week, and potentially for a few bestselling authors. Spotify says it hopes to have audio versions of 70 per cent of the New York Times bestseller list available at any given time. This is also a direct challenge to Amazon’s Audible platform, with which Spotify is competing for the title of 600-lb audio-everything gorilla. Where it leaves niche authors dependent on selling actual books for their cover price remains unclear.
