In Spotify’s quickly evolving quest to turn into the house of every little thing audio-related, the corporate announced on Tuesday that it’s bringing narrated long-form journal articles to its app. The articles shall be obtainable to Premium subscribers as a part of their 15 hours of audiobook listening time per thirty days. Free customers can choose to buy standalone articles for $1.99.
The streaming service stated that, beginning at this time, there shall be over 650 long-form journal articles (obtainable in English solely) from a group of tales that features publications like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, Selection, Billboard, Vibe, GQ, Wired, Vainness Honest, and Pitchfork. Spotify says the articles had been produced in-house by its audiobooks group and complement Spotify’s current audio choices, like podcasts.
Spotify tells TechCrunch that the narrated articles will use a mixture of human and digital voice narration and that the portion of the articles utilizing digital voice narration shall be clearly labelled for customers.
Past being one other technique of bringing monetizable audio to its app, Spotify believes the addition of articles might encourage customers to attempt a distinct sort of listening past music, which might finally cause them to attempt different types of long-form listening, like its probably extra worthwhile audiobooks.
“By bringing shorter type content material into the combo, we’re assembly audiences the place they’re to assist construct wholesome listening habits, finally rising engagement with books over time,” famous Colleen Prendergast, Licensing Lead at Spotify Audiobooks, in a weblog post in regards to the launch.
At current, Spotify presents audiobook listening hours to its paid subscribers in addition to “top-up” hours when the listening time runs out. There’s additionally a $9.99 per thirty days Audiobook Access plan for Spotify’s free music listeners, and a $11.99 per month Audiobooks+ plan that doubles the listening hours.
The addition follows a deluge of stories from the streamer in current weeks. This noticed the corporate take massive leaps on the planet of AI audio with new options like AI-generated podcasts, just like these you might create with a analysis app like Google’s NotebookLM, AI-powered audiobook creation for authors, support for AI covers and remixes, and different, non-AI options, like fitness content.
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