Spotify announced on Tuesday that it will be adding narrated long-form magazine articles to its app as part of its quickly developing mission to become the home of everything audio-related. Premium users will get access to the articles as part of their monthly allotment of 15 hours for listening to audiobooks. For $1.99, free users can choose to buy stand-alone articles.
More than 650 long-form magazine pieces (accessible in English only) from magazines like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, Variety, Billboard, Vibe, GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, and Pitchfork will be available starting today, according to the streaming service. According to Spotify, the articles were created internally by its audiobooks team and enhance the company’s current audio products, such as podcasts.
Spotify informs TechCrunch that a combination of human and digital voice narration will be used in the narrated articles, and that users will be able to easily identify the parts that employ digital voice narration.
Spotify thinks that adding articles to its app could encourage users to try listening to something other than music, which could eventually lead them to try other forms of long-form listening, like its potentially more lucrative audiobooks. This is in addition to being another way to add monetizable audio to the app.
In a blog post on the launch, Colleen Prendergast, licensing lead at Spotify Audiobooks, stated, “By bringing shorter form content into the mix, we’re meeting audiences where they are to help build healthy listening habits, ultimately growing engagement with books over time.”
Currently, Spotify provides its paid users with audiobook listening hours and “top-up” hours when the listening time expires. Additionally, there is a $11.99 monthly Audiobooks+ plan that doubles the listening hours and a $9.99 monthly Audiobook Access plan for Spotify’s free music users.
The addition comes after the streamer has released a ton of news in recent weeks. With new features like AI-generated podcasts, like those you could make with a research app like Google’s NotebookLM; AI-powered audiobook creation for authors; support for AI covers and remixes; and other, non-AI features, like fitness content, the company made significant strides in the field of AI audio.