How To Download And Listen To Audiobooks On Spotify
If one of your New Year's resolutions is to read more books, listening to someone read it to you is an efficient way of doing so. Thanks to the rising popularity of audiobooks, book lovers now have the option to consume stories while doing errands or even right before going to sleep at night without having to read the words or carry physical books around manually. Much like e-books that you can easily purchase online, audiobooks are also an extremely portable format that lets you conveniently finish your reading list while you're out and about, on the road, and even off the grid.
Many audiobook streaming apps out there are worth the try. One of the more popular ones is Audible, Amazon's audiobook portal that lets you purchase titles through different for-pay membership tiers. However, if you prefer accessing all your audio content on just one platform, Spotify has you covered. Not only does it have a massive catalog of music and podcasts — it also has an audiobook collection, which was first launched in late 2022.
How to access Spotify audiobooks
Anybody who has an account should be able to browse audiobooks on Spotify. To listen to one, though, you'd need to purchase titles individually or have a compatible Spotify Premium subscription to get to listen to a few for free.
As a Premium subscriber, you get 15 hours a month of free audiobook access for select titles, with the option of purchasing additional hours. If you're part of either a Premium Duo or a Premium Family subscription, only the plan manager — the person paying for the service — can enjoy this perk. Note that once a Spotify Premium group subscription has been created, the assigned plan manager can't be changed. You'd either need to buy audiobooks directly or start a new premium subscription with yourself as the primary member. Moreover, the Premium Student plan doesn't include the 15 free audiobook-listening hours.
For now, you can only buy Spotify audiobooks through the Spotify web player:
- On your computer, open a web browser and go to open.spotify.com.
- Log in if necessary.
- Click on the Search bar.
- Click on the Audiobooks genre tile.
Once on Spotify's Audiobooks page, find a title you want to listen to. Eligible Premium subscribers with free listening hours left to consume should be able to immediately play certain titles that say "Included in Premium" underneath the play button. Otherwise, click the Buy or Get button to add the selected audiobook to Your Library. Provide your payment details if needed.
Once an audiobook is added to Spotify's Your Library section, you can listen to it on any computer or mobile device. Any audiobook added to your library can also be downloaded for offline listening, whether you're a Spotify free user or a Premium subscriber.
How to search for Spotify audiobooks
Through the Audiobooks genre page — accessible via the Spotify web player's search function — you can check out a variety of titles conveniently grouped into categories like "New and trending releases," "Popular authors," or "Audiobooks for any activity," to name a few. In addition, Spotify also has several curated playlists for specific moods and themes — some good examples you can look into are Great First Listens and From Book to Screen — each one containing multiple audiobook titles for you to acquire. Alternatively, you can check out all available audiobook genres by clicking on the tiles listed in the "Dive deeper" section or hitting "Explore all genres" to expand the full list.
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You can also use the Spotify web player's search bar to look up a specific book title or author to see if Spotify carries it as an audiobook. Narrow down search results by selecting the Audiobooks tab at the top of the page. Again, if you're a Spotify Premium Individual subscriber or a Premium Duo or Family plan manager, most titles should be available to listen to immediately (if you have free hours left) and will have the "Included in Premium" label under the play button. You can also conduct your audiobook search on your mobile device and listen to (and download) your pick right away. If you don't have a compatible Premium plan and you see a Buy button, you'll have to pay the indicated price via the web player to listen to it on Spotify.
Can you listen to Spotify audiobooks for free?
Officially, the answer is... not really. Unofficially, there are ways you can find free audiobooks on the platform, but they will be very limited.
The primary way of listening to titles included in Spotify's official audiobook catalog is through a compatible Premium subscription, which you need to pay for every month. Similarly, if you opt to look up titles using Spotify's Audiobooks genre hub, you will likely see a lot more options available for purchase. For a chance to stumble upon book titles you can get for free, you'll need to look around via the Spotify web player's search function. Audiobooks that bear a Get button instead of a Buy button mean good news — you get to add the selected audiobook to your library for free.
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Based on testing, finding a Spotify audiobook that has the coveted Get option is rare and would require a lot of time and effort sifting through search results. If you're not quite ready to get Spotify Premium or purchase individual audiobooks, you can try a hack of sorts.
If you look up "free audiobooks" using the search bar and select the Playlists tab at the top of the page, you can view collections put together by well-meaning Spotify users of audio tracks — which are different from the titles that appear under Spotify's Audiobooks genre — for different book titles that you can listen to without paying an additional fee. Some of these audio tracks may be chopped up into shorter chapter files, but most of them should be available to listen to regardless of your account type. To download these audio tracks for offline listening, though, you'd need a Premium subscription.
How to find out how many free Spotify audiobook-listening hours you have left
If you're signed up for Spotify Premium Individual or are the plan manager for a Premium Duo or Premium Family subscription, you have a 15-hour monthly allowance that you can use to listen to audiobooks from Spotify's audiobook catalog. Depending on the length of the audiobook, this allotment can cover around 1–4 audiobooks or so. You can easily check your listening hour balance by doing the following on your mobile device:
- Launch the Spotify app.
- Tap on your profile photo.
- Select "Settings and privacy."
- Go to Account and tap the name of your Premium plan. On an Android, you will need to tap on your plan again. At this point, you should be on the "Plan overview" page.
- Tap "Track your included hours and top-ups."
Alternatively, on a desktop, you can go to spotify.com/account, login, and select Audiobook Listening Time under Subscription. These aforementioned menu options will only show up for Premium Individual subscribers and plan managers as they are the only ones who have free hours to use on audiobooks per month. Note that speeding up the playback won't change your hour usage — consumption of your 15-hour monthly allowance is based on playing the audiobook at its intended cadence. In addition, any unused listening hours expire at the end of the month and will not carry over to the next billing period. Refunds will also not be issued for unused or expired audiobook listening time.
How to purchase additional hours for audiobook listening on Spotify
For voracious audiobook "readers," 15 hours may not be enough. If you have a compatible Premium subscription and would like to add more audiobook listening time to your account, you can only do so once your 15 hours have been fully consumed. Here's how:
- On a computer, open a web browser and go to spotify.com/account/overview.
- Log in if necessary.
- Under Subscription, select Audiobook Listening Time.
- Select "Top up."
- Follow onscreen prompts to finalize the order.
Top-up hours are only tapped into when you've used up the free listening hours included in your compatible Premium plan. Once a new billing period starts and your free listening hours are refreshed, consumption will revert to using the free hours up first. Any unused top-up hours will be there to access any time your free listening time is consumed.
Note that any top-up hours you buy are only valid for a year from the original purchase date. You can buy as many top-up hours as you want, available in increments of 10 hours. However, if you cancel your compatible Premium subscription, you won't be able to use any purchased top-up hours unless you resubscribe within 12 months of the top-up hours' original purchase date.